Moving in With My Emotions (the Heart Center)
Our heart center speaks the language of emotions and connection. Part of being human is experiencing a wide range of emotions. In my days as a qualitative researcher, we taught clients how to identify and mirror emotions through a process based on the research of professor Robert Plutchik Ph.D. Plutchik identified 24 emotions (plus combinations), ranging from mild and frequent to severe but quite rare.
Like most of us, I enjoy and welcome feelings of joy, admiration, and anticipation when they come, but actively resist and ignore feelings of fear, sadness, and anger. After all, unpleasant emotions are…unpleasant. But is this the right approach?
In 2014, I had a protracted battle with aggressive cancer. It was quite a wild ride. Through that terrible experience, I was able to see my emotions with fresh eyes. Cancer has a way of granting you new perspectives. Suddenly (and as a matter of survival), I was aware of and in touch with my emotions like never before, mastering them when necessary, but mostly flowing with them and engaging with them as they came and went. Yet the longer I have been in remission, the more often I catch myself falling into old patterns.
When Anxiety Comes to Visit
Of all of the challenging emotions, I have the closest relationship with Anxiety (which is not on Plutchik’s wheel, but I find it a more culturally understood word for a feeling between apprehension and outright fear). Each time Anxiety comes to visit, it comes expressly to set a trap. I often take the bait.
The trap that Anxiety lays is a pernicious story: the story that this is obviously going to be the time that I get permanently stuck in my fear, paralyzed and unable to find my way out. In fact, I might as well lie here forever, because surely I’ll never be able to achieve anything worthwhile ever again. (In these moments, I seem to forget that having lived several decades, I am very likely to find my way through to the other side of whatever is happening right now.)
When Anxiety shows up to my house and starts telling its story, rather than trying to reason with it, I seek relief by fleeing to other homes in the neighborhood.
First, I go and visit the house of Just Ignoring It. Just Ignoring It and I are old friends, and they are very good at helping me pretend that I’m not feeling anything at all. However, Anxiety usually shows up about an hour later and walks right into the middle of whatever I’m doing, making it very hard to ignore.
Faced again with my anxiety, Ignoring It and I flee next door to the home of Resisting It. Together, we bar the door and lock the windows. Anxiety huffs, and it puffs, and it blows the door in.
With nowhere left to go, we all scurry at last to the home of Fighting It. This doesn’t work either, because Anxiety is much stronger and louder than all my defense mechanisms put together. Luckily, Blaming Myself seems to live here as well, and is more than happy to tell me why I failed. (Fighting My Emotions and Blaming Myself are married, I think, or at least engaged in a thriving domestic partnership.)
“What if my emotions are not out to get me?”
One morning during meditation, I saw clearly the trap I was repeatedly falling into. Ignoring, running from, and resisting anxiety was not working. It had never worked. In this moment of clarity, I realized I didn’t have to continue to live in this neighborhood full of useless defenses. Instead, I wondered, What if my emotions are not out to get me? What if my “negative” emotions are not my enemies? In fact, what if they are conspiring in my favor?
So I picked up and moved in with my emotions. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve become quite the conversationalist. I've found that by engaging them in conversation when my emotions show up, I can take full advantage of what my heart is saying at any given time. I call this five-step process I-TALK, and have found it to be powerful when dealing with emotions. Here’s how it works:
I-TALK: How to hear what your emotions are saying
Step 1
I - Identify the emotion. You might also use Plutchik’s wheel to put the right name to what you’re feeling. I often still have trouble with this (being far more Head-driven), but I’ve found that using apps like Calm can help me tune into what emotion I am feeling. By seeing the emotive words on my screen, I can try that word on, feeling and sensing which emotion is an accurate fit.
In her book “How Emotions are Made”, Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about how we often get emotions wrong. Studies show that suppressing emotions actually causes further arousal of the emotion, yet we can reduce or release the emotion just by speaking out loud what we are experiencing.
Step 2
T - Thank the emotion. This is the true disrupter. Give great amounts of gratitude for the emotion. Seriously, really pile it on. “Thank you, fear, anxiety and even sadness for being here. I know you are conspiring in my favor and have something you want to show me.”
The emotion itself is not what brings about pain. Unfortunate and painful things happen in life, and the emotion is there to help us process and cope. The emotion is a channel through which we release the pain and trapped energy caught inside of our bodies. Our emotions are an evolutionary adaptation to get us unstuck.
Author Glennon Doyle’s words forever changed my relationship with emotional pain associated with fear:
“Pain is like a traveling professor. It goes to everyone's door and knocks, but only the wise say come on in, sit down, and don’t leave til you’ve taught me what you want to teach me.”
Powerful!
Step 3
A - Ask. With real kindness and curiosity, ask, “What do you want to show me?” I have started to see my emotions like little Yodas. My emotions may seem capricious and belligerent, but they are actually quite patient and wise. They will give up their wisdom if asked, but if you fail to ask, they may just hit you over the head with it instead.
Step 4
L - Listen. After I have identified the emotion that is present, thanked it and asked it what it wants to show me, I must listen deeply to its wisdom. There are many more ways to listen than just with our ears!
Did you know there are at least 7,000 living languages in the world? As best-selling author Mark Nepo suggests in his book 7,000 ways to listen, if there are 7,000 ways to speak, then there must also be 7,000 ways to listen:
“Put down all the things we believe we know about life from the past and meet the world by listening freshly to what is actually here and we will hear.”
We have three Centers of Intelligence to draw upon when listening to our emotions: our Heart Center to intentionally feel our emotions, our Head Center to think about them, and our Gut Center to sense their effects in our body. We each have a default center, and that center can often become dominant in times of stress, so I always call an internal board meeting to make sure everyone is being heard. What information about this emotion does my mind want to analyze? What does my heart feel about what I’m experiencing? What does my gut simply know?
Step 5
K - Know that the answer is on the way. We have an internal wisdom that, when tapped, answers the call. The emotions still come and go. It is not about eliminating our emotions, but rather working with them. I notice that when I approach my emotions with curiosity and love, they don’t seem to have the damaging, blow-me-over effect that they used to. Surprisingly, they don’t stick around as long either. Perhaps their tendency to yell and chase me around was simply my unwillingness to listen and stay in one place long enough to hear what they had to say.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of our fears being invited to ride shotgun: “Your fear is allowed in the car. It’s going to be there anyway, so it’s not even a question of whether it’s allowed. You can’t get rid of it. It’s going to be there, but it doesn’t get to drive. It doesn’t get to hold the map.”
So the next time you find yourself experiencing challenging emotions like fear, shame or anger, consider this: Perhaps there is something your “negative” emotions are trying to tell you, a valuable piece of insight that only they know, and which is meant to help you grow and thrive. Next time, don’t shunt those emotions aside or resist them. Instead, use the I-TALK tool to engage with them and hear their wisdom.
If our emotions are indeed conspiring in our favor, there can be only great benefit in working together.
In a related article, “Enneamania” and Three-Centered Leadership, I introduce the idea of Three-Centered Leadership, which is built on the ancient idea of engaging each of our inherent centers of intelligence (Head, Heart and Gut) and combining their powers to tackle the many challenges life throws at us.
