“Listening to What Our Emotions Are Telling Us: Understanding the Signals Within”

Emotions act as signals within our bodies, guiding us on how to meet our needs. They are not inherently good or bad, but rather indicators that provide insight into our well-being, feelings, and necessities. For example, consider how you respond to thirst—you reach for a drink because you recognize that hydration will satisfy this bodily requirement. Similarly, when you experience hunger, it prompts you to seek nourishing food. In the same way, our emotions alert us to what we need emotionally, helping us understand and address our mental and physical states.

We create emotional narratives from these signals that teach us how to make sense of our experiences. The way that we process our emotions can shift our mood. The narratives we assign to these signals are important, because we can create shame around difficult and uncomfortable emotions. When we feel shame surrounding a particular emotion, we try to get rid of it by avoiding it and/or suppressing it. We want it to go away quickly and fear that if we allow ourselves to feel the emotion, it will linger.

Emotions are cycles that happen in our bodies. These cycles are actually neurological events. Nearly every signal in our body responds to emotions. Emotions are involuntary responses with a beginning, middle and end. We have to move completely through the cycle of an emotion, or the emotion will get stuck. If we get stuck and don’t deal with our emotions, our emotions will deal with us in the form of panic attacks and other adverse psychological and physiological effects.  

It is important to get clear about understanding our emotions, so that we can be specific about naming that emotion both for ourselves and for others. This helps us to appropriately respond. Naming our emotions calms down the alarm response center of the brain.

Getting specific about our emotions and appropriately naming them requires that we understand how to appropriately name our emotions. For example, jealousy and envy are not the same. I want to use these two emotions, because they are both associated with shame and cause us to have emotions about having these emotions, and ultimately this gets in the way of us tending to our needs.

Jealousy is between three people. It is the fear of losing someone else. Envy is between two people. It is wanting something someone else has. There are two forms of envy. One is I want what you have, too. The other is I want what you have, and I don’t want you to have it.

Let’s hold here for a second. If I feel envious of someone, wanting something they have too, this signals that I need to create more spaciousness in my life in a particular area. We experience this all the time, in the form of inspiration. This is why influencers are so popular!

But let’s explore when this feels really hard. There is a scene in the tv series Being Mary Jane that perfectly illustrates envy. Mary Jane has an eruption of emotions and lashes out on friends and family during a dinner party. Her lashing out places special emphasis on one of her close friends. She later explains to the friend, “I want the life you have on Instagram.” Mary Jane’s friend was married with two kids and had a successful career as a psychiatrist. Mary Jane’s envy of her friend was a signal that she needed to create more space in her own life in the area of partnership, in order to achieve her personal goals of marriage and family.

Envy is a natural emotion. If we recognize it, we can respond to it, by turning inward and asking ourselves questions like:

• Where do I want to create more spaciousness in my life?
• How can I create more space in this area?
• How can I remove the clutter that is preventing me from creating more space in this area?

When we proactively address our needs, we help stave off feelings of loneliness. Often, feeling isolated can lead us to unfairly criticize ourselves for experiencing uncomfortable emotions. By responding intuitively to what we need, we can mitigate these feelings and foster a sense of connection with ourselves.