Respect Your Emotions
Many times in my therapy practice, clients will describe an emotional response to a situation and express guilt or shame at having had the emotion at all. They have this response to fear, sadness, jealousy, anger, and even joy. Many ask me how to change that feeling to avoid this guilt or shame.
I tell all of them all that the initial emotion, the primary emotion, is always valid no matter what it is. Positive or negative, appropriate to the situation or inappropriate.
Our brain’s initial response to an event, our primary emotional response, is data from our brain about the situation. Based on our past experiences, our neurology, our values, and our current capacity in that moment our brains provide us with an emotion to help guide our decision making. Anxiety about a situation means our brains are concerned there is a problem to be solved for. Sadness tells us the situation is not desirable. Anger tells us that the situation is unacceptable in some way, trying to get us to change things in some way. Joy tells us this is good for us and helpful in some way.
These primary emotions may sometimes be an accurate read of the situation in front of us. Sometimes, they seem oversized or out of place. When that happens, I challenge clients to think about when in their life this response would have made sense. What about this situation may mirror difficulty in a past relationship, experience, or trauma?
Take our response to constructive criticism at school or at work. We receive the feedback and may feel anxious or defensive in ways that seem inappropriate to the situation. The rational, logical parts of our brains may know there’s no danger when we receive this information. But if we grew up being criticized in unhelpful or unfair ways, feedback can feel scary even when it is helpful and constructive. In this situation, we may need to remind ourselves there’s no danger and do things to help soothe the fear such as relaxation techniques.
So the next time you find yourself having an emotional response that doesn’t seem to fit the situation, I encourage you to follow Marsha Linehan’s guidance: “Respect your emotions.” Don’t engage in judgment against yourself for having them, as that often leads to guilt or shame. Instead, take it as a cue to sit with the feeling for a moment. Ask yourself what your brain is trying to communicate to you. Is it reminded of a situation where this emotion would have made more sense? Is it trying to tell you something important about what this situation means to you? How can you attend to this feeling in a way that respects the emotion and allows you to move forward?
If you struggle often with “big” emotions that don’t seem to fit the situation or are difficult to manage, therapy can help you learn skills for processing and regulating them in healthier ways with models such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Rational-Emotive Process (REBT).
