Processing Emotions
04/18/11: One of the most common things my clients want help with is understanding and processing their emotions. Essentially, this means getting a deep understanding of what we are feeling, why we are feeling it, and what to do with it. The following is a brief overview of a model of doing just that.
How Emotions Work
There have been debates in many disciplines for centuries about how emotions work. One of the most current views that synthesizes most previous work is the cognitive-experiential perspective. Basically it goes like this:
1) A stimulus (an event, object, situation, etc) is perceived by the person
2) An instinctual response happens that produces instant changes in the body including increased alertness, focused attention, changes in facial expression, increased heart rate, and a variety of others. It also includes impulses to approach, avoid, flee, attack, freeze, submit, laugh, or celebrate, among many others, depending on what the stimulus is. For example, if you saw a gorilla roaring and charging toward you, before you could form a conscious judgment of what to do, you would likely instantly have a burst of adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormone), have a rapid heartbeat, and run, scream, and focus all attention on finding safety.
3) The instinctual responses then rely on our thoughts to sustain or challenge them. For example, imagine that after you took a couple steps running, you remembered that a friend of yours has a gorilla costume and a mean sense of humor. Your thoughts would then rearrange how you were responding, and thus change your feelings and responses to what was happening. You may start laughing or get angry, but either way, a change happened. This is the basic idea for a lot of therapy around changing how we feel about ourselves, others, and the world.
The Steps
A technique to help understand and work with emotions is "processing" them. One of the best outlines of processing emotions was developed for therapists and their clients by Kennedy-Moore and Watson, in their book Expressing Emotion (2001). Over the years I have modified this to be more practical for anyone to use on their own. At each step I will identify the common places people make mistakes in the process, and offer some ideas that can help.
1. Sensing
The building blocks of emotions are in the physical sensations and automatic impulses we have. Therefore, the first step is to scan your body and identify the types of sensations and motivations you are having. Is your stomach turning? Is your jaw clenched? Is there a lump in your throat? Is your face flush? One mistake people make is skipping over this step entirely, which leaves us somewhat out of tune with our body. Another is when we deny that the sensations exist, or assume them to be something other than part of an emotional experience, like saying "I'm just tired".
2. Naming
Once you have the feelings down, it is important to accurately name the emotion. The mistakes people make here are mislabeling the emotion, or using generic words that do not get it exactly right. For example, using words like "weird", "upset", or "bothered" all have a variety of ambiguous meanings. There is more power and more ability to work with the emotion when using words like "anxious", "sad", or "angry" instead. Additionally, we often have blends of several emotions at a time, or conflicting emotions, which makes this part even more difficult. Having a good emotional vocabulary is an important part of this, so check below for a large list of emotions.
3. Attributing
After you have the right name, it is key to accurately determine what caused it. Sometimes this is obvious, whereas other times emotions seem to "come out of nowhere" or "for no reason". Emotions are almost always triggered by something, but the triggers may be unknown to us. A common explanation for emotions coming "out of nowhere" is that the emotion was present, but was only consciously experienced when there was space for it, like when doing a mindless task, or taking a familiar drive. A mistake people make in this step is attributing the emotion exclusively to one thing. For example, say a man that just had an argument with his partner became enraged in traffic. In this step, we'd say that the anger was immediately provoked by the traffic, but the strength of the emotion is likely due to anger that is related to the earlier argument.
4. Evaluating
This part is where we ask ourselves how we feel about having the emotion. We all have different answers to this based on our identity, culture, and comfort with certain emotions. For example, someone may feel perfectly comfortable being angry, but feel very uncomfortable feeling sad. That means the intensity of the emotional experience just doubled because discomfort or shame was now added to sadness. Basically, things can get really complicated here if we do not accept or value the emotions that we are experiencing. In counseling I generally promote the idea that all of our emotions are valid and have value, even if it is just a signal that something is happening within us, or in the world. Judgment can be reserved for our actions related to our emotions (step 5), but spare the emotions themselves, and instead work to accept that they are there.
5. Acting
After all of this is complete, we are left with choices about how to proceed. In this step, we get to decide whether and how we will express the emotion, and/or how to cope with it. The key here is that if we think about what kind of action to take, we can avoid making mistakes in our lives based on flares of emotion. Developing a set of coping strategies is important for this step, and something I have written about here, here, here, and here, and here.
If you struggle with this process, or want to work with it more extensively, counseling can help. I often work with my clients to develop mastery over this, and deepen understanding of emotional life.
List of Emotions
Below is a list of common variations on primary emotions. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but may be able to help you expand your emotion vocabulary.
Fear: anxious, avoidant, cautious, concerned, frozen, insecure, intimidated, guarded, overwhelmed,
panicked, stressed, tense, terrified, trapped, vulnerable, worried.
Anger: aggressive, bitter, cold, competitive, defensive, disgusted, disrespected, enraged, frustrated,
hostile, irritated, jealous, mad, outraged, resentful, revolted.
Sadness: apathetic, depressed, disheartened, disappointed, disillusioned, embarrassed, grief-stricken,
guilty, hurt, lonely, needy, regretful, rejected, shameful, stuck, tired, weak.
Joy: blissful, brave, confident, connected, ecstatic, energized, excited, friendly, happy, hopeful, loved,
loving, proud, powerful, rebellious, relieved, relaxed, spiritual, strong, thankful, touched, tough, warm
Self-Conscious Emotions
Guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride. Read more about this unique group of emotions here.
