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What is emotional empowerment to you? Is it being at peace with how you feel, knowing each emotion is valuable, and trusting that you can move through any unpleasant experience? Or is it ignoring the problem, pretending like it’s not affecting you, and feeling afraid of something so simple and natural as how you feel?
I know for me, becoming friends with my emotions, learning to regulate and support myself through any emotion, and trusting that there is value in every feeling - both the pleasant and unpleasant ones - have made me a wiser, more resilient, and much more peaceful human being, and you could learn how to feel that way too. In support of that, here are three super important things you need to understand about your emotions to unlock real emotional empowerment.
1 - Your emotions are messages
So often people will talk about emotions as if they're useless or just in the way. But the truth is far from it. Your emotions serve as messages and they give you cues and insights into what’s not working, what your purposes are, who’s right and wrong for you, and where there’s a lesson for you to learn. So the next time an emotions pops up, especially an unpleasant one, lean into it. Be curious about it. Empathize with it. And see what you can learn from it.
2 - The only way through, is through.
Emotions are like tunnels, the only way to get to the other side is through. And yet most of us get stuck in the middle and then feel afraid to approach our emotions the next time, because we think we’ll get stuck again and so we avoid it all together. But avoiding your emotions is only delaying the inevitable, creating stress and harm in your body, and keeping you stuck in needing to numb yourself out so that you don't have to feel what you're needing to feel.
The truth is, you don't need to get stuck in the tunnel. That's not actually how it's meant to work. And when you can learn how to get yourself through the tunnel (a.k.a. the emotion), they suddenly don't seem so scary anymore, because you know that even the unpleasant ones won't stick around forever.
3 - There’s no such thing as good or bad feelings
How often do you say "I feel good?" How many times do you refer to how you feel as "crappy, shitty, or this sucks?" Marc Brackett developed a framework called RULER (learn more in his book Permission to Feel here) where he explains that no feelings are inherently good or bad, they are just feelings. Placing your feelings into those categories is kind of like saying your liver is a good organ and your intestines are bad organs. Doesn't really make sense, does it?
And yet, we often act like some feelings are good and some feelings are BAD, so what happens? What makes the feeling “good” or “bad” is actually the meta feeling, e.g. how we feel about the way we feel. So it's not the feeling itself that's bad, it's your interpretation of the feeling that makes it seem bad. In simple terms, when you judge how you feel, it gets boxed up as a "bad" feeling.
There is so much content and advice out there that really just promotes a mindset of “overcoming your feelings” or “not letting your emotions limit you” but in truth, your emotions are powerful, insightful messages. They inform you of where your attention is needed, where your focus must be shifted, and where your efforts must be let go to create space for something new and truer. And the more you try to move past your emotions, overcome them, or ignore them - the more stuck you’ll become and the less progress and healing you’ll actually reach.
Want to dive deeper into the topic of emotional empowerment? Check out this video on how to stop blaming yourself for their reactions in this video.
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