Decoding Emotions
A better way to understand why you feel what you feel
Give yourself permission to feel. Before we can shift anything, we first have to understand what it’s asking of us. What it needs from us. This information is a critical piece of the puzzle. It starts with giving yourself permission to feel, then making space for the possibility of you feeling something different. That’s how we start creating a shift.
This permission can only come from within. This is the catalyst to creating a clearer relationship with yourself and the world around you. This is how you reclaim your agency and take accountability for how you decide to face your challenges.
One of the reasons it can be difficult to fully commit to shifting your emotional patterns is because the emotions themselves are repeatedly telling you a story about you and your life. This lens which you see yourself, your relationships and the world around you. It becomes very familiar. And that familiarity provides a safety in its predictability. Even if it’s not serving you.
This familiarity creates a sense of ownership and that can prove difficult to release. It creates the fabric that you believe is your identity. Even if you know better, the emotional hold of that belief system has a gravitational pull.
The only way to untangle it and create space for a new more empowering narrative and identity is through listening to it.
Don’t run or hide. Give yourself the chance to feel something different.
What’s ‘emotion’?
Emotions are information serving as a signal to guide you.
Your emotions are a diverse and complex aspect of your experiences. They are represented in what you think, how you feel, and respond to the information from within you and within your surroundings.
We tell our clients all the time that their emotions, even the ones considered “bad”, are preparing each of us to make the next best decision based on our previous experiences and the information available at the present moment.
Emotions allow you to respond to and make decisions about important or potentially dangerous information in a timely manner. As an example, a sudden loud noise causes the release of stress hormones and prepares the body for the most appropriate response. Depending on how the noise is interpreted by you (how loud was it, how close or far, your familiarity with the sound, has a sound like this caused distress in the past, etc.) predicts what thoughts, feelings and actions will follow.
It’s for all these reasons emotions are also thought to be predominately subjective experiences which are influenced by differences in each individual’s personal history. Different people can have different reactions to the same emotional stimulus, and the same person can have a wide range of emotions in response to similar stimuli.
It’s important to discern that your emotions are not only produced to keep you away from danger, they also allow you to recognize what is safe and healing.
They have the ability to act as a wise guide revealing opportunities for you to create deeper bonds within yourself, others, and anything else within your environment.
Your emotions are not trying to hurt you or ruin your life.
In fact, it’s the opposite.
However, being unaware of the automatic nature of your reactions to your emotions will continue to create more hurt and confusion in your life. As often your reactions are a re-enactment of an emotion that may have been useful or adaptive in the past but is being expressed in a maladaptive way in the present moment.
Learn the difference.
That being said, it is not our place, or anyone else’s for that matter to tell you how to respond to a situation. Our hope is to help you understand your personal relationship with your emotions, and provide you tools to shift where and what you want to shift.
Your attachments to your stories about your experiences contain information for you. Your emotional reaction is protecting these stories. You’re the only person that can decide: do they serve me? Is this sustainable? What would align better with my whole self?
Once you are able to develop a relationship with your emotions you are free to choose your response based on a deeper understanding of the situation, how it is affecting you, why it’s affecting you and how you want to respond.
This is the ultimate goal.
Emotions are the bedrock to all our experiences, not logic.
This means every decision you make is influenced by emotions first, and only after which is that decision justified by logic. Therefore, ‘being logical’ only occurs when you allow yourself to be fully present and non-judgemental to the emotion(s) you are experiencing.
You cannot outsmart your emotions or anyone else’s, no matter how much you may want to believe you can. This attitude towards emotions only further separates you from being able to experience and articulate your emotions in a healthy manner.
The uncertain terrain of challenges and conflicts will highlight these patterns the most. It also becomes fertile ground for evolution.
Demystifying emotions, reclaiming yourself.
Your personal emotions and the emotions of others can often feel complex and mysterious. This distant understanding of emotions generally creates two camps; those that do their best to avoid their emotions, and those that get lost within the storylines created by their emotions. It’s not uncommon to see yourself oscillate between the two camps either, depending on the trigger.
The more you understand them the easier it is to reclaim your agency.
Decoding Emotions: A Framework
Let’s start by picturing an inflatable balloon figure. The kind you see at car dealerships or county fairs. Usually they are big, colourful and flapping in the wind attempting to get your attention.
Got it? Ok, good. We’re going to use this image as an analogy to present this framework. This framework is designed to help you decode and deconstruct your emotional patterns.
