Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 224, “How to deal with difficult emotions, Part II.” If you missed part one, I wanna encourage you to check that out first, as I offer the first two tips and a little more context to the conversation. You can find that episode, as well as today’s show notes on DrJessicaHiggins.com, and at the top navigation bar you can see a tab that says Podcast. If you click on that, you have access to all of the show notes. The most recent episodes are at the top. Again, today’s episode is 224, part II; 223 is part I, “How to deal with difficult emotions.”
In our conversation I’m offering you a step process of what to consider perhaps if you’re recognizing there’s some pain you are feeling, and possibly have been avoiding, or just feel scared to turn towards, and maybe haven’t had a lot of experience around… And I wanted to offer this as a little bit more of a template.
Now, this is not comprehensive, but it will give you some guidance as you’re contemplating developing more skill and turning towards difficult emotions. And as I mentioned in part one, there has been so much going on in the world in the last several months, and many of us have been limited around activities and the type of interactions we engage in, and therefore may have had more time to notice ourselves, perhaps notice our tendencies… And with that, more of an opportunity to see what we’re experiencing when we’re so caught in the fast-pace nature of life. We can run the risk of being really disconnected, and therefore not being in alignment with what matters most to us, or what is most impacting us.
It has been my experience that when we do not tune into our emotion or turn towards our feelings, we are abandoning ourselves. If we’re not in alignment or connected to what matters more deeply to us, then we’re living really outside of ourselves or we’re cutting off from ourself, and I talk a little bit more about this in part one. Again, if you missed that first episode of “How to deal with difficult emotions”, I encourage you to check that out.
Before we get started in today’s conversation, I wanna take a moment and perhaps just center into our breath, into this moment… And I’ll be setting the intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast; but as I do so, I wanna just invite you to bring awareness to what you’re experiencing, and being more accepting, more allowing for what is there for you in this moment, making it all okay, and just bringing the mindfulness and the awareness to your present experience.
And as I welcome that, I wanna share the intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and that is that these conversations are in an attempt to help you feel better prepared, more equipped to navigate the terrain of long-lasting intimacy, so that you can feel more confident as you perhaps approach some of these difficult areas or conflict or threat or insecurity or tension, and also the times where we might be expanding our capacity for joy, for ecstasy, for pleasure, for passion, and that relationship oftentimes will be the curriculum for our growth and our development. And as we say yes to developing and growing, we also increase the capacity to show up for our significant other and therefore develop and grow our intimate relationship.
With the Empowered Relationship Podcast, my also hope is that you feel a part of the community, and that wherever you are in your journey and developing your growth individually, as well as your relationship, in whatever form or fashion that is, that you know that you’re not alone. I’m on this journey, I talk about my stories. Many other listeners bring questions, I have other guests that are on the show that offer their perspective, and that we’re all in this together.
If you’re interested in gaining more support, visit DrJessicaHiggins.com; there you’ll find resources in the way of articles. Again, as I mentioned, all the podcasts, to date — again, today’s episode is 224, so there is 223 other episodes, as well as how to perhaps explore the option of getting coaching. You can access more information about that on the Work With Me page. For those of you that like to self-study, there’s also courses available to you, and you can find that on the Courses page. So I encourage you to check out the website, as there’s lots of free gifts and other resources… And again, you can find that at DrJessicaHiggins.com.
Okay, I just wanna recap the first two tips and steps that I offered in part one of “How to deal with difficult emotions.” And the first one is simply listen, being willing to turn towards. As I mentioned so often, we wanna repress, remove, distance and deny sometimes our feelings or our emotional world. I mentioned in part one it’s almost as if a friend were to call, that’s in pain and looking for some help or support… And perhaps we would wanna take a moment and check in, like “Can I go there? Am I available right now?” And if we are and we wanna offer that listening ear, we say yes, and we turn towards.
