Naming Our Emotions

There are times when life can feel overwhelming.  Our emotions can sometimes get the best of us, and at times we don’t even know why.  To manage our stress, it is helpful to actually take a moment to name the emotions we are feeling that led us to being overwhelmed.  When we name our emotions, they lose some of their intensity, and this helps us to reduce our overall stress.  I like to say all the time that when we name an emotion, we own it…instead of it owning us.

How does naming an emotion help reduce stress?  Well, when we are in a stress response, we tense up, thinking gets muddled and the frontal cortex becomes a hinderance instead of our friend.  When we get into our fight, flight or freeze mode, as we often do in times of stress or overwhelm, our amygdala has taken over our brain short-circuiting our ability to see life clearly.  In short, naming the emotion(s) helps us become grounded in the present, and when we do this we can get this clarity back and take some real steps in reducing our tendencies towards impulsivity, anxiety and reactivity.

There are real costs to unnamed emotions.  When we are not able to identify what emotions we are feeling in the moment, the emotions can fester and misdirect.  We end up snapping at someone when what we might actually be feeling is fear, worry, betrayal or helplessness.  There is a level of clarity that we experience when we name the emotions we are feeling.

Here is a simple, three step process for naming emotions:

• Pause and Notice: “What am I actually feeling right now?”
• Name it Precisely: Go beyond “bad” or “stressed” — Is it Disappointment? Shame? Loneliness?
• Validate it Without Judgment: “It makes sense I feel this way.”

You can also ask these questions:

• “Right now, I feel…”
• “What happened just before this feeling started?”
• “I there something I actually need right now?”

If you decide to make this change, remember that this is not a process of changing the feeling.  Resistance to any emotion only makes it more intense and makes it last longer…the exact opposite of what we really want.  However, when we name the emotion, we are taking the first and vitally important step to reclaiming our calm.

source https://www.lifesworkclinic.com/naming-our-emotions/