Plutchik Emotion Circumplex
Additionally, below is the wonderful graphic representation of a highly regarded emotion classification system.
How Emotions Work
There have been debates in many disciplines for centuries about how emotions work. One of the most current views that synthesizes most previous work is the cognitive-experiential perspective. Basically it goes like this:
1) A stimulus (an event, object, situation, etc) is perceived by the person
2) An instinctual response happens that produces instant changes in the body including increased alertness, focused attention, changes in facial expression, increased heart rate, and a variety of others. It also includes impulses to approach, avoid, flee, attack, freeze, submit, laugh, or celebrate, among many others, depending on what the stimulus is. For example, if you saw a gorilla roaring and charging toward you, before you could form a conscious judgment of what to do, you would likely instantly have a burst of adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormone), have a rapid heartbeat, and run, scream, and focus all attention on finding safety.
3) The instinctual responses then rely on our thoughts to sustain or challenge them. For example, imagine that after you took a couple steps running, you remembered that a friend of yours has a gorilla costume and a mean sense of humor. Your thoughts would then rearrange how you were responding, and thus change your feelings and responses to what was happening. You may start laughing or get angry, but either way, a change happened. This is the basic idea for a lot of therapy around changing how we feel about ourselves, others, and the world.
The Steps
A technique to help understand and work with emotions is "processing" them. One of the best outlines of processing emotions was developed for therapists and their clients by Kennedy-Moore and Watson, in their book Expressing Emotion (2001). Over the years I have modified this to be more practical for anyone to use on their own. At each step I will identify the common places people make mistakes in the process, and offer some ideas that can help.
1. Sensing
The building blocks of emotions are in the physical sensations and automatic impulses we have. Therefore, the first step is to scan your body and identify the types of sensations and motivations you are having. Is your stomach turning? Is your jaw clenched? Is there a lump in your throat? Is your face flush? One mistake people make is skipping over this step entirely, which leaves us somewhat out of tune with our body. Another is when we deny that the sensations exist, or assume them to be something other than part of an emotional experience, like saying "I'm just tired".
2. Naming
Once you have the feelings down, it is important to accurately name the emotion. The mistakes people make here are mislabeling the emotion, or using generic words that do not get it exactly right. For example, using words like "weird", "upset", or "bothered" all have a variety of ambiguous meanings. There is more power and more ability to work with the emotion when using words like "anxious", "sad", or "angry" instead. Additionally, we often have blends of several emotions at a time, or conflicting emotions, which makes this part even more difficult. Having a good emotional vocabulary is an important part of this, so check below for a large list of emotions.
3. Attributing
After you have the right name, it is key to accurately determine what caused it. Sometimes this is obvious, whereas other times emotions seem to "come out of nowhere" or "for no reason". Emotions are almost always triggered by something, but the triggers may be unknown to us. A common explanation for emotions coming "out of nowhere" is that the emotion was present, but was only consciously experienced when there was space for it, like when doing a mindless task, or taking a familiar drive. A mistake people make in this step is attributing the emotion exclusively to one thing. For example, say a man that just had an argument with his partner became enraged in traffic. In this step, we'd say that the anger was immediately provoked by the traffic, but the strength of the emotion is likely due to anger that is related to the earlier argument.
4. Evaluating
This part is where we ask ourselves how we feel about having the emotion. We all have different answers to this based on our identity, culture, and comfort with certain emotions. For example, someone may feel perfectly comfortable being angry, but feel very uncomfortable feeling sad. That means the intensity of the emotional experience just doubled because discomfort or shame was now added to sadness. Basically, things can get really complicated here if we do not accept or value the emotions that we are experiencing. In counseling I generally promote the idea that all of our emotions are valid and have value, even if it is just a signal that something is happening within us, or in the world. Judgment can be reserved for our actions related to our emotions (step 5), but spare the emotions themselves, and instead work to accept that they are there.
5. Acting
After all of this is complete, we are left with choices about how to proceed. In this step, we get to decide whether and how we will express the emotion, and/or how to cope with it. The key here is that if we think about what kind of action to take, we can avoid making mistakes in our lives based on flares of emotion. Developing a set of coping strategies is important for this step, and something I have written about here, here, here, and here, and here.
If you struggle with this process, or want to work with it more extensively, counseling can help. I often work with my clients to develop mastery over this, and deepen understanding of emotional life.
List of Emotions
Below is a list of common variations on primary emotions. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but may be able to help you expand your emotion vocabulary.
Fear: anxious, avoidant, cautious, concerned, frozen, insecure, intimidated, guarded, overwhelmed,
panicked, stressed, tense, terrified, trapped, vulnerable, worried.
Anger: aggressive, bitter, cold, competitive, defensive, disgusted, disrespected, enraged, frustrated,
hostile, irritated, jealous, mad, outraged, resentful, revolted.
Sadness: apathetic, depressed, disheartened, disappointed, disillusioned, embarrassed, grief-stricken,
guilty, hurt, lonely, needy, regretful, rejected, shameful, stuck, tired, weak.
Joy: blissful, brave, confident, connected, ecstatic, energized, excited, friendly, happy, hopeful, loved,
loving, proud, powerful, rebellious, relieved, relaxed, spiritual, strong, thankful, touched, tough, warm
Self-Conscious Emotions
Guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride. Read more about this unique group of emotions here.
Plutchik Emotion Circumplex
Additionally, below is the wonderful graphic representation of a highly regarded emotion classification system.
