Connecting with our emotions
Connecting with our emotions
For many of us, it can be hard to properly express our emotions.
Emotions play a huge role in how we understand the world and communicate to others. It is therefore very important that we learn how to connect more with our emotional self.
The first step in connecting more with your emotional self is to be aware of signs of emotional repression.
One common sign that you are repressing your emotions is that your emotions often erupt unexpectedly. For example, you spend a long time not telling someone about this little thing that bothers you, and then one day you just explode at them.
When you don’t allow yourself to express or release emotions in a healthy way, they can build up to a point where you can no longer control them.
Give time to ask yourself how you feel everyday
Just spending 5-10 minutes sitting down, and questioning your feelings, can make a big difference in how well connected you are to your emotional self.
And if you practice meditation, consider spending a whole session just using your emotions as the object of focus.
Often times people who aren’t connected with their emotional self feel a constant need to “rationalize” their emotions.
They can’t just “feel” for the sake of “feeling.” There needs to be a reason, a purpose, or an explanation behind every feeling they ever have.
let yourself experience an emotion without needing to find some underlying reason behind it.
Not every emotion is going to be explainable.
In fact, often times emotions express a special kind of “knowledge” about ourselves and our world that can’t be translated verbally.
You need to sometimes accept emotions as a language of their own.
Talk to other people about how you feel
Talking more about your feelings allows you to be honest about your emotional self, and gives others the opportunity to offer insight that you may have not considered.
Many emotions are emotions driven by our relationships with other people – social emotions – like love, anger, disappointment, shame, embarrassment, guilt, and pride.
Find ways to express emotions creatively
This can include any activities such as music, writing, photography, painting, film-making, dancing, or whatever you are passionate about.
Having creative outlets also gives you a chance to digest your emotions at a unique and personal level that can’t usually be achieved through only introspection and conversation.
Mirror other people’s face and body language
Emotions are usually a combination of both our internal thoughts and feelings, but also our external facial expressions and body language.
One trick to help get yourself more used to expressing your emotions is to practice mirroring other people’s face and body language.
Do it first on your own time – Google images of people expressing different emotions and practice doing them by yourself. Often times just mimicking an emotion at a physical level can make you begin to feel it at a psychological level.
This exercise at first may seem silly, but it can really help “loosen your emotional muscles,” which makes it easier for you to express yourself spontaneously during your social interactions.
Another great tool in helping you connect more with your emotional self is to watch movies or TV, read a book, or listen to music that elicits strong emotions.
Horror movies give us a chance to experience terror and fear. Romance novels give us a chance to experience lust and love. And dramas give us a chance to experience sadness and grief. All of these provide a safe and healthy way to tap into different emotions.