Do you have a habit of tucking in emotion? Do you press it down when a difficult emotion bubbles up? This is a very common pattern to dealing with intolerable emotions. When we experience difficult emotions, like anger, frustration, guilt, and sadness, we have three general ways of dealing with them. The first is to tune into the emotion, to acknowledge it and move through it in a healthy way that brings regulation to our nervous system. When we learn how to deal with emotions this way, it helps us to be more compassionate with ourselves and others, to take a wider perspective, connect with our inner strength and wisdom, and develop a stronger sense of self.

The other two options for dealing with emotion lead to getting stuck in the emotion. These are to 1) supress the emotion or 2) to heighten it, feed into it, and get hijacked by it. We suppress or heighten emotion in different ways, such as by avoidance, shutting others out, people pleasing, or numbing with substances or activities. Supressing and heightening are also known as hypoarousal and hyperarousal.

Women often tell me they have a habit of “tucking in” emotion; often pointing to their solar plexus area when telling me so. Another way women describe it to me is “stuffing down” emotion. It can feel like pushing something down deep within us to make it go away. They might stuff it down with staying busy, with food, or numbing out on their device. The problem is, supressing our emotions doesn’t make them go away. Unacknowledged emotion will always find a way to manifest itself in our lives, whether it be through our dreams, through irritability with those we love, though emotional outburst, through high blood pressure, or through physical pain, just to name a few. It also tends to make us re-affirm negative narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves and others, diminishing our sense of self and the quality of our relationships.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) teaches us that when we develop a pattern of pushing down, or avoiding emotion, it diminishes our capacity for personal growth, for s strong self-perspective, and for living authentically and connected to our inner wisdom. EFT views emotion as a what I like to call, “a sacred path to change and inner transformation”. Emotions are not just a feeling; they always have an associated body sensation, narrative we tell ourselves, and an action tendency. When we stuff the emotion, we miss out on noticing how it is affecting our body, what it is making us tell ourselves, and what habits it makes us do (like stress eating). We get caught in a loop of repeating the same (unhealthy) cycles. But when we tune into the emotion, notice each aspect of the emotion, and regulate it in a healthy way, the doorway to change and inner transformation opens before us. This, however, is not an easy task, and often requires learning how to safely tune and regulate with a trained professional so that we learn how to tune in in a way that keeps us within our window of tolerance and that regulates our nervous system.

If you learned how to safely tune in and tend to yourself, what might your doorway to change look like? What possibilities might open up if you weren’t stuck in anger, frustration, guilt, or sadness? What might you want to do if you broke the limitations of negative narratives and were able to step into a greater sense of who you are? Opening up to emotion has the power to open up our lives.

If you are looking for a counsellor in Qualicum Beach, feel free to book a free 15-minute inquiry call with me HERE

Source:

Johnson, S.M. & Campbell, T.L. (2022). A primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT): Cultivating fitness and growth in every client. Routledge.