In a recent talk at the Collective Trauma Summit, therapeutic coach Alex Howard discussed the importance of feeling rather than acting out or avoiding our emotions. Howard suggests that people generally have six emotional styles they may use to avoid painful emotions. While none of these strategies are inherently harmful when practiced occasionally, they may become a problem if they are a person’s only coping strategy.
People who use avoidance/distraction try to remain constantly busy in order to avoid negative emotions. This strategy can be useful in the short-term but can lead to exhaustion and a build up of unexpressed feelings in the long-term. This would put a person at risk for overreacting or blowing up later on.
“Eating” Your Feelings
Chew: We take in our feelings much like taking in food, by chewing on them and tasting them. This can be thinking about the feeling, making art about it, talking with a friend or loved one, or using therapy/supervision.
Swallow: This is allowing the feeling to come into the body. This gives the opportunity to begin digesting the feeling, much like food entering the stomach. This may express itself in tears or other physical expressions or changes in the feeling as it gets broken down (anger into sadness, etc.).
Digest: This is absorbing the nutrients and nourishment from the experience, much like food in the small intestine. What can this feeling teach me? How do I grow from this experience?
Expel: This is the process of releasing or letting go that which doesn’t serve us anymore.
People who use state change use activities that change the physical state of their body to avoid their feelings. State changing activities include taking drugs or alcohol, smoking, exercise, sex, thrill-seeking, eating, or sleeping. The attempt is to physically feel something different than the sensations brought up by the emotion. Most of these activities are not harmful in and of themselves, however, any activity done to excess can become problematic. Excessive exercise can lead to overuse injuries such as sprains or stress fractures. Overeating can lead to weight gain and other health problems. Use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco can lead to addiction and other health complications.
Analysis is an emotional style where a person can think about and talk about their feelings in the abstract but does not experience them viscerally. In psychoanalysis the term is intellectualizing, which is having an intellectual or cognitive understanding of something that is detached from emotional sensation. This might also look like jumping right into problem-solving or “doing mode” before the reality or gravity of a situation settles in.
Another emotional style is blaming others for the emotions that come up. By ascribing fault for the feelings we avoid having to actually experience them. This isn’t to say that other people’s behaviors may contribute to our emotional state but feelings are communication from our bodies so they aren’t really anyone’s fault.
Empathy as an emotional style is feeling the emotions of others in order to avoid feeling your own. Being able to place yourself in the shoes of others can help us make connections with our friends, families, neighbors, and clients by helping them to feel understand and engendering compassion in us. However, empathy as an emotional style is living through the emotions of others rather than connecting to your own experience. Not only can this lead to delayed expression of emotions (blowing up) but also feelings of resentment, “Everyone dumps their problems on me… Nobody asks me how I’m feeling.”
Finally, somatizing is an emotional style where the body expresses the emotional through physical symptoms which are disconnected from feelings. This is very common in children who tell you they have “a tummy ache” when they are worried about something. It is not uncommon to develop a headache during a stressful day. While a stomachache, headache, muscle soreness, etc. is sometimes just what it presents as, it can also be a manifestation of stress or emotional upset. If an emotional problem is treated as medical issue, the root of the problem remains unaddressed and a person may undergo unnecessary medical testing/procedures.
So how do we experience our feelings, rather than act them out or avoid them? Howard uses the metaphor of eating a meal to explain this process. When we start to eat, we chew our food. This allows use to taste the flavors of the food and begin breaking them down into smaller, more digestible pieces. Emotionally, this includes activities such as thinking about the feeling, making art about it, talking with a friend or loved one, or using therapy/supervision. The next step is swallowing. This is allowing the food/feeling to come into the body. We begin digesting the feeling, much like food entering the stomach. Enzymes and movements of the the stomach break down the food even further, sometimes changing its chemical properties. This may express itself in tears or other physical expressions or changes in the feeling as it gets broken down (anger into sadness, etc.). The next step is digesting. This is absorbing the nutrients and nourishment from the experience, much like food in the small intestine. What can this feeling teach me? How do I grow from this experience? The final step is expelling. This is the process of releasing or letting go that which doesn’t serve us anymore.
Howard explained that connection to our emotions is critical not only for our ourselves but the world., “In healing our individual trauma we are playing a part in healing collective trauma.” Changing our perspective from one that is rigid and fear-based to one that is flexible and amenable to change means that we can be less defensive and more collaborative. He suggested that connection to emotion is the route for this change.
“In healing our individual trauma we are playing a part in healing collective trauma.””