My Emotional Story And How to Discover Yours

How do you normally react to uncomfortable emotions? Is it different than you used to react? Do you want to change it?

We all react to our emotions differently. Some people are very aware of what they are feeling and can stop what they are doing to work through them. Others are less aware and either have no idea about what their emotions are or simply ignore them.

I’m somewhat in the middle. I used to never fully understand my emotions, I just knew I felt off or irritated. I wouldn’t really do anything about it but my immediate reaction/coping mechanism would be to ignore it and distract myself. Or if I would be in a conversation I would get very defensive.

However, recently I’ve really been working on becoming more aware of how my emotions come up, why they come up, and being able to actually understand them. Understanding them in this way helps me work through them myself but also helps me communicate to others the reason I may be reacting a certain way.

It is still a BIG work in progress as sometimes I’m still uncertain and afraid to express how I truly feel. This is because, over the years, I’ve gotten more comfortable keeping it all to myself. It was easier because I never wanted to hurt anyone with my emotions or make waves.

Although this can be beneficial to work through it and learn what you need to give yourself on your own, harboring your truth can also make things worse. If part of you harbors your emotions as a people pleaser, as I have, it will definitely make things worse.

Even though I’ve had a lot of struggles with this, I am working a lot to achieve my emotional goals. I want to be able to become so aware of my own emotions that I can feel and work through them quickly and not hold onto anything. I also want to become more confident in what I feel so that when I share them with others or when others share their own with me I am not shifted by others' opinions.

I know where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I generally want to go.

This is a shortened version of my journey with my emotions, what I have done, and what I’m working on but the story is never-ending because it’s always a process.

If you want to change the way you understand and work through your emotions you have to know your emotional story. To discover it ask yourself these questions:

1. What is my initial reaction every time I feel angry, misunderstood, hopeless, frustrated, overwhelmed or etc.?
2. What coping mechanisms do I use? (healthy or unhealthy)
3. What is my go-to defense mechanism? (denial, displacement, fantasy, projection, intellectualization, reaction formation, undoing, repression, suppression, humor, sublimation)
4. How do I handle disagreement and judgment from others?
5. Do I strongly stand by my own emotions or am I easily shifted by others?
6. Can I name my emotions or is it confusing to me?

If you have been doing a lot of healing work you can ask yourself these questions twice to see your progress. First, answer them based on what you have done/what you did before you started healing. Second, ask yourself these questions and answer them based on where you are at right now.

Then it’s important to come up with a goal of where you want to be emotionally or more so how you want to ideally handle your emotions. For example, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I want to be comfortable feeling and expressing my feelings?
2. What is the #1 emotional habit I want to shift?
3. How do I want to react when I feel ____?
4. Is my coping mechanism beneficial? How can I comfort myself so I don’t have to use it?
5. What is the real reason I need people to understand and agree with how I feel?
6. If a negative emotion comes up what are 3 things I can do differently than how I have reacted?
7. What are healthy coping mechanisms I can begin to utilize that will have the same relieving effect as my unhealthy coping mechanisms?

Every human being has emotional habits that are harmful but not one person can not change those habits to be healthier.

You have to become aware of what those harmful habits are (1st set of questions) and determine if you are really willing to change them and if so to what (2nd set of questions).

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a resource you can begin to utilize right now in this process. I attached an emotion wheel below. I started using this emotion wheel when I realized I had a hard time naming and understanding what emotions I was feeling.

Using this helped me to name it and then once I could name it I could understand better where it was coming from. Read the caption under the picture to learn how to use it.

To use it start by identifying which emotion on the outside circle you are feeling. Then you would go to the middle level and narrow your first emotion to a more specific one. Then do the same with the innermost level to find an even more specific emotion. It can be more than one!

❤️🌻 Thank you for reading!

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