How to Suffer Well With Emotions
In the previous post (How to Suffer Well), I reflected on what it means to suffer well.
"To become masterful in suffering means to experience joy each time we gain awareness that suffering is present. This is not an expression of sadistic nature but rather a reminder that suffering brings an invitation to learn, grow, and transform through the healing properties of mindful presence.
To avoid suffering coming from emotions means that we ignore the anger and forget to express our boundaries, we ignore fear and anxiety, so we don't prepare well, and we forget about worry, so we don't consider different options."
Can we avoid suffering from emotions?
I don't know how to answer this question. I have been brought up to hold emotions invisible to the external world as they annoyed my father. Reason and logic were the only means to win his heart. And I tried so hard to do it.
Sometimes I would succeed and receive acknowledgement for connecting information in a way that he thought was worthy of mention. However, no matter how hard I tried, eventually, I would snap, and a surge of emotions would overwhelm me. What else to expect from a child?
Sometimes I would break into tears just looking at him. I was so scared, and his opinion was so important to me. I adored him. I believed he was invincible. That is how we got trapped in this vicious circle of my emotional responses and his stern command to stop crying. Crying was just not an option. My conclusion was that this deep wisdom would bring me love, safety and belonging.
Fast forward a few decades into my late twenties and late thirties, my body was like an abandoned pressure cooker. Emotions were overcooked, neglected, and a real nuisance. By that time, the only outlet I had was to get drunk and party hard.
The best therapy I had was to give myself permission to cry after alcohol removed my capacity for self-regulation. The day after, accompanied by a debilitating hangover, I didn't need to talk much. Reminiscing about the crazy night with gaps in memory was the way to feel connected and understood.
Sounds familiar?
How to Approach Difficult Emotions
This hiding from emotions is a common strategy adult humans use. We apply it rigorously in trying to tame our offspring too. One difficult (and probably most important) lesson in mental health is learning how to find the balance between what is too much and not enough when it comes to touching emotional distress.
Our need to avoid pain can create a lack of sensitivity to emotional wisdom, while drowning in emotions too much will create instability. Although ignoring emotions is not the right approach, it is equally misleading to believe that emotions need to be expressed all the time as they are.
Difficult emotions have a quality of perpetual motion. That is why they are called E-MOTIONS. Mindfulness practice enables us to become acquainted with their trajectory with one simple objective: to name them.
When we feel them, we heal them; when we name them, we tame them. You might say, every time emotions take over, you are trapped in a tale of Rumpelstiltskin:
"The title character is a mysterious gnomelike man who spins straw into gold for the benefit of a beautiful miller’s daughter, in exchange for her future firstborn child. The little man reappears to demand his payment when the young woman, now the queen, bears her first child. After she begs him to release her from her thoughtless vow, he allows her three days in which to discover his name. If she cannot, he will take the child. All seems lost until someone overhears his premature celebration of his good fortune and gives the queen the information she needs to keep her child."
(Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Rumpelstiltskin". Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 May. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rumpelstiltskin)
Sometimes, it takes three days to get to their name, and sometimes you will have it faster or slower. Being open to this process, and getting more emotionally literate and mindful will help you to befriend them and receive deeper messages, turn them into your allies.
A three-step process to 'sit with difficult emotions:'
Labelling - when we label difficult emotions (name them: "This is anger," "Fear is arising") amygdala becomes less active, and there will be less surprising reactions in the body.
Locate their position - feeling vs thinking about them. The mind will often just perpetuate the movement of emotions as it tends to jump from one topic to the other. We might say that body is a closer friend of emotions; the mind's role is just to name them. When we locate emotions in the body, we can shift our relationship with emotions into grounded presence and non-judgmental witnessing. That has a calming effect on any emotion.
Soften-Soothe-Allow - caring for and comforting ourselves because we have difficult emotions. This final three-step approach of being present with emotions means that we are offering
Physical self-compassion (Softening)
Emotional self-compassion (Soothing)
Mental self-compassion (Allowing)
When we work with emotions, we are not applying strategies with the purpose of getting rid of them, but of meeting them and being with them. We learn how to build relationships through inner conflict and in that way we gain a broader perspective; we can 'hold' this notion of suffering which will make us feel better. Feeling better is a side-effect of mindfulness and self-compassion.
Wild Geese – Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Support your teens with the need to belong and accept themselves.
Learn more about MSC for Teens teachers Charlene and Julia
in this interview
