Naming Your Emotions: It’s Time To Stop Saying ‘I’m Fine’
When people ask you, “How are you?,” What do you respond? Do you simply say, I’m fine or do you say others filler emotions like great, alright, or good?
The Power of Naming Our Emotions
There is power in naming your emotions and being able to communicate that with others. I get it, it’s not really societally acceptable to be anything less than fine but let’s change that. I’m not telling you to tell everyone you meet all of the trauma you are working through right now but if you’re feeling frustrated, name it. If you’re feeling anxious, name it. If you’re feeling disappointed, name it.
I am no stranger to pushing down my emotions and putting on a happy face to the outside world. If I’m really honest, I have a tendency to hide my true emotions to myself. If I can’t name, accept, and honor my own emotions, how can we show up for others?
Breaking The Cycle
The first step in breaking this cycle is getting well acquainted with how we are feeling. Day in, day out. To know how we are feeling, we have to get comfortable with ourselves. Ask yourself how you feel each morning and check in throughout the day. All it takes is a few seconds, a couple deep breaths, and to drop in.
How you feeling today?
What if you don’t even know how you are feeling?
That’s when we can get creative. I really like using a feelings wheel to hone in on the exact emotions that are moving through my body. I start with something simple like happy or sad, then move deeper, and deeper, and deeper until we get to the specific emotion. Instead of saying I’m happy, I acknowledge that I’m actually feeling inquisitive or liberated. How cool is it to be able to name this unique emotion and then know what that feels like?
Humans have the capacity to feel a depth and range of emotions. This is more than happy, sad, mad, or glad. Often times, I find myself leaning on these general filler emotions out of laziness. I don’t want to diminish my own range of my emotions because of laziness. How silly does that sound?
But I don’t want to complain…
Just because you are honest with someone and tell them you are feeling a less than desirable feeling doesn’t mean you have to talk about it. You don’t owe anyone anything. If they invite you to share more, and you want to, go for it. But it is empowering to say, “I feel like shit today.” And leave it at that. It’s not the end of the world when you aren’t feeling 100%. In fact, if we could change the stigma to give us permission to feel a range of emotions, rather than just a select few, those “harder” emotions wouldn’t feel as scary.
We’re in the thoroughs of Cancer season right now. Cancer is ruled by The Moon and is all about feeling our feelings. If there’s one thing the Moon can teach us this season, it’s to honor our seasons and cycles. Just like the Moon, we all move through phases. Sometimes we are burning bright for the whole world to see and others we just want to be invisible. Give yourself the permission to move through your own cycles. Just like the Moon, the seasons, and life cycles in nature, we are not meant to always feel one way.
Riding the Wave
Our emotions are like waves. They come and go, high and low, good and bad. Everything is temporary, no matter how hard to try to cling onto the highs, there is always a low right around the corner. Those waves help us to appreciate the highs and honor the lessons learned in the lows. There is no good or bad. There simply is. Take one step towards honoring that duality by naming what you are feeling.
The next time somebody asks you, “How are you?” How will you respond?
If you’re feeling like you have too many emotions and they won’t get out, check out this post on releasing stuck emotions.