16. Emotions [part 2]: what it means to “feel your feelings”

Light and Shadow: the podcast

This episode is our longest yet, but jam packed with vital information all about the role of emotions and how actively feeling them will change your entire life. It is the part 2 continuation of emotions part 1, and finalizes the “little learnings” for the emotion/body sensation phase needed to “interrupt the cycle” is step three of the healing process. I begin the episode with a short recap of part 1, and continue on to speak about the preliminary steps before we’re able to fully feel our emotions. Next, I move into the key steps of actually feeling your feelings and what it specifically entails. I also provide real examples to illustrate how this might look like in your real life. Key concepts include mindfulness, emotional granularity, resistance, and agitation/limbic friction. I then move into how our emotional regulation plays a role in communicating and expressing our emotions to others, while also understanding the communication and expression of emotions from others on a more empathetic level. I talk about how these emotional fields collide and the best way to blend the two together. I also open the real possibility of rejection/abandonment in emotional relating and how to overcome to not just improve your own emotional health and wellbeing, but to also strengthen your emotional bonds with others. I also go over coping mechanisms specially related to emotions, as thinking and emotions are two separate roads, and explain where these two roads merge and where they diverge. I stress the importance of creating space between thoughts, feelings, emotional body sensations, and action in order to come to the greatest and most effective solutions to our emotional problems. It’s a long one, but there’s no time wasted when you’re learning to master the most important skills of your life - emotional regulation and healthy relating to other people. The benefits that come from this learning are far reaching and exponential!