Now, for some of us who haven’t had a positive experience in being with emotion, with our own or others, this can feel really scary, because we’re uncertain and we don’t know what’s gonna happen and we feel as though sometimes the emotional intensity will overwhelm us. So with that I am offering some of these steps to help offer, again, a little bit of a template, a roadmap around what will help, as well as just encouragement to go slow and also get more support, if needed. There’s lots of articles online; again, if you need a support person, I really wanna encourage getting that help, because again, this is only in service of your growth and your empowerment. And that is not only for yourself, but also your relationships.
Step two, feel it. As I mentioned in part one, there’s an ability to be present, a noticing, without judgment, and often a great skill in this is practicing mindfulness, not being preoccupied about the future, or the past, or even pushing away, or fighting against. It’s just allowing some acceptance, and presencing, as I mentioned. So I’ll put a few more resources on today’s show notes around mindfulness, and you can check that out if you’re interested in exploring more about that.
The third step – and you’ve heard me say this if you’ve listened to the show for any length of time, “Name it to tame it.” Neuropsychology helps us understand, there’s tons of research that supports as we are able to identify – simply just identifying the emotions and acknowledging it, it lessens the intensity of the pain. It’s so ironic that if we turn towards it, we would think it would get bigger. But in fact, it gets smaller. And this is where you’ve heard the analogy that fear is the only thing that gets smaller when you run towards it. And so oftentimes, again, we’re afraid to turn towards our emotion, and largely this is we don’t know what’s going on, it feels overwhelming, and when we can name it, there’s a sense of relief. Not that anything has changed, but there’s the identifying… And when we can acknowledge it, it starts to begin the process of organizing, and then therefore being able to deal with it.
Just this last week I was working with a client, and she’s quite remarkable; she’s a young adult and has just done a level of introspection and work on herself and how she was raised, and her patterns, and with the latest quarantining and social distancing, and she does have two roommates, but she’s been feeling really lonely… And instead of having the story of “What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening?”, she’s been working on trying to identify what she’s feeling and what she’s experiencing… And she was telling me – I felt the tendency or I felt the pull of going into — she calls it a dark place, like this dark hole. And it’s very depressing, and it feels very — she feels a lot of abandonment, and feels like she’s flawed, and not lovable, and it goes to a pretty dark place, so she’s saying.
And the other thing that she’s been trying to bring awareness to is her tendencies, her coping strategies; she talks about snacking, and watching TV, or scrolling social  media, and just how some of that’s fine, but the numbing that can come with that… So she’s been trying to increase her awareness, and she was saying that this last week, when she was able to identify “I’m lonely”, she said “I felt so much relief.” And again, not that anything changed, but again, that sense of being able to tune inward… Again, she’s not abandoning, she’s not denying, she’s not rejecting what’s true… So there’s this inner contact almost, and recognition, and it’s like “I see you. I acknowledge you.” And oftentimes we want this and we need this from another, and I agree with that, that there can be an ability to show up for ourselves as well…
And as I’ve mentioned too, the importance that when we turn to our significant other, it’s helpful to have our emotional balance, and to be able to identify what we’re feeling; it allows us to clearly communicate to our significant other. So there’s so much value in being able to name it, and also the experience of taming it. Again, I said, so often we’re afraid of it being overwhelming, but ironically, the “Naming it” starts to tame it.
The other beautiful thing that starts to happen is we start to deal with the most important aspect, the crux. Instead of getting spun out in these tendencies to cope or numb or deal or go into story land, or even beat ourselves up about it – “I’m not lovable, and I’m fundamentally flawed. Nobody’s ever gonna want me”, and just the downward spiral of that, we can recognize “I’m lonely.” And then we get to deal with that, and that’s so much more empowering than going down a thought train that’s disempowering.
I wanna take a moment and list some of the primary emotions. Now, if you were to look online or reference different material, you’ll likely get a different list… But this can be helpful. And this comes from Susan Johnson’s work in the attachment, and there’s a few behaviors associated with each one… And I think it can be helpful as we begin the process of starting to identify.
The first one – anger. This is a tricky one, because often it’s a secondary emotion. However, there are times where it is the primary emotion, and this often has to do with a violation, a boundary has been crossed, or some injustice. And when we are angry, it often looks like we wanna assert ourselves or defend. That gives us the fire and the passion to take action. The second – sadness. This is where we will seek support, or perhaps will withdraw. As I talked about in the loneliness episodes, ironically, our human tendency when we feel lonely is to withdraw.