As you work through the framework in detail it is important to keep in mind that all emotions can be healthy and unhealthy. The goal isn’t to avoid or suppress any of them, but to learn from them.
ANGER
What is the first thing you usually notice when you see an inflatable balloon figure? It’s probably the figure itself. The body and arms flapping every which way depending on each gust of wind that unpredictably forces its movements, right?
Those powerful and erratic movements are grabbing your attention. The balloon figure is clearly signaling, “Hey! There’s something to see here!” Energetically this is very similar to how anger expresses itself. Therefore, in our framework the top part of the inflatable balloon figure represents the emotion of anger. Let’s examine this emotion a little more closely.
Anger characteristics:
Energy State: Anger is expressed as a high energy state. Emotionally and often physically it’s fast moving and erratic. If anger is allowed to reach a heightened state it can also become very unpredictable, both to yourself and others.
These characteristics are equally true if you do your best to suppress and hide your anger. In this case, much of your anger energy is trapped and expressed within your mind and body without outwardly showing itself. However, inwardly the anger still manifests with racing thoughts, and swirling energy throughout your entire body.
Orientation: Anger is oriented towards conflict – towards others and/or yourself. Anger favours conflict because the emotion is desperate to reclaim power and satisfy an unmet need.
An unmet need is a perceived right or a desire that is not satisfied. In many ways anger signals to ourselves that a personal boundary has been crossed. Common examples include, someone continually showing up late, your flight being delayed, feeling like you aren’t being listened to, not getting the job you wanted or the promotion you worked so hard for.
Desire: To be heard. To be seen. To be understood. To reclaim power. To secure a personal boundary.
Other related states: Resentment, revenge, harming others emotionally or physically.
MINDSHIFT questions: What is your unmet need? What do you care deeply about that is not being recognised? What are you sad about? What element of what made you angry also makes you sad?
Anger is unchecked sadness.
SADNESS
As you continue carefully examining the balloon figureIf you will realize that there is something the balloon is holding onto despite its best efforts to thrash around in the wind. There are cables stabilizing from beneath preventing the balloon figure from flying away. These cables are much slower and predictable in their movements compared to the balloon figure they are holding. In our framework these cables represent the emotion of sadness.
Sadness characteristics:
Energy State: Sadness is expressed as a low energy state. This state is often represented by the body with slouched postures, and perhaps even careful or slow movement and speech. Because sadness is below anger in our framework it represents the energy state that precedes anger, and therefore is foundational to the experience of anger.
Orientation: Sadness is oriented towards being passive and in states of rumination.
If your sadness is not understood and worked through it can move from its lower energy state to the higher energy state expressed in anger. This often happens when you are “sick of being sad”. It’s our way of “snapping out of it” and feeling more powerful in the face of the challenge that has surfaced. As mentioned above, anger orients towards conflict because of an unmet need. That unmet need stems from address. Anger is unchecked sadness.
Dismissal of sadness creates the perfect conditions for sadness to erupt into anger. The variable here is not if it will happen, but when.
A common example to illustrate this movement from sadness to anger would be to think of a time when you tried to communicate your needs to someone. Even simple tasks like not leaving dirty dishes in the sink, or asking someone to pick up after themselves can turn mild disappointments into explosive anger.
Remember, when the primary disappointment is not addressed (sadness) over time conflict ensures (anger) to address the unmet need and reclaim power (anger’s orientation).
Desire: To be comforted. To be heard, seen, and respected. To have your needs met.
Other related states: Disappointment, depression, grief, regret, harming yourself emotionally or physically.
MINDSHIFT Questions: What am I grieving? What are my regrets? What did you hope for that was not realized? What element of what is making you sad also makes you feel worried?
Sadness is unchecked fear.
FEAR
As you continue to examine the balloon figure you will see the cables are anchored down to the ground with a bolt. This bolt that holds both the figure itself (anger) and the cables (sadness) is the foundational piece of equipment keeping the balloon figure from being taken away by one strong gust of wind. This bolt represents the emotion of fear.
Fear characteristics:
Energy State: Fear is expressed as a mix of high and low energy states. Depending on the intensity of the emotion you will notice primarily one or the other state in your mind and body. However, it is not uncommon to express both in tandem as you experience the eb and flow of fear.. Because fear is below sadness in our framework it represents the energy state that precedes sadness, and therefore is foundational to the experience of sadness. Sadness is unchecked fear.
