Transcript: Big Emotions for Adults

Welcome to the Us and Kids podcast.  I am your host, Jan Talen. I'm a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a wife, a mom and a grandma. This Us and Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you parent together. You and I know it's not an easy task. So I encourage you to subscribe to Us and Kids in your favorite podcasting app. I'm really glad you're here, so that you're marriage and your home can be fulfilling and so very good.

Today we're talking about feelings... A pretty normal part of life. And my thought is that over the course of 2020 and even over the course of life, sometimes we've had really big feelings. Ones that we don't really know what to do with. It can be because of things that have happened to 2020, but it can also be, because we have lost someone that we love or we've had to make changes we never thought we would need to make. We don't have all of the emotional capacity to understand what's going on. 

Today we're going to talk about where those big feelings come from. Some of us have a lot of them and often. Some of us rarely have them, so when they show up we're like, “Where did this come from?!?” The podcast today is going to focus mostly on adults and their big emotions because we want you to understand what's happening for you. And next week we'll talk about what's happening inside our kiddos when they have really big emotions, because they do too. We do not necessarily like all the emotions that we have. Sometimes they are just way too big! What we think should have just been a little wave of emotion, all of a sudden feels like a tsunami. You go wow, “I'm too loud!  I'm too big. I've been overwhelming. And I'm tired of it. So is everybody else.” But my emotions just feel too impossible to contain.. They just start out small and then within seconds they've just exploded to be monstrously oversized, filling the whole house!

And let's go back a little bit to the beginning and understand a few things about what's happening physiologically. Then we'll know how we can manage that physiology, in terms of how we present those emotions to the world but also how we experience them internally for ourselves.

So I'm going to split hairs here, we're going to talk first of all about emotions. And then we're going to talk about feelings. Emotions come from deep within our brain - in our amygdala and in our ventromedial prefrontal cortex. I know you want it to know that! The words don't matter so much. What I want you to know is that there's a physiological place where those emotions come from. These areas, the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, are the areas that produce chemical reactions inside your brain and your body and that have a direct impact on how we feel. We're going to talk about feelings in a minute, and how we respond physically. As in, how loud do we get, what does our heart rate look like and our blood pressure as well as our muscle tension and tenseness. These emotions get coded into our DNA. They are believed that they help us respond in that fight or flight manner that we know goes way, way, way back to our development of the amygdala. It also helps the release of the transmitters that are essential for building our memories. And because it helps release those transmitters into an emotional memory, those memories become more powerful and thus easier to recall.

So, emotions are measurable. If we hooked up to a whole bunch of electrodes, and then we talked about different subjects, we'd be able to watch your blood flow change, your heart rate change, your brain activity change as well as your facial expressions. Your eyes  would widening and closing, tension in your jaw, your eyebrows furrowed. And we also would be able to notice changes in your body movement and in body language. 

Those are emotions. They are deep within your brain. Feelings, on the other hand, are more subjective. They are influenced by our own personal experiences, and the interpretations we make up of the world around us. Based on those experiences our feelings are located in our brain, but they're located in the neocortical regions of the brain. 

So the two are connected - emotions are connected to feelings. Emotions will drive or direct or wake up the feelings. Feelings are often what we notice first. And then, as we sit with them the emotional part grows and moves farther into our conscious mind. So often, the first feelings are fairly subtle. And so they don't seem that big. It's when the emotions really move in, and the chemical, hormonal makeup in our brain changes, that those emotions really start to bubble up and show up as we work to figure out what the emotions are. Then you can also notice the feelings. And as we figure out the emotions, we are able to calm down the feelings. They are connected and I am sort of saying that it doesn't always matter which ones or where we start -  whether we start with understanding the emotions or understanding the feelings. It's important that we start somewhere. We have to know both sides or they become too squirrelly and then you end up in a rumination rut or just replay, replay, replay of the emotional situation. And they become agitated within your body - that chemical makeup becomes really agitated. And that's the combo that makes us want to explode. 

So, feelings and emotions, and I don't really care where you start. Just grow in that awareness of, “Oh I can feel that change in my heart rate, I can feel myself get tense. I can hear my voice, or my eyes are always squinting whenever I'm talking about this subject.” That awareness can help us now decide what to do with those emotions. And with any accompanying feelings. If we figure out one, we can figure out the other. 