The third, surprise or excitement. This is when we are attentive. We get wide-eyed, and we lean in, and we explore. The fourth – disgust or shame. This is when we hide, expel… I talked about in part one, I have a client who’s really wanted to reject, using the language of “kill” the vulnerable part of him. It’s like wanting to kick that part to the curb, or avoid.
Looking at the behavior or the motivation can be an indicator to the emotion. Again, sometimes the emotion is unconscious, as I talked about in part one, and it’s not readily available on the surface of our consciousness.
Number five, fear. And you’ve heard me talk a lot about the fight, flight or freeze. And this is often where we will give up on whatever goal. What this means is if we have a pursuit, or a goal that we really want and then we start to get into fear, a relief strategy will be that we’ll give up on that goal. I talked about this in the — I think it was a two-part series on the drama triangle. Oftentimes that’s a strategy to give up that tension. I’ll put the link to that on the show notes if you wanna revisit that episode. I think it’s really helpful to consider.
The sixth primary emotion – joy. This is where we will make contact, we’ll be engaged. We’re feeling that joy and we wanna experience that more fully. So again, we make contact and we engage.
The fourth step – be curious to learn. Again, as I mentioned a moment ago, if we are caught in a narrative of “What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening to me?”, our brain and mind is gonna try to respond to those questions, and those questions are disempowering questions. But if we were to look at the emotion, or even the experience – it has something to offer in the way of learning or understanding.
So a question to ask would be “What is this emotion helping me understand?” Because the belief around emotion is oftentimes a really good indicator around what matters to us, where our boundaries are, where our needs are… And if we turn away from that, that’s where the abandonment happens, because those are the real deep needs and the deep desire.
When I started doing this work, it was so profound to me that when I would turn toward my emotion and be curious in the insight, and understanding of what was going on for me, that oftentimes I wasn’t aware of. And as I mentioned in part one, so much of my relationship struggle early on, again, that was unconscious to me… But as I began to do this work of facing and turning towards and dealing with difficult emotions, did I learn a deep fear of abandonment, and really starting to heal that. And also, what I need and wanna be in service of. If I know my need, then I can be empowered to make better decisions. Or conversely, what I don’t want, where my boundaries are, what I’m not willing to engage in – and that, again, helps me have a useful guide moving forward.
But if I don’t turn towards the pain, then I can enter into unhealthy patterns, making excuses for people, or justifying bad behavior… When in fact, I have a lot of agency in what I choose to participate in. And I continue to glean insight and awareness when I am willing to turn towards the pain. And a few of my tools that I get a lot of value in are journaling, and oftentimes if I’m very upset, it’s never a journal that I’m gonna keep, necessarily; I wanna give myself full permission to shred it afterwards. I don’t use grammar, I don’t spell-check, and I handwrite… And I am not trying to construct anything in a composition, if you will…
So it’s really just a dumping of the emotional expression, and then somewhere along the line I start to see and get at the deeper layer, which is, again, what we’re trying to access when we’re dealing and listening to the pain, is what is it — it’s almost like… You know, you that are parents, if your child is so upset and they’re coming to you, and perhaps even they’re like crying so hard they’re hyperventilating, and you wanna help soothe, and comfort, and then it’s like “So tell me what’s going on?” and then they tell the story, and then you listen, and you try to empathize, and you try to get at what they needed and what they were afraid of, or where they got hurt, and really trying to help them navigate a painful situation. It’s very similar.
I’ll tell you, it is extremely hard to be curious, to explore and investigate with this softness, and to get really good answers when we are caught in our story. And if we’re incredibly steeped or attached to our position, knowing we’re right, or feeling validated, or not willing to see anything else, then we’re gonna likely run that story and that experience, because we’re almost looking for things to be right and support our position, and likely we’re gonna find it, and then we’ll continue to perpetuate that experience and that perspective.
