Emotional Processing: 5 steps to processing your feelings.
The phrase “Emotional Processing” or “Processing your Emotions” has become extremely popular recently. But what exactly does it actually mean?
If you go online, you’ll find a million different definitions, but here’s a basic one that I use with my clients.
Processing emotions is the act of identifying, experiencing, and accepting the full range of feelings you have toward a person, situation, or event. The goal of processing your feelings, is to experience an emotional release. This emotional release allows you to move forward, rather than remaining caught in an endless loop of anger, resentment, regret (or some other negative emotional state).
We all have unprocessed emotions
We are complex people living in a complex world. So it’s no surprise that we’re full of feelings. Some feelings we enjoy and look forward to (love, friendship, happiness) and others we avoid at all costs. We shy away from these difficult feelings because they are:
Upsetting
Confusing
There is no clear solution
They are often part of a much bigger set of conflicts in our life
Remind us of painful experiences
These unpleasant feelings often remained unprocessed and unresolved for decades. While avoiding these feelings gives us a short-term solution, it also robs us of the ability to work through the feelings so that they no longer plague us. As a result, we just carry the feelings around with us, endlessly. And the feelings then come out in other, and often unproductive, ways.
An example of unprocessed emotions
You have a phone call with your father telling him how excited you are about buying a new car. His response is something like “are you sure you can afford that new car?”. You feel he’s treating you like a child, you get angry and there’s a fight. Afterwards, you think to yourself “let it go”, “it’s not that big of a deal”, or “that’s just dad being dad”. And yet, you find yourself repeatedly thinking about the conversation. You stay irritated at your father, and you avoid talking to him, for days or weeks after the call. Avoiding him then leads to further conflict between the two of you, and you grow increasingly more distant. You know that you’re over-reacting to what happened on the call, but you can’t seem to let it go, or understand why you’re so upset.
This situation has all the hallmarks of a situation where emotional processing would be helpful. The signs of unprocessed emotions include:
A big reaction to a relatively small injury
The inability to let go of a resentment
You keep thinking about the incident over and over
It feels like you’ve been here before - many times
You feel confused and unable to sort out your feelings
These complex feelings about a parent are not easy to resolve and are uncomfortable to look at. But, until you are able to process the feelings, you will keep getting caught in this same loop over and over. The goal of emotional processing is to get you out of that endless loop.
5-Steps to emotional processing
Thinking about your feelings isn’t enough, to process your emotions you actually have to experience the feelings. You have to “feel your feelings”. Unfortunately, no one ever taught us how to feel our feelings. In fact, for most of our life, the world has been telling us not to have our feelings.
“Just tough it out”
“Stop wallowing in your feelings”
“Toughen-up buttercup”
When clients need help processing feelings, I suggest a 5-step process.
1. Pause
2. Name your feelings
3. Experience your feelings
4. Accept your feelings
5. Practice self-compassion
Step 1. Pause
The first step is to take a few moments to calm yourself. You don’t have to do a big meditation, just take a minute or two to let your mind and body settle down. Here’s a simple two-minute calming exercise.
1. Find a quiet, comfortable, and safe spot to sit
2. Close your eyes if that feels comfortable for you
3. Relax your body
4. Feel the weight of your back and thighs against the chair
5. Take about 10 - 20 slow deep breaths at your own pace
6. As you breathe, pay attention to your breath and let go of your thoughts, when new thoughts come in just release them gently and bring your attention back to your breath
7. Slowly open your eyes
8. Look around the room and find 5 different colors and say their name out loud
9. Look around the room and find 5 different shapes and say their name out loud
10. Wiggle your toes and fingers
Step 2. Name your feelings
Close your eyes and imagine the person or situation that is causing you problems (in this case we’ll stick with the example of the father). Try to identify all the different feelings you have about your father. Remember, he’s an important figure in your life, so you undoubtedly have a wide range of feelings. Write down as many feelings as you can.
Remember, this is not an in-depth discussion of your feelings; it is just a simple list. Each item on the list includes a feeling statement. For example, you might write:
- I love him
- I’m angry at him
- I miss seeing him
- I feel ashamed that I’ve disappointed him
- I regret the fight we had
- I feel irritated and annoyed when I talk to him
- I feel sad that we don’t have a closer relationship
- I feel grateful for the help he’s given me
- I resent the fact that he treats me like a kid
- I feel hopeless that we’ll ever be closer
- I’m scared he might not live much longer
- I’ll be glad when he’s gone
- I’m worried that I may have to take care of him if he becomes ill
- and many more
Step 3. Experience your feelings
Now read your list over once or twice and then just sit back and let the feelings sink in. You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to understand your feelings, you don’t have to make sense of your feelings. You just have to be willing to open up to experiencing this complex, and contradictory, set of emotions.
Don’t try to work them out, explain them, rationalize them, debate them, fix them or anything else. You are just going to sit there and feel them. Don’t worry if you don’t “feel” anything, that’s OK. It may take a few tries for you to actively feel the emotions. But even if it doesn’t seem like you’re feeling them, a lot is going on inside you.
Step 4. Accept your feelings
Read over your feelings list again and notice the range of feelings you have for him. And just allow yourself to accept that you have all these feelings about your father and that you carry all these feelings inside of you. Not just anger or love. And it’s OK to have all sorts of feelings about your father, in fact it is very natural.
You don’t have to do anything about these feelings. You don’t have to try to have less anger and more love. Or forgive him or ask for forgiveness. Just accept that all of these feelings exist within you.
Step 5. Practice self-compassion
What you’re doing isn’t easy. There’s a natural tendency to criticize yourself for the kinds of feelings you have or for how difficult it is to process them. But instead of being critical, try adopting an attitude of kindness toward yourself. Try for a feeling of gratitude and accomplishment that you’re willing to start processing these difficult feelings. Talk to yourself with kindness. Some statements you might try include:
“I’m having a hard time with this”
“This would be hard for anyone”
“I’m doing the best I can”
What’s the benefit of emotional processing?
My clients report that the primary benefit of emotion processing is that it brings them a sense of freedom. They are able to get out of that endless loop and recognize all the feelings they are experiencing. It will still irritate them when their father treats them like a kid, but they will also feel all the other emotions they have (both positive and negative) for their father. So, instead of blowing up, they can see it as one feeling within a whole complex set of emotions. And when they can have their feelings, instead of pushing them away, it allows them to have closer and more genuine relationships.
I take the time to process my feelings because I can feel it lowering my stress level and helping me to feel more connected to both myself and the people in my life. I feel a weight physically come off my chest, I can breathe more easily, and I feel freer.
Give it a try. And leave me a comment so I can know how it worked for you.