4 Steps to Help You Process Complex Emotions
From studying trauma responses and cognitive behavioral therapy to going through somatic therapy myself, here are four steps to help process your emotions, based on all that I’ve learned.
1. Settling In
The first step to process our emotions requires us to surrender, and it is the hardest of the four. Accessing the present moment means that we give up our right to experience reality on our terms, and learn to open ourselves to the vibrancy of our emotion, regardless of how it makes us feel.
There are several different methods to settle in. The first is the highly effective method of utilizing our breath to settle into our bodies and minds. Take a few deep breaths, feel the energy of your body, see where there is tension, and begin to release it. We hold angst in our stomach, shoulders, neck, and many other places. Allow your breath to show you where you need to release, then do so upon the exhale.
This is the physical act of surrender. From the physical act of surrender, we can then begin to surrender our minds. Here we become aware of our thoughts, and the sensations they cause. We relinquish the conscious desire for complete control. Surrendering to the mind grants us a deeper awareness of our thoughts, and is another layer to “settling in”.
2. Engagement
Engagement is the process where we deeply access what we feel. After we have settled into our bodies and our environment, we can move into exploring our current emotional dynamic. This can be accomplished through several different methods.
- Meditation. Taking slow, deep breaths is the doorway to meditation. The first step of “Settling In” can naturally lead us to this method of engagement. Meditation allows us to tune in with the workings of our body, and to move through the emotional narratives of each part of our body. Because emotions — like anxiety — are stored in parts of the body, such as the chest or stomach, there will be an accompanying tightness that wants to be released in those places. Where do your emotions sit for you?
- Artwork. Whether it’s a few scribbles on a piece of paper or a full Mona Lisa, creating art allows us to engage with ourselves in a more grounded way than thinking does. We must give ourselves full permission to paint, draw, scribble, or craft whatever we are feeling and manifest it into visual expression. There is no room for judgment here because judgment prevents you from painting or drawing what you need to. Let your hand go where it must, and create the art with a curiosity about where your feelings are leading you. Paint as if you were the witness to your emotions.
- Journaling & Writing. Words are sometimes the only medium we can use to access our emotions. Whether through free association, a recap of the day, a short story or poem, or a rant expressing all the frustration you are dealing with, journaling allows us to pinpoint the foggy landscape of our emotional depths, and can lead us through the swamp one step at a time.
- Listening To Music. Finding a song, lyrical or non-lyrical, that matches our mood can be — pun intended — instrumental in guiding us through our mood. Music can bring awareness to our moods that can be challenging to access otherwise. But be careful, some of us will select songs merely to feel a certain way — sad, glad, angry — instead of engaging with the actual emotion we feel in the moment. Let the music say what you are having trouble saying, let it be the lantern that explores the inner world of your moods and emotions.
- Physical Expression. Dancing, especially to music, exercising such as yoga or walking (or smacking a punching bag really hard), playing a sports game, and doing all things physical, give us the opportunity not only for the physiological release of our complex emotions, but it allows us to express ourselves — artistically — through movement.
This process of Engagement doesn’t have to take long, but it does have to be true. We have to get to the point where we can allow our emotions to work through us. Some days one method may be our preferred doorway to our emotions. Other days, another method will be needed. We won’t always be able to make a piece of artwork or feel like working out. But we need something, even if it’s just a few breaths of meditation, to give our body the space to move through its own physiological state.
“Engagement” can be hard because it is often messy. Writing through our emotions will very rarely end up in a neatly organized five-paragraph essay. The sculpture or painting we make might not have perfect proportions to be commercially ready to sell this holiday season. We may not look or feel like the zen master when we meditate. Instead, we may feel turbulent inside, unsure if we are doing it the right way.
We may feel self-conscious while dancing, even if we are alone. But ask yourself: How would I move if I had all the confidence in the world? Move like that. We may be afraid to release our anger on the punching bag or in the sports arena. But also ask yourself: If not here, then where?
The goal of Engagement is to allow the emotion to say what it wants to, uninhibited by the mind, by all the things you need to do, and by all the worries shouting at you from your brain. Engagement simply asks you to be and move with the rhythm of whatever you’re feeling, from peace and joy to anger, rage, and frustration. No emotion is off-limits. Remember, if you’re feeling it, it’s already there in the first place. Give yourself permission to feel what is there.
3. Staying With The Emotion
What do we do with the actual emotion? We want to get in and out of our emotions as fast as possible so that we can reclaim a sense of (false) control with our minds. The skill we need to learn is staying with the emotion. This is an extension of surrender.
Emotions want to be processed. When we engage with them through a journal or a piece of artwork, they are taking us on a journey, and we are telling a story through them. We need to allow this story to be told in its entirety until the emotion fades into something else, or dissipates entirely.
Emotions are also communicating important information to us, and engaging with them gives us access to their knowledge. Sometimes they reveal wounds that haven’t been healed, limiting mindsets that are cutting short our chances of fulfillment, and damaging beliefs that do more harm than good. Our body holds great wisdom.
We will often resist whatever emotion is within us. When we are blocking our bodies from feeling what they are feeling, we need to give ourselves permission to move through the actual emotion. We can say out loud or in our mind: It’s okay for me to feel this way.
“Staying With The Emotion” is akin to listening to someone until they are done talking. When they are done, you may want to ask further questions. Why do you think that happened? Is there anything else you want to say? That’s interesting, do you think my estranged relationship with my father caused that? Is this pointing to a habit of dependency where I have to feel less insecure about my performance? Ask and be curious. There may be an answer waiting for you.
4. Making It A Habit
After going through this process of letting the emotion move through you and cleanse you, you will likely feel really good. You will feel balanced between mind and body, more in control of your mood, and more excited to live your day.
A strong tendency once we are in this space is to want to hold on to it. This is perfectly understandable. We are not used to feeling free within our bodies. When we finally do feel free, we want to squeeze every last ounce of that freedom to hold onto it forever. This leads us back to the initial phase of being locked up by bodies, where we declare war on our body instead of offering surrender.
Just as we must surrender doing emotional turbulence, we must also surrender during emotional peace. We must surrender to the fact that the ebb and flow of life will take us back to negative emotions at some point. But we can also realize that the negative emotion doesn’t want to stay there for months on end. It wants to be processed and have the freedom to move through us, tell its story, and dissipate into peaceful energy.
Before long, this process can become a habit, and we can experience great faith even during times of great anxiety. Because we will know how to let the emotion work through us, and we will know that emotions do not stay around forever. And we will know that this is a blessing.
