How to Express Your Emotions in a Healthy Way: Tips and Tools
Emine Yesilcimen
Senior Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn | Talent Acquisition | Employer Branding | ICF Certified Career Coach ?| Podcaster??
It's easy to fix problems quickly. The important thing is to find long-term solutions.?
As our emotions lead our lives most of the time, I want to point out recognizing emotions and making room for emotions. I will also share scientifically supported practices that might help us to balance our emotions and logic.
What is Emotion?
Emotions are reactions that human beings experience in response to events or situations. The type of emotion a person experiences is determined by the circumstance that triggers the emotion. For instance, a person experiences joy when they receive good news. A person experiences fear when they are threatened.
Emotions have a strong influence on our daily lives. We make decisions based on whether we are happy, angry, sad, bored, or frustrated. We choose activities and hobbies based on the emotions they incite. Understanding emotions can help us navigate life with greater ease and stability.
What Do Emotions Do?
Think of life as a journey where we enjoy it on the way rather than focusing on the destination.
When we are unfamiliar with our emotions when we do not know what it is for, that roads of our life journey are like pitch black. We see nothing. We don't know where we're going, we don't know which way is the best or we can't even properly choose our companions to accompany us on that journey.
There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion. – Carl Jung
Emotions are one of the most important tools that determine who we are and how we live our lives. So what are we doing? We treat them as something that is always underfoot, preventing us from developing and growing.
Or we perceive it as a sign of weakness, suppress it, ignore it, and do not want to deal with our emotional leaks among all the work we have to do. And most of the time, we don't know how to deal with it or how to deal with that emotion.
Why Do We Hesitate to Share Our Emotions?
A study of several hundred thousand people was conducted by the Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence on why people are reluctant to share their feelings. The results are very interesting. They generally said:
“We were never taught a comprehensive dictionary of emotions.”?
“We are used to automatically saying good or okay.”
“If we accept how we feel, we should own it and do something about it.” emotional responsibility
“Nobody cares how you feel.”
“We were taught not to discuss our feelings.”
"I don't want to be judged."
"No time!" “I have so many feelings.”
“There is too much social pressure to risk being honest.”
“If I shared how I felt, no one would want to be around me.”
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Let's look at it this way; Think of emotions as a form of information. Consider them like the news agency of our soul. Let our emotional world be a news agency that sends us instant messages about what is going on inside us in response to the internal or external events we experience wisely.
As long as we accept these messages, and understand what they are telling us, we can make conscious decisions. We can establish a healthy relationship with ourselves, our environment, and the world we live in, both mentally and physically. We can continue our life journey in the light, not in the dark.
5 Areas Influenced by Emotions Most in Our Lives
Marc Brackett is a professor at Yale University and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, a research scientist on emotions and emotional skills. In his book Permission to Feel, he talks about the 5 areas that emotions affect the most in daily life.
RULER Method & Mood Meter App
While writing the book I mentioned above, Marc Brackett wrote it for the following purpose; to create a healthier, more egalitarian, innovative, and compassionate society by using the power of emotions. For this, he proposes the following method.
Recognize: Ask when you feel restless; how do I feel?
Understand: After describing what we feel, we can ask: Why do I feel in this way? It helps us better understand our behavior and analyze the impact of others' behavior on us.
Label: This is important because it increases self-awareness and helps us communicate our emotions effectively, reducing misunderstandings in social interactions. Some studies have even found that labeling emotions can help reduce stress.
Mood Meter App to Label Emotions
There is an application to create a list of emotions to define and measure them in detail in order to increase awareness. The name of the application is the Mood Meter app. Download it if you think you are not good at naming your emotions easily. You will be surprised how many emotions we have.
Express: Expressing; In short, knowing how and when to show our emotions.
?“Unexpressed emotions will never die.?They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”- Freud
Regulate: The last one is self regulation. You can think of it as an arrangement that involves monitoring, softening, and modifying emotional responses. The reason is that we do not experience emotional outbursts afterward and face undesirable and regrettable consequences.
You may have an IQ that would make Einstein jealous but if you can't recognize your emotions and see how they affect your behavior, you may be undermining yourself. People who lack the permission to feel, the vocabulary to express these emotions, and the ability to understand them also limit their potential in life, work, and relationships.?
Thanks for reading Mindfully Yours newsletter, I hope you enjoyed the topic. Here are some ways to access more mindful living tips:
→ Contact me if you're interested in to work together on Mindfulness or Career Coaching.
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Warmly,
Emine