How to Have a Healthy Relationship With Your Emotions

Liz was someone who brooded and worried all the time. Her mind was constantly busy chewing on one problem or another and making plans. She desperately wanted to be freed from her thoughts and the cacophony of her mind.

And so we got to work. Through the practice of mindfulness, Lina learned to witness her thoughts; She discovered a separate place within herself from which to observe her thoughts and hear what her thoughts were telling her. Becoming a listener rather than a thinker of her thoughts, she unleashed a deep and much-needed sense of peace in the process.

However, when we tried to bring that same kind of mindful detachment to her emotions, it was a much more difficult and painful process. While most of us have the knack of witnessing our thoughts and understanding their purpose, it is far more challenging and even threatening for us to detach from our emotions and take a witnessing seat for them. It turns out that we’re even more attached to and identified with our emotions than we are with our thoughts, and we’re fucking attached to our thoughts.

To step back for a moment, while I use the terms emotions and feelings interchangeably, they are technically distinct phenomena. An emotion is a chemical reaction in the body, a physical process involving brain activity and hormonal changes that we are not aware of. On the other hand, a feeling is something we are aware of, a state of mind that generally occurs in response to an emotion or thought.

But for the purposes of this article and space limitations, I will use both terms to refer to what we commonly call an emotion. That is, an inner experience that is mental, physical, and also conscious. Emotions and feelings, as I use the two terms here, are those sensations that we experience as being deeper than thought, taking place throughout the body and connected to the heart rather than just the head.

Interestingly, while we are open to the idea that we are not our thoughts, we are incredibly resistant to the idea that we are not our emotions. In this way we can also accept that our thoughts are not always true, credible, important or even our choice. But when it comes to our emotions, we firmly believe that they are true and of great importance. We can let a thought float through our heads without engaging it or paying much attention to it, but the same willingness doesn’t apply when it comes to our feelings. Feelings define us (at least that’s what we were taught to do) and therefore need our full attention and reverence.

When we’re sad, we say we are sad. When we feel happiness, we say we are happy. We are our emotions. Likewise, we imagine that our emotions hold a fundamental truth about our experience and hold important clues about our deepest nature. We see our emotions as the key to the lock of who we are.

Our emotions, as we have learned to relate to them, are manifestations of our life experiences. They keep our sorrows and also our joys; Emotions are our heart’s way of carrying and expressing our lives. Detaching from our emotions would mean losing a primal part of ourselves, giving up everything we have endured, suffered and enjoyed. Relating to our emotions with a sense of disconnect would ultimately mean giving up who we are.

At the same time, we imagine that our feelings cause our suffering. In fact, it’s not the feelings themselves that make us suffer, but the way we deal with them. We cling and identify with our feelings, costing us our emotional freedom and happiness. We do not experience suffering as much as we suffer our experience.

We immediately construct a narrative to explain why the feeling is there, to make sense of it, and fit it into a larger self-story, adding layers of made-up meaning, complexity, and usually suffering. When a feeling arises, we give it permission to consume us and control our state of being. We think it’s that important.

In truth, our emotions are not as important, solid, or insightful as we think they are. They are more like weather patterns moving through our consciousness, constantly changing, coming and going without our permission. Some are strong and dark. Others are light and airy; We can be excited, sad, frustrated, afraid, and happy, all within an hour or, for some of us, a minute.

Often they occur without any apparent cause and are simply remnants of old memories and conditioning. Sometimes the intensity of a feeling matches the situation; at other times it will not. Sometimes feelings agree with what is true and sometimes they don’t. But what is certain is that feelings are not facts.

The point is that we don’t have to choose our emotions and face them with respect and fear. We don’t have to surrender to them just because they show up. Our emotions are not the keys to our happiness or well-being. Furthermore, we don’t have to examine, understand, immerse, and essentially penetrate every feeling that arises. Having a feeling doesn’t mean we have to concern ourselves with feeling it.

Like thoughts, feelings also pass – if we let them. If that’s the case, then we don’t give them the highest priority and importance, cling to them, take the ride they offer, and build them into narratives about ourselves and our lives. In essence, they will pass away if we don’t relate to them for who we fundamentally are.

To free yourself from the tyranny of your emotions, start by becoming aware of your emotions first—by actually paying attention to the feelings moving through your inner world. We cannot change anything until we are aware of it. When you’re sitting at your desk, showering, driving, or doing anything else, you really get used to focusing your inner lens on your own inner landscape.

Throughout the day, pause and ask yourself, “What are my feelings at this moment?” Make a note of, “Oh, I see the weather of sadness is here, or hmmm, a wind of irritation is blowing .” Notice where and how they show up in your body. The important thing is that you do this without getting involved in the storylines associated with the feelings of who and what they are about and why they are here.

Just notice the feelings yourself, name them if it helps, again, without dealing with them or identifying with them. Notice how quickly they can move, transform, and disappear through you – if you keep your witness seat.

Remember, you didn’t build this reverence for your emotions overnight, and you won’t undo them overnight. Keep practicing awareness and observing how your feelings come and go; Keep practicing noticing without engaging and building the self that is not defined by your emotions. As you practice, your life will change, and so will you.