Ep 33 Processing Our Emotions

We all know that how we process – or don’t process – our emotions can affect our lives in big ways. What’s more, many of us haven’t been given a whole lot of help in figuring out how to process what we might view as “negative emotion” in our lives. And so in today’s episode, we explore any number of contemplative practices that have been useful in helping us move through some of the more challenging emotions and energies that we experience.

#Feelings
#FeelingsWheel
#MoodMeter

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

contemplative, feelings, retreat

Dominic Kaiser  00:06

Welcome to The Contemplative Life. Three pastors, friends and spiritual companions help us explore spirituality through a contemplative life.

I'm Christina Roberts.
I'm Chris Roberts.
I'm Kristina Kaiser. We're glad you joined us.  

Kristina Kaiser  00:24

Hello, it is great to be with you today! We are taking some time to look at emotions. We all have emotions, we all experience emotions, and how we process them, or don't process them, and what kind of season of life that we're in tends to be a really big deal. So we are taking a contemplative look at emotion. And: Is there a contemplative way to process our emotions?  

Happily, I was just on a retreat in Madison, where we got to do some of this. And there was one piece of paper in particular that asked us to look at various aspects of our lives: How do we experience emotional processing - in culture, in our families? How does my personality in particular process emotion? How does my spiritual community process emotion? And I started to realize as I went through each of these, "Wow! There's not a lot of hard emotional processing. There's a lot of emotional repressing, irritation about emotion, only give me the positives..." And it was in every aspect of my life. So that led me to turn my paper over and start to really think through some of the others. 

There's other ways that I've happily gotten to process emotion, thanks to other spiritual communities. But in general, if I was thinking about my church experience, it was all on the "praise God" side. So yeah, let's talk about it. How do y'all experience emotion? And how does the contemplative help in the midst of that?

Chris Roberts  02:02

It's interesting that you talk about coming from faith traditions that only let you process positive emotions. I would say that the same has been true for myself. 

I have loved becoming a spiritual director. And I think one of the most memorable moments in my training was one weekend, we were talking about emotions, and they were saying how most people categorize emotions as sad, glad, and mad. But they gave us this exhaustive list of emotions. And actually, they put them out on the floor. There were something like 40 different words that described emotions. And one thing that stood out to me was "if people are mad or angry..." And then they gave this example of frustrated. So, "frustrated" is different than "mad." 

And so, I was currently experiencing frustration in my life. And I was frustrated because I felt like there was this blockage. I wanted to do something, and there was something that was blocking me. And so, if I say, "I'm frustrated," that's a lot different than saying, "I'm mad, I'm upset." 

And I really appreciated that weekend of seeing all the different emotions. Because I think it's more identifying of what's going on inside of you to accurately name the emotions that you're experiencing, rather than putting it in this big category of "mad, sad, glad."

Christina Roberts  03:32

It's interesting that you're talking about blockage because I recently learned the origin of the word "emotion." It comes from French, which is essentially "energy in motion." And I found that to be a really interesting way to frame emotion...I remember years ago, someone talking about "emotion is just vibrations in your body." And I thought that that was kind of weird, the way that they were describing it. But there is something about "emotion is energy in motion." 

And I think, when we don't process our emotions, they come out in ways that, you know, probably not the most helpful, healthy ways. But eventually, they will come out. And so I think something that I've been really thinking about is, "What does it mean to process emotion and to involve God in that processing? And what does it mean to come up against some, what I would call, uncomfortable emotions?" And to really invite Spirit to help me to navigate through those uncomfortable emotions so that, that energy in motion can actually be released from my body or be metabolized to transform it to a different type of energy. So for example, if I'm frustrated, to use your example, Chris, what does it look like to process through, to release that? Or, to turn that frustration into action towards change? And so I think that there's something to that stuckness versus motion that we're describing.

