We often feel that emotions take over us, they just come from nowhere or because of a specific situation. This is a myth. Emotions always come from a thought first. This is why learning to see and manage your thoughts is so important for your mental health.
Because it’s sometimes hard to see all our thoughts, we can use our emotions as a tool to journey backwards. For example, if I notice that I am feeling negative, then I can start to identify the emotion. Once I identify the emotion, I can ask myself what was I thinking that created that specific emotion?
I was trying to explain something to my husband, which didn’t make sense to him, so he rolled his eyes. As I’m sure you can imagine, I was immediately pissed off. I happened to be making this handy dandy list of emotions as this was happening so I asked myself what I was truly feeling. I realized I felt unheard. The thought that led to feeling unheard was, “you don’t f*ing listen to me.”
The process of seeing and acknowledging my thought and emotion with clarity gave me the space to be able to communicate with clarity, “when you roll your eyes it makes me feel unheard.” He apologized and we tried the conversation again, this time successfully.
Expanding Your Emotional Vocabulary
Having the exact word to describe your emotion might be just enough to diffuse the emotion. Seeing your thought that caused the emotion will give you your power back because then you can decide whether the thought is true/untrue/useful/a waste of time. At the end of the day you are in charge of you emotions and you do have the ability to control them.
By expanding your emotional vocabulary you will feel that you have more clarity and power. You will get to know yourself on a deeper level.
Use It To Create
You can also use emotions in the reverse. Meaning that you can choose the emotion you want to feel and then choose a thought that creates it. This is how you can feel emotions on purpose. This comes in handy when you are working on manifesting or just trying to get things done during the day.
In the example with Phil, before I engaged in conversation with him again I chose an emotion I wanted to feel instead, which was “loving.” I chose loving thoughts until I authentically felt loving. THEN I chose to communicate from that place. In the past I could have used that eye roll as fuel for a days worth of punishment and shutting down, but instead the whole thing only took a few minutes to resolve.
The Emotions List
I wanted an alphabetical list that was in two simple categories, emotions when we are aligned and emotions when we are misaligned. Use these lists as a reference so you can heal and also so you can create. I recommend printing these out and keeping them handy somewhere, maybe taped into your journal or saved onto your device.