What Lies Beneath? Exploring Our Emotions and the Body

What if our emotions are not something to get rid of, but something to listen to?

What are emotions? Emotions are physiological survival responses that facilitate adaptive responses to environmental challenges. Becoming aware of and naming the core basic emotions of joy, sadness, anger and fear, without censoring or judging them, allows us to become more aware of what is happening within us. Their quality and volume, from intense to only slight, are all welcomed; they are a gathering of information. Emotions by themselves are neither good nor bad, they are simply energy and reactions. Perhaps the invitation is to become curious about our emotions rather than immediately needing to change or control them. What are they telling us, and what might we discover if we allow ourselves to listen?

Why do some emotions feel so uncomfortable?

The physiology of emotion is closely linked to the arousal of the nervous system, with various states and strengths of arousal relating to particular emotions. Emotions such as anger and fear can ignite the fight, flight or freeze instinctual survival responses, which can help us understand why some emotions can feel so powerful and uncomfortable. When we feel fear, our stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline can rise through activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Our pupils dilate, our heart rate goes up and we may start sweating. Our body is responding to what it perceives as a challenge, preparing us to survive.

Emotions have been described as a result of evolution, providing resolutions to problems that faced our ancestors. They motivate adaptive behaviours that in the past would have contributed to survival, for example, not being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger, and supported the passing on of genes that threatened the survival of the human race. Emotions also function as a way to communicate what is important to us, such as our values and ethics. The way we act, or don’t act, on our emotions can strongly affect our wellbeing. So rather than asking ourselves, “Why am I like this?”, perhaps we can become curious about “What is happening here?”

Where did we learn how to feel?

Emotions are influenced by experience and developed throughout our early life. As a young child, our primary caregiver in our first years of life is critical to our development. If attachment bonding is strong, we feel secure to explore the world, and we know that there is always a safe base to return to. If the bond is weak, we may be afraid to leave or explore, not sure if we can return to safety. People who are securely attached have greater trust and connection to others, have a positive self-image and can be more successful in life. Insecurely attached people can have more mistrust in the world, lack social skills, have a negative self-image and have problems forming relationships.

These early experiences can influence the ways we understand ourselves, other people and the world around us. What did you learn about emotions when you were young? Were they welcomed, or were some emotions more acceptable than others? Did you learn to be strong, to try hard, to please others, or not to make a fuss? Perhaps some of what we experience today has roots in what we learnt then. Our early environments, relationships and experiences can become part of the way we learn to respond to the world. This doesn't mean that we are permanently fixed by our past, but it can help us understand why certain emotional responses may feel so familiar.

What happens when we fight what we feel?

Feelings can be more unpleasant if you fight them; if you allow them to be there, they can become less intense. Sometimes we can cover up core emotions with other emotions. Like a deck of cards, what lies under the first card? For example, a response of anger can cover up deep sadness. Potentially, the real need is for compassion, comfort and safety, but instead the anger drives people away from your core need. The anger itself is not necessarily the problem; perhaps it is carrying information about something underneath that has not yet been felt or understood. This doesn't mean that we have to act on every emotion, or that every feeling needs to be expressed. There can be a space between feeling something and acting upon it, a place where we can notice what is happening and then make a choice.

If anger could speak, what might it be protecting?

If sadness could speak, what might it need?

What is your body trying to tell you?

Having become aware of an emotion, ask: where do you feel that in your body? This is about dropping down into a felt sense rather than remaining in a cognitive process. We often have instinctual messages from our bodies, ‘gut feelings’, ‘a heavy heart’, ‘goose bumps’, ‘butterflies in the stomach’, and interoception, our awareness of what is happening within our bodies, connects us to our aliveness.

Our bodies are amazing organisms and we can feel a huge range of sensations, some of which can be painful and scary, and others our greatest pleasures. We can develop an aversion to some sensations which can literally make it uncomfortable to be in your skin, and different emotions are associated with different postures. When we are sad we generally slump; when we are anxious we get jittery. The body can literally tell us more information about what we need and give us an awareness of exactly what we are doing. Our behaviours can sometimes be distractions from feeling our feelings, or the manifestations of energies held within us. When we have been prevented from learning how to say “no”, for example, our bodies may end up saying it for us in some form.

What might your body know before your mind has caught up? Perhaps by listening to the body we can begin to understand something that has not yet become a thought or a word.

Can we listen to our emotions without judging them?

If we view the mind and body as two separate things, dividing into two what is really one, we attempt to understand the body in isolation from the mind, describing human beings as though they function in isolation from their environment in which they develop and learn. The unexamined assumptions both determine and limit what we will discover. If we become specialised in parts, theories and knowledge, we become interested in only those parts and not in where the parts reside, becoming a dualist binary approach. Can we re-align with the wisdom and integrity of wholeness, of what is already there within our bodies? Maybe the resource is to surround yourself with the environment and people that support this exploration.

“Our present state of scientific knowledge suggests we can solidly affirm that kindness and compassion to the brain is what breath is to life.”- Daniel Siegel

Perhaps listening to our emotions is not about finding the right answer or diagnosing what is wrong with us. It can simply be an opportunity to become curious about our own experience. Our emotions, our bodies, our sensations and our behaviours are all giving us information, and the more we become aware of them, the more opportunity we may have to understand ourselves.

What lies beneath?

Listening to our emotions and body talk is an opportunity to notice and to make a choice. We can listen to our emotions, our body and our thoughts in any order that reveals itself to us. Perhaps what matters is not finding something that is missing, but becoming more aware of what is already there. Listening to ourselves can be an opportunity to notice what we have learnt, what we have carried, what may no longer serve us and what we might need now. It gives us the possibility of responding differently, rather than simply repeating familiar patterns.

What are you feeling? Where do you feel it? What might your body be trying to tell you? What did you learn about your emotions? And what lies beneath?