– across a crowded room.
I teach this skill to my clients and it is one of the weirdest things I do. But it works, so I’m going to share it with you, too.
The skill is to get so familiar with your negative emotions that you can spot them the second they walk in the room. Like spotting a friend across a crowded room. They could be facing away from you, but you know them by the way they move, how they hold themselves, their specific energy. You know them intimately.
That’s what I want you to be able to do with your negative emotions. With resentment. With anxiety. With whatever emotion has been feeling like some sort of terrible.
Why bother getting cozy with the bad stuff?
Because once you can recognize it, you get to choose. Is this emotion actually useful right now? Sometimes yes. For example anger moves things, grief needs space, regret can change behavior. Negative emotions aren’t always bad, but they are worth paying attention to.
Here’s how to do this.
Next time something uncomfortable shows up, just get curious. We can feel emotions in our body before our brain is aware of what’s causing them.
Ask yourself:
Where do you feel it in your body?
If it had a color, what would it be?
Does it move? If so, how?
How heavy is it?
What’s the texture — smooth, sharp, rough, soft?
If it had a rhythm like an EKG, what would the waveform look like?
I know this seems strange, but I would encourage you to try it anyway.
For me, I feel a lot of negative emotion in my chest and they feel like they get caught in my throat. There’s a tightness, a knot, and sometimes, it’s harder to speak up. When I feel that, it’s my cue: something’s going on. Let’s take a look. Do I like what’s happening here? That physical sensation is data; an opportunity to examine information.
Let me tell you about a client.
She was feeling off after spending time with certain people in her life. Not awful, but she noticed she was irritable, felt tightness in her chest, and kind of heavy. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, but once she started paying attention to it, she realized she was feeling resentment.
And then once she could name it, she was able to determine what was driving it: she was the one doing all the planning, all the driving, all the showing up. She’d schedule things, and they’d cancel. She’d make the trip to them, but they never came to her. It was wearing on her, but no wonder she felt so drained.
Once she recognized that she was dealing with resentment, she was able to decide what to do with it. She clearly saw that it was not indeed serving her, so she stopped planning her family’s life around people who weren’t reciprocating. She chose to make decisions that made the most sense for her family, to stop feeling guilty, to not carry around negativity and to stop people pleasing. She said that felt authentic, rather than resentful.
And she got there because she recognized the feeling that wasn’t serving her.
This is a skill that you can learn.
The first time you try to describe an emotion in your body it’s going to feel weird and abstract. That’s OK. Try it anyway.
What you’re building is the ability to catch your negative emotions sooner, before the emotion gets the best of you. The faster you recognize it, the faster you can decide: is this working for me, or am I ready to move on?
I’m sure you’ve felt these emotions hundreds of times. You just haven’t been “formally introduced” yet, so start here.
If you are a Logan Health Employee and want help to quickly recognizing your emotions, so you can easily shift out of them– that’s exactly what we do in coaching. Coaching is a part of your benefits. You can book a coaching session here.
Or, if you are not a Logan Health Employee, you can book a complimentary consultation to see if we’re a good fit here.
