Finding the words. What am I feeling?

When I initially started posting on LinkedIn, I couldn’t hit the post button. I was manifesting fear, insecurity, rejection. Fear of being judged, called out for not knowing what I am talking about, or people rejecting me because they couldn’t see any value in what I shared.

My hesitation, what was preventing me hitting the post button, was my physical fear response. The shallow breathing, that clench in my stomach, feeling like I needed to stay silent to protect myself.

What I have learned is that my emotional response is not unique. Many, many people feel the same way that I did.

Opening ourselves up to this and understanding how to recognise and respond to emotions is a beautiful way to practice self-agency and self-regulation.?Emotional intelligence enables us to ground ourselves in the moment, recognise and regulate our response and make a conscious choice about what to do next.

To be clear, I am not a neuroscientist or GP. I do however have a keen interest in behaviour, have read lots of research and think that it is important that we all understand our biology and our brain and how it can help us, and also hinder us.

Those emotions that start to bubble up within our body when we react to something within our environment, sets off this biochemical and electrical chain reaction within our body that alters its physical state.

This is the basic stimulus – response reaction. A change in the environment is the stimulus – the reaction that we have to it is the response.

One part of our brain, our amygdala, fires off neurotransmitters to another part of our brain, the hippocampus, which is an area that is central to memory consolidation. One theory is that this is why our emotional memories are perceived as stronger and long lasting.

Those emotional memories – that is the stuff that we physically feel, the raw, real-time data. They are usually stronger and therefore stick with us, sometimes even when we don’t want them to.

Feelings are something that we consciously process and label, we give them a name, and they can be diluted by bias or stories that we have created and associated with the emotions. Feelings are sparked by emotions; however, they are shaped by personal experiences, beliefs, memories and thoughts that may be linked to that particular emotion. Basically, our brain perceives the emotion, and then leaves our conscious mind to assign meaning to it.

A lot of the time, thanks to our brain creating mental short cuts for us, this is happening automatically. Rarely do we pause and take notice of the sensation to check in with what is really going on before we assign a meaning to it.

Very rarely do we ask ourselves is this feeling helping me or is it derailing me?

Imagine this.

You are walking along, and you see a snake slither in front of you. For those of us who don’t like snakes, when you see the actual snake and have a stimulus – response reaction, you will more than likely freeze, or you might fight by trying to scare the snake away or you might run away. ??

I was eight years old when a snake slithered in front of me while playing in a friend’s backyard. I still remember it so vividly, feeling so frightened as I ran away. Just thinking about it now activates the same emotional response. I turn pale, my stomach starts to turn, I feel faint and nauseous. That memory from childhood has stuck and shaped my future response to the way that I think about snakes.

The reality is that there are times when our brain cannot distinguish what is real from imagery.

My brain cannot distinguish between whether I’m looking at a snake right now or simply imagining it. My brain still produces stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol whether it is real or not.

Why does understanding the difference between emotions and feelings matter?

Because our past experience does not have to define how we feel about things in the future. Instead of our brain using past experience to construct the present, we can tap into our brain’s amazing ability to cultivate new experiences and sensations.

Instead of getting stuck in these mental stories that we repeatedly tell ourselves, eg ‘All snakes will hurt me if I go near them,’ or ‘I have nothing of value to share,’ we can instead press pause and take some time to connect with what we are experiencing.

How to create change

Use tools such as https://feelingswheel.com/ to identify the core emotion, and then work through the associated feelings to create a deeper level of understanding about how you are really feeling. Instead of simply stating that you feel sad, perhaps the tool will help to recognise that what you are actually feel is isolation or loneliness. ?

If it hard for you to be in your body, use the Feelings Wheel to name the feeling that you have associated with the event, and ask yourself ‘How do I know that this is true based on the signals that my body is telling me?’

Or if you are confused about how emotions manifest inside of you, explore your sensations during different nervous system states, such as your fight, flight, freeze or ease response.

Emotions are this wise language within us, always trying to give us useful information to stay regulated, resilient and show up as our best self. With knowledge, we have the power to pause, and notice when this is happening.

If necessary, we have the power to change the story.