Orientation: Fear is oriented towards hypervigilance, and of state of mistrust in yourself or another. Much like the bolt being the foundation to the balloon figure, fear is the foundation to how the brain processes your internal and external environments. More specifically, fear represents a real/perceived lack of safety. This constant monitoring is the number one job of the brain and is called “error detection”.
Any time you are moving through a scenario from certainty to uncertainty your brain kicks into heightened awareness, causing the brain to use a lot of energy and resources. In fact, ambiguity is the most taxing environment for the brain.
So when you encounter an uncertain situation, for example someone behaves in a way that is “unlike” them, you are required to start a new job, or get lost at night in a new neighborhood, your brain becomes hypervigilant and quickly tries to answer one very important question regarding resources with two very distinct questions: a) Am I enough? b) Do I have enough?
Am I enough is a question based on your internal resources. Do you have enough belief in yourself, your skills, your character and your connection to something bigger than yourself?
Do I have enough is a question based on your external resources. Do you have enough support within your family, friends, extended community, network, money, time, etc?
Therefore, if your answer is “no” to the questions:
Am I _______ enough? and Do I have enough _________?
Then you will find yourself in a fear state. As with all emotions, the degree to which you feel you are lacking the resources and the scale of the situation will dictate the intensity to which you feel fear.
Over time after fear is initiated because you believe you are not enough or don’t have enough it will begin to move into sadness. Once you reach sadness it will linger as long as tolerable if nothing changes. Eventually, sadness regarding this disappointment will move into anger in an attempt to regain power and collect on the debt you believed you are owed to do an unmet need. This is the full pattern from fear to sadness to anger.
Desire: To eliminate threat. For it “all to just go away”.
Other related states: Worry, anxiety, lack mindset, etc.
MINDSHIFT Questions: What am I scared of? Where do I feel like I lack? Where do I feel a lack of hope? What element of what made you sad also makes you feel worried or fearful?
Fear is unchecked disconnection.
DISCONNECTION
This is where all the magic and power that lives within you is present. This is where your answers have been living waiting for you to come knocking at the door of your own wisdom.
If you take a closer look at the balloon figure you will see what lives beneath the ground. The roots. Like the massive base of an iceberg that lives under the water out of sight. Similarly the most impressive and powerful parts of you are often hidden out of plain sight, from yourself and others.
It is the earth itself that allows the bolt to be held in place, which allows the cables to do their job of stabilizing the wild irregular movement of the balloon figure.
Without the connection to the earth nothing else matters. Without you connecting to yourself, first and then to others, nothing else matters.
The goal is to reconnect with yourself and those that champion your evolution.
Fear is unchecked disconnection.
The main characteristic between being connected or disconnected is presence. Are you available for your experiences and relationships? Are you embodied in your mind, heart and body?
Connection doesn’t mean perfect. You’ll still have challenges and questions. But this time you’ll have a knowing within yourself and your connections. You’ll have trust in yourself and your relationships.
Connection is almost about a greater purpose.
Connection is oriented towards being trusting, present, vulnerable, and maintaining healthy boundaries. It strikes a fine balance between being anchored within yourself and open to bridging the gap with others. Open to feeling and learning.
You’re self aware and accountable to your behaviours.
Rebuilding from the ground up.
All your relationships (self, others, environment) must be rebuilt from the ground up.
Any relationship that does not have contact with the base of the framework cannot sustainably be in harmony and truth.
The moment(s) of disconnection is what perpetuates the ongoing cycles of the fear, sadness, and anger.
The only antidote to the never ending cycle is reconnection. Reconnection with yourself and those relationships that champion you. Whenever you notice yourself dysregulated ask: what am I disconnected from?
The AND conversation.
Healthy expression of all emotions requires you to allow yourself to work through what comes up and to have the skills necessary to reconnect back to the best of who you are in service of connection with self and others.
Emotions are not the problem. They are the signal sent to awaken you to address something more within you or your environment.
Integration of this framework is the ability to feel emotions and reconnect.
You can learn to move through the original emotion while honoring the message it is trying to teach you, and land back to (re)connection. This is the most sustainable, creative and purpose-driven parts within you.
It’s an “and” conversation.
“And” gives you permission to work through the framework while not denying or dismissing all the emotions and step along the way.
“Your Best Leader” informs a foundational layer of who you are, what’s important to you and how you want to live and create your life. You honour this version of you, their needs, their desires and their struggles. You give them space to heal and you give them space to evolve.
Let your emotions take space. Then give them even more space to shift.
Welcome home. We’re delighted you are finding your way back to yourself.
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Supporting podcast episode: “Can you decode your emotions?”