Kristina Kaiser  05:05

Oooh. So interesting! I think, as everybody's talking, I'm realizing there is a practice that I've utilized, probably the last half a year or so where, after I kind of sit in some silence for a bit, I will sit with a number of questions, one of which is, "What are you feeling?" And I've often noticed that I have conflicting feelings in my being. I will both be irritated about one thing and excited about something else. 

But yeah, to this point that we're talking about, I will often try to avoid just sweeping, like, "I'm mad, glad, sad," and kind of look for a deeper word, "I feel irritated; I feel frustrated; or I feel energized, excited, motivated, whatever it is." 

And that is really helpful. Because, for one thing, it's helping me see that it's not all one experience. I'm not just having a bad experience, or a euphoric experience. My whole life is jumbled together. There's multiple things going on. But wherever the difficult story is, the next question is, "What is my painful story? What is the struggle? What's causing that emotion?" It's usually a thought-based script that I'm running. And, "Is there a better story," so that I won't just get left with an emotion that I can't do anything with. There's somewhere to go with this emotion, which has also been very helpful. 

So for a while I was doing that daily, and it's summer now. And I have all the kids. So now it's more like weekly, but it is still meaningful, even if it's not as frequent as it was a little bit ago.

Christina Roberts  06:51

And I think, Chris, you know, you use a really engaging example of putting the emotions on the floor and being invited to take an emotion and sit with that. I think oftentimes, there's feelings wheels, or mood meters, (if you Google that online, you'll see different things.) And what I appreciate about that is that there's typically a spectrum. 

So they might choose the color blue for certain emotions, and there's the light blue to the dark blue. And I think that, that is really helpful, because sometimes we can feel, "I'm anxious right now." And if I really sit with that, maybe it's a light blue, but in my mind, it's like this midnight blue anxiety that I'm feeling. 

And I think sometimes when we are sitting with that, I know, in our last episode, we talked about meditation, and sometimes just settling down and, you know, realizing, "Okay, there's some anxiety here. I'm going to sit with this," and watching that dial turn down from the intensity of it to, "Actually, it's really not that big of a deal. And the reason I'm anxious today is because I have this meeting that I'm unsure about. Okay, I can invite God into that and just let that go for right now." So I appreciate the spectrums, and the intensity or lack of intensity thereof of emotions.

Chris Roberts  07:58

Man, what a can of worms we have opened up! I think, going back to talking about only positive emotions being able to be expressed in one's journey: I think something that has really sort of helped me open up to exploring negative emotions - I'm the type of person that have been classified as an "Enneagram Seven." And so our greatest fear is pain. We, sort of, run away from negative emotions. And I've found that to be true in my life, that ease of just being able to maybe walk away from something has been my makeup, my personality.

But I've also felt invited by God to process some of these negative emotions. And something that's been helpful to me, one of the things that was said in a conference I was at is, "You know, if you're in a good place right now, that's awesome. Celebrate it. But hard times are gonna come. And in the hard times, you need to find God." 

Life is full of happy moments. And life is full of more challenging and negative emotions. And so you need to process those and find those, too. And I've just found that to be a wonderful invitation. Like, yes! Enjoy the now, the good. But also, I've appreciated the invitation to find God in what we would call the more challenging energies that move through us. So that's something that's come up for me.

Christina Roberts  09:58

Yeah, and I think this notion of, "If we don't process the emotion, it can get stuck, it can become large..." So you're talking about the colors where I could think it's a dark blue when it's really a light blue...

Kristina Kaiser  10:10

For sure! I took this trip at the early part of the summer, and realized, "Oh my gosh! There's all of this stuff just hanging out." And I hadn't even been aware that it was hanging out, quite honestly. But just seeing all my friends' faces again and feeling like...my one friend, we said goodbye, and I burst into tears. It was so emotional! And these are the kinds of tears that tend to be reserved for family, which, truthfully, my Massachusetts family is a family. 