There are some personalities that are a bit more prone to having really intense emotions. If we were going to call them something or put a sort of name around it for ease of conversation, we would call these people deep feelers. They are imaginative and they are sensitive. This means that they're able to imagine a whole lot of scenarios: dar,k black ones and light ones. And they pick up on clues that nobody thought they were sending out,

They experience the world first through their emotions, not through the verbal input, nor necessarily even through what's going on around them. They experience the world first through what they are feeling and emoting inside of themselves. This is their first experience of the world, everyday.

 And so, if their emotions are uptight or fearful or agitated, then their world, (regardless of how calm it is for everybody else) is scary. They will experience the world secondly with their thoughts. 

Here's the glitch, as well. They experience not just their world this way. They also are busy experiencing your world and reading you and picking up whether or not you look or feel agitated, or worried or dismayed. And so they not only have their emotions bouncing all around, they have all of yours, and all of the other people in the room as well.So, they quickly get overloaded with all these emotions. If they don't have time to process all of this they get into emotional overload and trouble.

 If you're a deep feeler, and you don't take the time to process the emotions and let the thoughts and facts catch up to your emotions so that the two are talking together and making your worldview, more realistic and honest, then, often, the situation turns sideways. We need them both to work together.  

So often I tell my clients. I don't really care how big your emotions are. If your emotions are running at a 10 that's fine, as long as your thoughts are running at a 10 as well. They gotta be talking to each other. But when you're way overthinking and you haven't had time to give your emotions any space, your thoughts are at a 10 but you're giving your emotions a 2,, you're not going to have a good behavioral response. If you need to bring your thoughts down to a six, then your emotions up to a five. Now those two can talk, and we can come up with a much better response that won't have shame in it. 

How can you tell when you or your spouse is going into overload i -nto that explosion space? You just heard me say,”Pay attention to whether or not they're doing too much talking about what they feel and not enough rational thinking going on alongside of it. We will notice this if we pay attention to their breathing rate. This means that the more intense, the more rapid, racing breathing rate can be a sign that those emotions are really overloading the brain in the system. 

Remember we said emotions are based in the amygdala, that triggers these physiological responses. It also causes pupils to dilate, speech to pick up and move faster and louder, and muscles to tense up around the jaw and the eyes and the hands and the neck. All of these become more strong, more pronounced. If you and the one you're with can have a system that says, “Let's just take a breather for a second. Let's walk around for a minute, let's do a little writing. Let's go pick up something, sweep the front patio and give yourself a little bit of space, so that thoughts and emotions can rebalance.

This will lower that physiological response and help you to take some deep breaths.

Do something that's distracting. That's what sweeping the back patio is. 

Think the truth just quietly. What's the truth? Honor yourself by going there.  

Acknowledge the emotions and where you can chunk them off, bit by bit.  It might sound like this:

“I know that I'm pretty upset because I feel really rejected or dismissed by that look. Look?? I think you have to find out whether or not that work is what you think it meant. Chunk that one off.

“I better see if that look that I saw from my spouse is what it meant -  what I think it meant.” Okay, I'm gonna chunk off another one. 

And I'm gonna say, “I feel pretty alone. Don't feel very heard.”

And now I'm going to take that and I'm going to explore that.

 

When you can chunk it into different places now you can think about those things separately. And often those are better solutions that can calm things bit by bit then all in one huge pile. You see we're working to get your nervous system to settle down so that you can think in the DNA for Fun Communication Course. We talk about your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system and getting those two to talk together, and that's some of what we're talking about here.

Sometimes we are really reacting. And our emotions are coming really really high because we have written a storyline that is overwhelming to us and scary. Some storylines might be like this:

1 - I am not important to others.

2 - Everything is out of my control. I have no impact, no influence on anyone or anything. 

3 - No matter how hard I try, I always fail.  I don't win at anything. 

4 - I am not precious to anyone, and they leave. No one stays.

5 - I'm not good enough. I'll never measure up, never be satisfied. I'm not good enough. 

