Working with human nature, not against it.
Did you know that a sensation in your body is the first available cue that an emotion is present? Did you know that this is a surprise to most people? As Candace Pert’s research reveals, there are neuropeptides released in the body during different subjective emotional states, causing a sensation in the body. In...
Last week, I talked about the intensity of emotion to establish a framework of when feelings can be helpful and unhelpful. This week I want to talk more about the unhelpful part of intense emotions: flooding. It’s true that being with your feelings and developing the skills to tolerate them is essential. Absolutely. And,...
In spin class, there is a teacher that always says in the beginning: “I coach on levels of intensity: easy, moderate, hard, breathless”. The intensity for unpleasant feelings is similar: easy, moderate, hard, breathless. While there is the range of all human emotion that we need to practice tolerating, there is also the intensity...
If emotional health means allowing and tolerating the entire range of human emotion, why do you resist the unpleasant feelings so much? We could have a whole conversation here about ways societal messages contribute to shutting down unpleasant emotions. But I’m just not going to get into it. Maybe later. Understanding Resistance Let’s just...
I ask my child clients this question all the time: Which feelings are OK? And, pretty much every time, they tell me “happy”. And maybe they will look at their parent if the parent is in the room. But, let’s be real, as adults, we kinda feel the same way. Maybe we intellectually understand...