But in the midst of all of it, sometimes there are just not words, either. And so, like, on this retreat, I was just taking, I realized, I spent a lot of time turning pages over and drawing because I don't have words to go through whatever the grief was that I was feeling. But I can kind of draw it or get it out. And at other times...it was so devastating in my life, it was like…a puzzle. Like, "I need colors and things that are taking me through my emotion, but they can't even come out of me. They just have to be something I can, kind of, create." So a puzzle was perfect. 

So yes, if we don't process the emotions, they get stuck, they become larger than life. So this business of processing really helps the freedom to come out. By the time I got to the end of various sessions at this retreat, I was able to say, "This is okay now. I thought that this was going to be a really big deal. I thought that, you know, the absence of this relationship, or moving...these various things...was this really big deal. But now that I'm sitting here, I realize it's okay. I'm okay. There's freedom. There's new possibility." And in particular, I think I wrote on my paper at one point, "I'm free to be who I am right now instead of trying to be whatever it was I was trying to be at some previous point in my life. Now I can be present to today."

Christina Roberts  12:18

And I think that's important, because I think in addition to maybe being stuck, our emotions invite opportunities for transformation. And again, that's a spiritual practice, where I think what I'm hearing you describe, Kristina, is: As you were naming and owning and sitting with these emotions, as the retreat unfolded, you were able to see transformation in even some of your mindsets and thoughts around the emotions, which I think is important. 

And even to your point, I think one of the beautiful things about children is that they are not conditioned to not cry. So when they are frustrated about something, the tears just turn on. And they can easily turn off as well. But there's something in our bodies saying, "I need to release. I am frustrated right now, or I feel misunderstood, or I'm scared." And so I cry, and our body releases toxins or the energy is in motion to get out, and then we can move on. Where I think as adults, we scoop it all in and deal with it or buck up. And so I think having that freedom to release in different ways often can lead to that transformation that you're describing. 

Kristina Kaiser  13:17

Well, thank you guys so much. I feel like we could probably talk endlessly about emotion. But it's probably okay for now just to take a moment and digest everything that we've just thought about.

So why don't we transition into the part of our podcast where we talk about things that we are excited about.

Christina Roberts  13:42

So what I am into this week is different blends of massage oils. I have a dear friend who does massage and she makes these different blends, and I've just so appreciated that jojoba and almond and basil can be one sort of a blend. And citrus and things like that. And so I am engaging and opening my awareness to the world of massage oil blends.

Chris Roberts  14:06

Well I am into summer-pool-time-fun. We got a membership to a pool for the month of August, and we have been going to the pool almost daily with our kids. Usually they invite a friend, and it is just hours and hours of fun. I can read a book. I can do some work. The lifeguard can babysit my kids. My children's friends can entertain my children. It is just a wonderful, blissful experience. So I am into summer-pool-time-fun.

Kristina Kaiser  14:46

Woohoo! That is exciting! Yay for August! I feel like a lot of times people discount August, but I'm all in for August. It is full on summer. 

Speaking of summer, the harvesting time is coming. We just got a call from my husband's mother the other day that there was probably over 100 years of corn to be coming our way, these kinds of things. And we've planted a little garden of our own. And so knowing what happened last year about this time, I was like, We're gonna be ready!" So I am into canning supplies. We have suddenly become people who need this kind of thing. So we bought this large water-bath-pot, and it looks like a cauldron. It's just so big. And then we realized that you can't water-bath everything. And so we also bought a pressure canning pot. So now we are the owner of these two ginormous pots, and we are going to learn how to use them. So that is what I am into these days. 

Thank you so much, everybody, for being with us. We would love to hear from you. So feel free to go to thecontemplativelife.net. There's lots of resources there. You can email us if you want to chat about any of the things that we are talking about: info@thecontemplativelife.net. And if you have a moment, we would love for you to rate us on iTunes so that other people can find this. Thanks so much for being with us and we will see you again soon!