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Of: Irene Zamora, Master in Emotional Well-being, Kokoro
We have been taught to feel emotions as good or bad, but that’s because we don’t really understand their functionality. Emotions are the response to stimuli: they are messengers.
Emotions are at the service of our life to preserve our survival but also to open our consciousness. In this way we not only survive, but we learn to live in full well-being.
Emotion is that perceived bodily response that can be both expansive and contractive, carrying a sensory sequence. The senses are stimulated by sending information to the nervous system which sends signals if necessary.
The components of emotions
Several components are involved in emotions:
- Physiological: governed by our nervous system.
- Energetic: the fluidity of its energy will be the result of the stabilization or destabilization of the system.
- Cognitive: the learning process as we feel through experience.
- Behavioral: the behavioral response of the process.
Emotions have tone and are shaped by socialization
Neuroscience confirms that every sensory experience has an emotional tone, a quality that – depending on each individual – has a unique result. And it is unique despite sharing similarities of expression according to cultures through the same socialization processes.
In a way, socialization leads us to allow ourselves to feel certain emotions and makes us block others, causing us discomfort. If our goal is to “not feel” something we are feeling, there is a break between what we want and what we are experiencing.
If we allow ourselves to feel, we will be able to integrate the experience by listening to the message it brings us. It can be an adaptive message that is physically felt or an emotional or even intellectual adaptive message to make a decision.
For example, let’s take fear as a reference. Fear is one of the basic emotions, which informs us that we are facing a threat and guides us to seek internal or external resources to positively exit the risk situation. We identify it physically through the activation of the mechanisms of fight, flight, block, tremor and tension, among others.
Fear is highly conditioned and susceptible to generalization. This means that when faced with a stimulus similar to that generated by a real threat, we feel a fear that puts us on alert “just in case”. This conditioning continually pushes us to search for security which, taken to the extreme, generates a “without living”.
This “without living” that makes us suffer is not the emotion itself, but our resistance to it and the mental discourse associated with it.
Mindfulness a tool for the gestation of emotions
We could view the flow of emotions as a flow of water where the emotions leave those messages they have for us. Sometimes we would like to block the flow of sadness or fear and just run through the flow of joy, but it doesn’t work that way. These blockages cause us to lose vitality and store blocked emotions like dikes that can overflow causing uncontrolled reactions to a situation.
The practice of awareness it gives us a guide to feeling emotions and accepting their message in the moment it is happening in order to provide an adaptive response.
We observe without judging ourselves
With the help of deep, slow breathing, let the emotion express itself. Let’s bring our attention to the part of our body where the sensation is happening and accompany it with the breath. Let us return now to pay attention to what is happening.
We accept what we are feeling, we allow ourselves to feel even if it is unpleasant. During this process we will have the opportunity to consciously identify the emotion.
Once the emotion is identified, let’s not forget to be kind to ourselves. We give ourselves the affection that we would give to another person if they were experiencing something similar.
Finally, let’s release the emotion, let it go. It is likely that the message has already been integrated.
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