Your feelings are a compass
(A few thoughts on emotions)
Hello!
Before we get started:
Wondering what you’ve subscribed to? I’m Laura Holway and this is Stay Soft, a newsletter about cultivating a more tender relationship with ourselves. You may have formerly subscribed to my newsletter about creative business, The Makings. This current substack is an attempt for me to share a bit about what I’m learning (about humans, about myself) in my work as a therapist—while also allowing me to show up here as a person who enjoys writing. This is a free service (and will continue to be). If you like it, share it with a friend. A reminder that this isn’t intended as therapy or advice—it’s just a sharing of my opinion, as I’m learning.
I get nervous about sharing bite-sized pieces of information because the truth is nuanced, complicated, and big—there’s nothing bite-sized about it. (There are exceptions to every emphatic piece of information that I share.) Unfortunately, the time I have to put into this newsletter is not a match for comprehensively tackling an issue. So, bite-sized it is!
Also: the ideas and perspectives that align with me might not align with you. You do you.
Finally, I’ve shared before that I believe human behavior makes sense (aka, Soft is Tricky), and if things were truly as simple as “5 Steps To Change Your Relationship with Yourself,” then we’d already be sailing into a self-compassionate paradise. I want to honor that change is tricky. I’m not showing up with answers, but am here to be with you in the questions.
Wishing you tenderness,
Laura
It’s not uncommon for folks to start therapy because they want to get better at regulating their emotions, or because they have noticed that they have difficulty in this area: maybe they’re irritable or frequently in a bad mood; maybe they get angry after a conversation with their boss or partner. They ask for coping skills.
But what often happens as we slow things down in therapy is that we have the opportunity to get curious about what might be happening in these moments of dysregulation. We start to notice the message in the emotion.
It turns out that our emotions are not arbitrary! They’re full of information.
At some point I read the words, “You cannot regulate what you’re unwilling to feel.”
(I wish I knew the source.)
I like it. It makes sense.
But many of us have not developed the capacity to feel our big feelings without getting scared or shutting down or worrying about how they might impact our relationships.
We forget that feeling anger, for instance, is not synonymous with acting in rage. We forget that feeling our sadness doesn’t mean swimming alone in an endless depression.
So perhaps part of our healing is learning to relate to our emotions differently.
To get curious about them; to just notice what’s happening.
What’s an emotion?
At the core, it’s a signal.
An emotion holds information about what we need/want (i.e. safety, food), what we like, how we are, what sits right with us—or doesn’t. It gives us important information that helps us thrive! In her book, It’s Not Always About Depression, Hilary Jacobs Hendel distinguishes between core emotions (sadness, fear, anger, joy, excitement, sexual excitement and disgust) and inhibitory emotions (anxiety, shame, guilt)—which often work to distance us from core emotions.
In essence: our feelings provide a compass that allows us to better meet our own needs.
(All kinds of clouds. All kinds of feelings.)
Anger is a particularly taboo emotion.
When I tell a client that I believe anger can be healthy and important, they often look at me a little suspiciously. But, anger communicates our needs, beginning when we’re tiny. Think of a baby fussing because they’re hungry. It ensures that they get fed!
Anger is a protest—our way of noticing and communicating our limits or what sits wrong with us.
What an important signal!
(Side note: I imagine that if we became more comfortable with voicing our limits and preferences in small ways—when we first feel them— that we would experience less rage and depression. Also, this is tricky. Something to practice and practice…)
Bearing all of these complicated feelings (ha) about anger in mind, I appreciate these thoughts:
First, from writer and poet David Whyte:
“Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.
…But anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, an an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it.”
(David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)
“Rage is [a sign of] an unmet need.” -Glennon Doyle
“Anger is a sign that we’ve preserved access to our self worth, because if anger is [about identifying] what you need, you really can’t have self worth if you don’t have access to what you need.” - Dr. Becky Kennedy
(Both on the We Can Do Hard Things Podcast, episode #274: What is Our Rage Telling Us? It’s a great episode, regardless of whether or not you identify as a mom, a woman, or a raging woman.)
You might find it helpful to notice:
How you relate to your emotions (How do you feel about noticing your have feelings?)
Do you access some emotions more easily than others?
What were the messages you received about emotions growing up?
How do you feel when others (especially close loved ones, and even your kids) expressing strong emotions around you?
What are YOUR fears and internal stories about feeling and expressing your emotions?
Hi Laura! As always, your newsletters are a wealth of great information.