Part of being human is to experience the world physically and energetically. Emotions are energy in motion. They are the sensations and messenger systems of the unseen world as we internalise the external stimulus of our experiences.

Our emotions have evolved as part of humanity to guide and direct us through life. They are an important messaging system that keeps us on our designated path. 

As we move through life in peace, we feel few emotions. We are on track and going in the best direction for us. We are safe and in a supportive environment; we know this intuitively. We feel emotions when we are being directed towards something we want or need or away from something unwanted or unsafe. 

It is our energetic and intuitive intelligence that helps us to understand and interpret our emotions. In the modern world of mental schooling and externalised religion, we have forgotten to learn and share these skills as part of our growth and education.

Humans who grew up as part of a complex ecosystem, without books and computers or access to unlimited information at our fingertips, were feeling beings. It was our intuition, wisdom and insight that would have kept us safe when navigating a harsh and ever-changing natural world. 

We would have used all our senses to navigate life, including our intuitive senses. We would have learned to trust and rely upon our internal sensations to find food, trust our environment and others in it, and be wary of threats or potential predators. 

These innate parts of humanity can be complex when we haven't learned how to adapt them to the modern world. Without emotional intelligence, we can become confused, cause harm to ourselves or others and stray from our unique life path. 

When we are young, we are often taught to ignore, repress or deny our emotions. This is mostly because we now exist in contained, controlled environments where we are expected to behave in ways that are very often unnatural. Our busy parents, frustrated or strained and stressed teachers, all may have contributed to the message that our emotional expression is bad and that emotions are unwanted or even dangerous.

If we grow up without the skills and understanding to navigate our internal world and emotional lives, life can become confusing. We can be led astray and get caught up with people and environments that are not good for us or even toxic. At times when we struggle to repress our emotional lives and can not cope with difficult or powerful emotions, we can begin to use unhelpful coping strategies. These can ultimately lead to developing harmful patterns of behaviour or addictions. If this goes on too long, we can find ourselves trapped in long-term emotional states such as depression or anxiety, become mentally or even physically unwell and need to seek support.

Misinformed adults can lead us to think this is purely a mental or physical health problem. Convinced that our mind or body is not working correctly, and we have to be fixed in some way. Very often this is not the case. What is happening is an emotional and spiritual problem that has caused us to think or behave in unhelpful ways. To distrust ourselves and our innate instincts.

The root cause of our distress is our inability to correctly interpret and use our emotional messages in our day-to-day lives. Learning to reconnect with and understand our emotions is part of maturing, an essential part of healing on a recovery journey and part of our spiritual growth. 

You might be wondering, how do I process and understand my emotions? 

Each of us has a unique energetic system, we have unique DNA, and therefore have individual desires, wants and needs. This means we will have our own emotional world and a unique emotional processing system. The object of processing our emotions is to understand them, so we can use them as a guide.

Positive emotions lead us to what we want, and negative emotions draw us away from unwanted or unsafe situations.

Our mind is used as a tool to try and understand why we are feeling what we are, and if we want or need to feel this way in the current circumstances*. Sometimes the situation is simple enough that we can move away from it and redirect ourselves or we simply move toward something we want (depending on how we feel about it). 

* When we have repressed emotions or have complex traumatic experiences our triggers may need to be understood more deeply and untangled from our nervous system responses. It could be we are feeling a negative emotion in a safe situation due to other sensory input linked to past experiences. This is where emotional processing can be more complex and we need to learn to understand them more fully to heal, grow and recover enough to feel safe in secure surroundings.

A simple emotional process would look something like this:

I feel...

Therefore, I think...

And choose to do...

This is a basic process and is often used in therapy modalities such as CBT.

However, trauma survivors, people who have experienced complex abuse or neglect, people with addictions and neurodivergent people have different and more complex emotional landscapes to navigate. A more complex emotional process might look like this:

I am experiencing this... 

and therefore I feel this physically...

Which I've conceptualised to mean...

Because I associate it with this experience...

And I have made that mean...

So I am thinking....

And want to....

But I can't because....

So I am doing...

Which I don't want to do because I know I am safe now because....

So I would prefer to feel...

And will try to think about it like this...

And force myself to act this way...

It can be very complex to navigate! 

Ultimately, to build emotional intelligence, we want to know what emotion we are feeling and why. Then we are empowered to make choices and act accordingly, based on that emotion which is relevant to the present situation.

Emotional language, being a felt emotion, can initially be hard to describe through speaking or writing. This is because it uses a different part of our mind when we have to think, speak or write and then connect that thinking to a bodily action. 

Emotional and feeling language tends to be much more physical and artistic. Often, we can express emotions more fluidly through our body in dance, body language or even shaking. Or by using artistic mediums of sound, like music or creating art with colour and texture, like when painting or sculpting. 

This is why artists tend to be more sensitive, intuitive and emotional people. They use their body and creativity to express a complex internal world. 

To fully process and understand our emotions:

• We can start by feeling and identifying the physical sensations. We might notice a tingling in our throat or a hardness in our chest, for example.

• We can also consider conceptualising them. This is where we can explore movement or artwork. We can ask ourselves, if this feeling were a colour, what colour would it be? Or how would I move my body to express this feeling?

• Ultimately, we can often find a sense of relief by naming our feelings. For example, "I am feeling anger" or "This feeling is excitement".

• We can dive deeper into the underlying meaning by fully feeling the emotion and allowing it to unfold. We can explore further by asking our heart and body what it means to us. Here, we might begin a journaling exercise or meditation practice to connect with the feeling intuitively.

• We can then relate the current feeling to any past experiences that might be relevant to it and consider what we learned from them. We can ask this in our minds. [Be aware that memories or unexpectedly connected experiences might come to our awareness. Our Inner Child & Reparenting course can help with this.]

• Then we use our mind and body to decide on an action or understanding that aligns with our internal peace.

• We then choose to embody the new awareness, which results in us finding healing and being able to release the emotion completely.

If an emotion continues to come up again, it may be because it has been connected with a current complicated situation in our lives and has many energetic dynamics involved or complex connections for us. We may have lingering beliefs or attachments to old wounds or past trauma, causing a nervous system trigger. It could be that we haven't fully explored or cleared all of the emotional energy.

Each emotional expression is valid, and by exploring it, when we are able, we can learn to let go of the attached energy and free ourselves from the triggers that cause the emotional response within us.

Practising feeling and processing our emotions builds resilience, understanding and our energetic muscles. Just like working out and exercising, the more we do it and practice, the stronger we become. Emotions can initially feel painful to experience but as we build our energetic awareness and emotional intelligence, we remove any attached fear we have associated with feeling and emotional energy. We can be free to move through life with self-awareness, more peace and fewer emotionally charged responses, making life easier and more enjoyable with confidence that we can cope with life and emotions as they arise.

Additional Support

If you would like to improve your emotional intelligence and practice separating your thoughts from feelings and understand what causes us to respond to the external world, download our free I Think, I Feel, I Observe PDF!

If you have struggled to understand your emotional world, you may be interested in our Emotional Expression & Regulation experience with Mama Bear Mentorship or our dedicated at-home course.

You might also find benefits in our Inner Child & Reparenting Course that focuses on nurturing yourself to navigate life with less confusion as you reparent through emotional experiences.

Prefer Video Content?

Watch this video on YouTube where Terri explores why emotional regulation is so important right now!