M I N D S E T A N D E M O T I O N
There has been a lot of research in the eld of psychotherapy that links our thoughts and emotions. This chapter is about exploring that link and simply becoming aware of the situations that we associate with specific emotions.
THEORY AND CONCEPTS “How does that make you feel?” has become the question that represents psychotherapy in popular culture. Language is important, so let’s look at that standard question in a bit more detail. There’s a trick we learned in my undergrad studies to deconstruct the meaning of a question or sentence. Repeat it but emphasize a different word each time.
*How does that make you feel?
*How does that make you feel?
*How does that make you feel?
*How does that make you feel?
Can you see how shifting the focus changes the emphasis? Yet whether our attention is drawn to what that is that makes you feel a certain way or what it makes you feel as opposed to what somebody else would feel, there is a constant. There is an external factor. The next step in this logic is that our feelings are a reaction to how we perceive something outside of ourselves. This means that our thoughts and feelings are very closely linked.
It is crucial to understand this relationship and learn to examine the source of our emotions more consciously. Girls at middle school age often feel like they are helplessly trapped on the rollercoaster of emotions that accompany the adolescent experience, leading to the onset of puberty. Extremes of happiness and sadness, loneliness, depression, low self-esteem, rages, shame, and isolation are just some of the precursors to teenage angst. Maybe if we can offer them healthy coping mechanisms, we can shift the stereotypical images of teenage rebellion. One of the key factors in gaining control of our emotions is to look at the context in which they occur. Psychologists and neuroscientists agree that we develop feelings in response to messages from our thoughts and signals from our bodies. We see our children playing in the garden with our eyes. Our brains tell us who they are and what they’re doing. This makes us feel happy. If, however, we see that one of them is about to run into the street, we could feel fear which we might express as anger. See how our sensory perception combines with our thought processes in context to create emotion? This is what we need to become aware of if we want to have any hope of learning to understand and ultimately control our emotions. Let’s explore this.
Real Life Experiences
I have already described how the death of my mother forced me to face some very deep and complicated emotions all at once at a very young age. Even in the deepest of my pain, there was a beautiful light at the end of the tunnel. I was blessed with a great support system, a loving family that helped to channel those emotions in a positive environment, which was a tremendous advantage to me in the long run. When my mom passed, she and my biological father were separated. It was her family that took me in and did every‐ thing they could to take care of me. My grandmother raised me. All my aunts and uncles were my role models. When I was in ninth grade, my mom’s oldest brother took over my foster care. To this day I call him Dad more often than I refer to him as “Uncle Tyrone.” My cousins are my siblings in every sense of the word and my best friends. The family might not have even realized it at the time, but the emotional support that they provided was helping to shape me into a much stronger individual. Even though I couldn’t express everything that I was feeling about my mom for a long time after her death, it did make a huge difference just knowing that there were still people who loved me enough to accept me exactly as I was. Not everybody is lucky enough to have the support and understanding to deal with di cult emotions. A friend of mine was taught from very early childhood that she was not allowed to feel anger. Her mother believed that it was a sin to be angry because we are supposed to forgive every‐ body for everything. This led to her not knowing how to set any boundaries. People took advantage of her because she had never learned to speak up for herself, so she wasn’t able to say when she didn’t want to do something. She endured this for so long that it was her own daughter who finally convinced her to change. Her daughter told her that she couldn’t continue to be a doormat forever. People would always be walking all over her until she stood up for herself. She eventually learned, quite late in life, to acknowledge her anger and channel it more effectively to improve the quality of her life.
Exercises and Practical Skills
Start with something fun: decorate your notebooks together, cover them in brightly colored paper, write your names on the front or design a name tag on a computer to print out and paste onto your cover, draw, print, or cut out pictures from magazines, use inspirational quotes, throw on some glitter. When you’re done, wrap it all in book cover plastic so the artwork doesn’t get damaged. Sit with it for a week and write down anything that feels relevant: describe a sunset, doodle, write a poem, discuss a song you heard, draw a self-portrait. You can also just leave the first two pages empty to come back to later. The point is that the first page of your notebook should not be an exercise from this book. When you’re ready, start recording your emotions. Write down everything you feel for a week. Try to include as much context as possible. Instead of saying, “My brother is such a jerk!” explain what he did that irritated you or made you feel bad in some way. Expand on, “Today was awesome” with a list of things that made the day awesome. The point of the exercise is to figure out when you're happy or sad and why. At the end of the week, compare notes. Talk through the specific incidents that you listed. Share as much detail as possible with each other. Be loving and supportive. No judgment. No advice. No suggestions about what to do differently yet. Just explore the feelings. Celebrate and commiserate together. Right now, it is enough to just practice sharing your feelings. Get used to being aware of your emotions and talking through them in a healthy, constructive way. Also, practice listening to the other person. Watch for nonverbal cues like body language, tone of voice, and eye contact, among other things. Be aware of listening to empathize rather than listening to fix each other's problems.
Keynotes
It is not always easy to open up about the things that are important to us. This is why we need to start with complete acceptance. Make sure that this space is safe. Of course, you’re human, and you don’t like the idea of the people you love feeling anything that we’ve been taught to label as negative. At rst, it will be di cult to stop yourself from interrupting with well-intentioned advice. Becoming aware of when you want to say something is also an important part of the process. Remind each other to listen for understanding instead of listening to respond. You will get better with practice. There is no time frame for this. Take it at your own pace. Repeat this chapter as many times as you need before moving on to the next one. Wait until you can simply express and listen without comment. That is how you will know that you can observe your emotions objectively.