There are two episodes where I was referencing the book by Dr. Stan Tatkin, “Wired for Love”, and it has a lot to do with our beliefs and our narrative, and I’ll make sure to put that on today’s show notes as well.
I wanna turn back to the book Untamed. I read an excerpt from Glennon Doyle out of this book in part one… And in this book, a little later – it’s a chapter called Deliveries. She’s got a lot of humor in her delivery, and I’m not gonna read the first part of this, but essentially, she’s talking about how much she feels for humanity, but she’s very introverted, so she likes to have some distance… And then she’s talking about the very common modern experience of the doorbell ringing, and how alarming that is, and “Who is that? Why are they ringing our door?” It’s just such an uncommon, foreign thing, but it feels a little intrusive… And really what ends up happening is she’s getting her kids to answer the door — but it’s like this whole progressive process of like what happens when the doorbell rings… But then it ends up being a package, and she’s excited about the package.
So she makes this analogy about emotions, and she’s saying:
“When I got sober, I learned that hard feelings are doorbells that interrupt me, send me into panic, and then leave me with an exciting package. Sobriety is a decision to stop numbing and blaming away hard feelings, and to start answering the door. So when I quit drinking, I began allowing my feelings to disturb me. That was scary, because I had always assumed that my feelings were so big and powerful that they would stay forever and eventually kill me. But my hard feelings did not stay forever, and they did not kill me. Instead, they came and went. And afterwards, I was left with something I didn’t have before, and that something was self-knowledge. Hard feelings rang my bell and left me with a package filled with brand spanking new information about myself. This new information was always exactly what I needed to know about myself to take the next step in my life with confidence and creativity.
It turned out that what I needed most was inside the one place I’d been running from my entire life. Pain. Everything I needed to know next was inside the discomfort of now. As I practice allowing my hard feelings to come and stay as long as they needed to, I got to know myself. The reward for enduring hard feelings was finding my potential, my purpose, and my people. I am so grateful. I can’t imagine a greater tragedy than remaining forever unknown to myself. That would be the ultimate self-abandonment. So I have become unafraid of my own feelings. Now, when hard feelings ring the bell, I put on my big girl pants and answer the door.”
Again, this is out of the book Untamed, by Glennon Doyle. I’ll make sure to put the link to that book on today’s show notes.
The fifth and last step – soothe and show up. As we are curious to learn, and we turn towards, we start to identify and name, we’re gonna begin to get that much more information. And when we get a better understanding, we get the learning and the insight, now we have an opportunity to show up. And we can do that for ourselves, and we can also do that in relationship. And this is so often what I’ve talked about, around how to communicate with a significant other, is when we have this understanding, this deeper connection around what matters, we can speak from this I position.
Just the other day my husband and I were talking, and I was asking him some questions — or actually, I think I was listening to him, and I was like “Oh, I think I see you, and I understand something a little differently…”, and I asked him about it… Because he had had a conversation with his best friend. And when I asked him, I think my husband was inferring that I had some judgment there. Perhaps this inferred judgment or worry that I was judging him has come from previous understanding. I haven’t always known what’s going on in his mind. If I’m sharing something painful with him, he’s holding space; he doesn’t always respond right away, and I often am like “Can you tell me how that feels to hear, or what you’re thinking?”
So I solicit a response… But as he was talking about being there for his friend that was having a difficult experience around something, and I was like “Oh, you have a really high value for holding space, and really inviting a deeper level of connection with the feeling”, because this is how my husband operates when he’s feeling something. He embodies it, he feels it, he goes there… Where I will go there, but I also have a lot of mental activity and other things going on… But my husband is very committed and prefers to really get the insight from that deep feeling state. So I was like “Oh, I think you offer this to other people. But all that to say he wasn’t really liking or was reacting to what I was saying…
So we proceeded and he got up, we were transitioning to starting to make dinner, and I was like “What I’m saying is really positive. I feel like I’m knowing you better.” And he was like “I’m not comfortable with your tone right now.” And I genuinely felt very positive, but at the end of the day, he didn’t feel comfortable.
