How To Digest An Emotion

When I find myself having similar conversations in my sessions throughout a week, it usually is a red flag for me that this is something that is missing as available information and education in our culture. I talk a lot about befriending our emotions but how exactly do we do that? We receive a lot of messages in our culture around just letting something go, but is that really possible?

I want to offer a different perspective that we don't necessarily let anything go. What we can do is transform what is showing up. This can begin by naming what emotion we think we are feeling. I say think because we have often labeled our sensations as a specific emotion potentially without curiosity if that is actually what we are feeling. We could be misinterpreting excitement as fear or anticipation as anxiety. For now, going off of how you have labeled your sensations, you can name out loud what emotion is showing up. So we are first welcoming in the emotion with open arms. We need to stop fighting our emotions if we are going to transform anything in our life.

Next, describe how that emotion feels in your body. If you have identified that you are feeling something like fear, where is it showing up in your system? Does your chest feel tight? Do your hands feel tingly? Do you sense tension in your head? There is no judgment here. There is nothing to get "right." You are just describing what you're noticing in how that emotion feels in your unique body.

Then we are going to step into curiosity around how those sensations want to move through your system. So if your chest feels tight, does curling into a little ball sound appealing or does opening up your arms and stretching your chest sound satiating? If you noticed you don't feel any sensations at all in your legs, do they want to get up and move? How do they want to move? Do they want to be stretched? Shaken around? You can try one kind of movement with the body part the sensation or lack of sensation is showing up and then notice how you feel. Again, you can't get this wrong! After you have moved that body part in a specific way, notice how you feel in your body now. Do you feel lighter or more contracted?

Your body is guiding you in the movement it wants to engage in to move that emotion through your body. We haven't necessarily let the fear, anxiety, panic, frustration, sadness go. What we have done is honored its presence, explored what it needed, and transformed it into something beneficial as a way to feel closer, accepting, and more connected to ourselves. Your emotions get to be your signal that some part of you is needing your loving attention.

By attending to the sensations showing up, we get to utilize our emotions as a way to continuously keep our emotional body in movement so that nothing gets stuck inside. This is a great practice to explore before you reach for food. If you check-in and notice that you're not physically hungry but there is a deep desire to reach for food, there is probably an emotional hunger present that is needing some satiation. Just how when we are physically hungry we attend to those sensations of stomach gurgles by giving our body food, our emotional hungers also need attention and to be satisfied.

So just to break this down into actionable baby steps:

1. Notice a desire to reach for food

2. Check-in with your body if you're actually feeling physical hunger

3. If not, name out loud the emotion present

4. Describe the sensations you feel in your body

5. Explore how those sensations want to be moved through your system

6. Notice how you feel in your body now

The more we embrace, acknowledge, and get curious about what is showing up in our body, the less likely we are to reach for food to satiate an emotional hunger that is often never truly satisfied by food.