Does your thinking race ahead of your emotions?

Does your thinking race ahead of your emotions?

Do you sometimes find that you understand things intellectually before you allow yourself to feel your emotions? Perhaps you can see why someone acted the way they did or said what they said. Maybe you can even understand the bigger picture — yet your emotions seem to lag behind, or don’t seem to show up at all. Your heart and emotions haven’t caught up to your thinking.

A clue that this might be happening is that you hear yourself saying you should or shouldn’t feel a certain way. This creates a disconnect and can have you invalidating your emotions — as though your understanding of the situation or person means you’ve forfeited the right to your own feelings. Your empathy might have gone into overdrive and so you explain away your own feelings, favouring logic and an understanding of the other person’s position instead.

But the truth is: you absolutely have a right to feel what you feel.

Understanding a situation cognitively doesn’t cancel out the emotional experience. In fact, when emotions are dismissed or pushed aside, they often sit in the body and find their way out through tension, frustration, shutdown, or reactive behaviours, often in ways that don’t serve you, the other person, or the situation. Emotions don’t simply disappear; they just go underground.

When you allow yourself to acknowledge your emotions without judgement, something powerful happens. You create space to process them consciously and safely. And from that place, you have more choice in how you respond.

Processing emotions

Processing emotions can look different for everyone. It may involve one, or a combination of:

• Giving language to your emotions – can you name the emotions you are feeling?
• Allowing yourself to experience your own emotions in addition to understanding the other’s view
• Gentle breathing to regulate your nervous system – a slightly longer out breath than in breath is helpful (e.g.: 4 counts on the in breath, 6 counts on the out breath)
• Movement to shift emotional energy through the body
• Journaling to give your emotions somewhere to land
• Talking with a trusted person, coach or therapist,
• Hypnotherapy, or
• Having a conversation with the person involved — or choosing not to, depending on what serves you best.

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Connecting with your emotions can require practice. And that’s okay. Your mind may move quickly, but your heart has its own pace — and it deserves to be honoured.

Warmly,

Laurenne

Laurenne Di Salvo
Coach (PCC) | Clinical Hypnotherapist | Facilitator
0413 776564
www.harvestcoaching.com.au

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