And while he might have not have been expressing his deeper need in that moment, he was expressing a boundary. So I was able to hear that. And then we reconnected about it later.
Now, I bring this up because as we can be in connection and contact with what we’re feeling and our emotion, we’re able to help other people know us, know our boundaries, know our needs and know our desires better. As I mentioned a little earlier, I also feel so much more empowered when I do have clarity around what I need, or my boundary, or a desire, that I can make choices and advocate for that in my life personally, and with others. So I’m talking a lot about the showing up for the deeper understanding, the deeper need or boundary. There’s also a soothing, a compassion here…
And one of the things I wanna communicate is you are not alone. We are not alone in our pain. Yes, our unique experience might be specific to us, however, there’s a universal experience of being human, and the full spectrum of emotion. Again, those basic emotions, primary emotions… And really, one is really positive. That says a lot about our human experience – anger, sadness, surprise and excitement could be positive, could be alarming. Disgust, shame, and fear, joy… So this is what we are up against, and there’s so much value in being present to; that mindfulness, the non-judgment, the acceptance… And sometimes when we know we’re not alone, it gives a sense of soothing. And this is why groups are really helpful.
There’s a lot of 12-step groups, or there’s a lot of support groups for different topics, and this can be incredibly therapeutic and healing, to hear other people’s experiences and stories that we resonate or relate to, and knowing “Oh, I’m not alone. Other people go through this, too.” Or even to be able to learn from someone that’s a little bit later down the road.
Also, around soothing and feeling not alone, spirituality can be incredibly helpful. Having a faith or a belief in something higher. And I remember Susan Johnson bringing this up, and I was very interested, because I believed that this was something I was studying, and I wanna say there’s research to support this… That we can gain soothing and comfort from our spiritual perspective or spiritual beliefs or spirituality, and that our connection with God or a higher power or the divine or the universe, however you articulate spirituality or higher power, can become a source of secure attachment.
I can say that this has been incredibly helpful for me when I have turned towards really difficult pain. I think I tell the story about grief and me surrendering to the intense pain of heartbreak and grief, and the immediate wave of grace that washed over me, and feeling held by that unnamable love… So if you’re interested, I’ll make sure, again, to put that on today’s show notes. So just to offer that if you have a belief, spiritual or even religious – and that can take many different forms, I realize – that this could be a resource, as you turn towards some of these difficult emotions and are looking at soothing and showing up.
Sometimes when we’re beginning this practice — I remember when I talk about showing up, I talk about it like it’s a very clear thing… And it can feel clear now, but if I look back on some of my beginning iterations of it, I was fumbly, and didn’t quite always have a good sense of it, and it is a forever-evolving process. What’s challenging me now might have been something I couldn’t even relate to back several years ago.
Another thing that can come out of this process that relates to this soothing and the showing up is self-compassion. I offer this and invite clients into this a lot, because as we are investigating, exploring, unpacking, oftentimes I’m reflecting their experience and they begin to see “Oh, it makes sense.” So many people talk about their self-judgment, or the expectations that they should be in a different position, or that they shouldn’t do what they do, or – again, just the judgment of how they see themselves…
Recently, I was working with a client, and her upbringing was pretty challenging in the way that her mother was abusive, physically, emotionally… And she had a number of other various complicated family dynamics. Her parents divorced, she had an older sibling that was special needs… Anyway, her parents were young, and there just wasn’t enough capacity to be there for her with a level of consistency.
So in a nutshell, what she often was faced with growing up was some pretty terrible behavior. And in order to survive that family, she had to justify, make excuses, minimize the bad behavior to try to stay in connection and stay in belonging. But she didn’t have a really clear experience or roadmap to what love is in the way of behavior – healthy loving, healthy caring. And she also didn’t have a real good template around how to build trust with someone, or more specifically, how to know if someone’s trustworthy. How someone earns trust with her.
So as she was talking about her early romantic experiences, there was a lot of substance abuse with her significant other, alcoholism, and just a number of really horrible, horrific things that she dealt with… And she just was like “I was so naive.” And yet fast-forward, several, several years later she’s scared that “Are there trustworthy, reliable, faithful men?” Something that was helpful in her conversation was to recognize how her template, her imprint of relationship did not prepare her to be able to clearly discern between healthy and unhealthy.