 

These are some pretty intense storylines.  You might have a blend of those or come up with your own. These are not always true storylines. We think we know - we live into them because we think that they are true and accurate. They create emotions inside of us and lots of fear and trembling. And so it's sometimes appropriate to really explore that story. 

For example: 

1 - I'm not important to others might more truthfully be:  I am and bring value to people that matter to me. Sometimes they don't show it in a way that makes sense to me. But I know their hearts, and they know my heart. I am important.  A sideline, for me, comes out of my faithwalk with Jesus. I know I am important to him. And that brings me comfort as well. 

2 - Another storyline. Everything is out of my control.

If I was going to rewrite the storyline, it might go like this: Well, it sure seems that way (that nothing is in my control). I will take a look at what I cannot control. And for me because of my faith in Jesus I might say, I will trust Jesus to take care of what I cannot. And I will influence with kindness and grace, the spaces that I can implement.  And so acknowledging I do have influence in some places. I just have to make sure that I do it. 

3 - Another storyline, I always fail. Failing is a pretty harsh word, you know. Maybe it's a little gentler to say: “Well, I don't very often do things to the standard that I set for myself, there’s a lot of perfectionism in me. But the task is still done in many ways, and other people are not too stressed about it. Just because it wasn't done to this perfect standard doesn't make it a failure. I'm still valuable it is still a good contribute to to this project/process 

4 - Storyline number four. No one will stay. Well, do I have to explore? Do I frighten them away? Maybe they want to stay, but they don't have the skills to equalize my size emotions.

So maybe I can learn to express my emotions so that they're not so scary to everybody else. I'm used to them, but other people aren’t. I could help them feel calmer and myself feel better. We could all feel safer, if I could learn to slow myself down.

I betcha I can do that. And I betcha that if I say to them, "I'm working on that and you're welcome to help me." They will stay. They are learning from me. They're running because they're scared of my oversized emotions which they, truthfully, are oversized. I'm like the Hulk pounding on through a situation. Everybody should run from that. If I own that and I can work on improving myself. I probably will be in a better space in my relationships.

5 - Number five. I am not good enough. Well, a better truth might be: I am good enough. The deeper question is good enough for whom? for what? How are you defining good? What are you looking for?  Are these realistic expectations? I might be able to say, I can improve in these areas. I can also be gracious about my shortcomings towards myself and others.  I bring good to relationships. There's always more I could do.  

Do you see how these things can help me, or you, any of our deep feelers around us re-direct our emotional energy into something far more positive and useful for ourselves and for others. So thinking about how does this big of an emotion help me be wiser? How can this big of an emotion, give me more compassion? How can I use it in a really gentle, encouraging strengthening way? 

Will my reaction (that I feel like I want to get with 120%.), will I be glad I did this in five minutes, or five hours, or five months, or five years. See, if I can slow myself down and I will be able to figure out how to use courage and compassion and creativity. These are deep things within those rich, rich emotions to help a situation. And those things, (compassion, courage and creativity) can redirect that intense emotional energy into something that is helpful!

So take a deep breath, with you and with those around you do.  Slow down your story.

Listen to your body and your brain, so that you know those emotions that are ready to pop, and take a step back so that you can redirect those emotions in a way that really fosters better relationships. 

Not all emotions go away. We don't want them to. They're important to bonding and joining.

It's when they are too big that creates the struggle. 

Don't get scared, but it can be wise to relook at things. For the sake of your family, your spouse, your relationships around you and your kiddos, just take a look at how you're doing with those big emotions and make one or two thoughts or notes. 

Invite your spouse to help you in yo’llr help her or him, so that together, you can really parent well, and be married well. 

Thank you for listening today and for joining  me. Remember that we have a Facebook page for new information. We have a DNA for Fun Communications Course for couples that builds these communication skills so that you can define what you want out of your relationships, marriage in kiddos, and then build the necessary skills and apply them just nicely for your spouse, or for your kiddos. And then life becomes wonderfully fun.

Check out the Us and Kids website for all the information, and I look forward to meeting you there, and continuing to share ideas with you through this us and kids podcast. Bye bye.

PS - be sure to grab that printable!  It will help you with making some gentle, good changes!