A moment ago I was saying as I was able to investigate, explore, be present to and uncover what was more important to me, deeper, and my needs, and my boundaries, I was able to say “This is what I don’t wanna participate in and have some boundaries, and this is what I do wanna participate in.” So I really needed to unpack that and get the clarity. When we haven’t been taught or didn’t experience some of this healthy relating, we’re a little confused, or don’t have the lived experience to rely on.
And with this client, I was asking her about how she knows if somebody’s trustworthy, and she’s like “I have no idea.” And so we really worked with that, around knowing that if she has a little more clarity around what demonstrates trust or what helps her start to know that somebody’s trustworthy, there’s a lot that can go into that. Now, it’s not a guarantee, bulletproof criteria, but it can be a whole heck of a lot better than not having anything at all.
One of the other things I was reminding her of is she’s not that 20-year-old. In the last 19 years she has developed so much wisdom, intuition, insight about people and about relationship, and that perhaps she could start to recognize and give credit to that, while also holding that self-compassion that she didn’t get a lot of the really important, foundational experiences around secure relating, and that we have to re-parent ourselves, if you will, or reteach ourselves, or teach ourselves if we didn’t get it.
And so with that self-compassion, we can turn our focus and our energy and attention to how to support ourselves, rather than, again, judging ourselves – “What’s wrong with me? Why aren’t there any good men?”, all of these questions that are very disempowering. And as we get into taking steps further with our learning and our understanding, the kindness, knowing that we didn’t learn this, and as we’re in the learning curve, we wanna be supportive, we wanna be gentle. We don’t have the expectations that we’re gonna hit a home run when we’re just learning to walk.
I realize that this process is so much easier said than done, and it’s really quite beautiful to talk about on the other side – from the learning, from the growth, from the transformation. And as I mentioned in episode one of this “How to deal with difficult emotions”, I too even in this moment will be hesitant to turn towards some of the difficult emotions and the pain. It doesn’t feel pleasurable, it doesn’t feel good, and I don’t always want to do it, but I trust the process, and that is what keeps me committed to the practice of doing this process, in some form or fashion. It doesn’t always have to be super-formal, but as you’re learning, it might be helpful to really break this down, so that you have a little more guidance.
In recap, step one, listen. Be willing to turn towards the pain. Two, feel it; be with it, without judgment. Again, that building mindfulness around what you’re experiencing. Number three, name it to tame it. Again, this is the identifying to begin the process of organizing, and getting in contact with the most deepest, important part, to the crux. Number four, be curious to learn. Again, changing the question around “What is the emotion helping me understand? What is the learning? What is the growth opportunity?”, again, rather than the questions that are disempowering; “What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening?” And that, again, there’s a gift. As Glennon Doyle is helping us understand, there’s a package if we open the door.
And number five, soothe and show up. We can hold the hand of the part of us that’s uncertain, that’s scared, maybe even terrified, or that needs support, whether or not it’s to assert a boundary or to say “This is what I would really love, or this is what I want.” It’s such a vulnerable work… And to know there’s some soothing in knowing that we’re not alone, that other people – there’s universal experiences in these emotions, and the human experience of heartbreak, of reaching towards someone and being afraid of how they’re gonna respond, or not feeling good enough. And that spirituality could be a resource here.
And then as we start to learn and understand our experience and what impacts our experience, that we can have some self-compassion and some kindness along the way. That it makes sense, that perhaps we didn’t get the training and the support and the imprint of healthy relating, so we have to really relearn or learn these parts that we didn’t get. And the kindness and the support as we practice.
Again, if you want access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com At the top navigation you’ll see Podcast. Click on Podcast, and you’ll find today’s episode, 224, “How to deal with difficult emotions, Part II.” You’ll also find just beneath that part one, 223, same title, part one.
Thank you so much for spending this time with me, for listening and contemplating this very, very important topic. Again, if you’re looking for more support, there’s many resources on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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