“How are you doing?”
Whenever we see familiar people, friends or colleagues, we regularly begin by asking this famous question… How are you? But we usually never mean it. The answers to this question are often “I’m ok”, “Fine, Thank you” or some similar versions.
The truth is, at a given moment, many of us are not really aware of how they’re really feeling and are not prepared for such question nor willing to give a real answer. Personally, I didn’t use to give my feelings much attention, and frankly? I noticed that most of you don’t either. We usually prefer to burry those feelings and pretend that everything’s ok. “Being positive” we call it.
Burying feelings worked for me. Well, at least for a few days or a couple of weeks. Until you eventually break. Unfortunately, as hard as I try to be, we’re not machines, nor robots.
Less than a year ago I met a new friend. Over a short period of time, that person showed an incredible amount of care and noticed the patterns of my “breakings”.
Eventually, after figuring out my weakness in expressing emotions, that person reached out to help me figure out a way to “describe” my feelings. Although the methodology failed at that time, the experience was still beneficial: I realized the importance of identifying feelings and from there, I continued the journey on my own. Today I’m writing this post as I finally figured things out. And the process went as following:
How do you feel when you’re giving your best: working at best performance, being productive, etc. Answers always seem to be similar to: positivity, happiness, confidence, enthusiastic and optimistic.
On the other hand, at your worst, usually the feelings are opposite: negativity, unhappiness, self-doubt, defensiveness and pessimism. Our sense of self value feels at risk and our energy gets consumed in self-protection.
Most of us tend tend to move along between our best and our worst all day long, depending on what’s going on around us.
But what’s the real value of expressing what you’re actually feeling? Why not just keep things “less dramatic” and pretend that everything is OK?
Well as simple as the answer is, it’s not quite obvious to a confused person with mixed emotions. But naming our emotions tends to minimize their charge and lessen the burden they create on us. Dr. Dan Siegel refers to this as the “name it to tame it” practice.
After all, the fact that you can’t change what you can’t notice makes perfect sense. Denying or avoiding our feelings will not make them go away, nor will it lessen their impact on us, even if it’s unconscious. Emotions can be described as a form of energy that’s always seeking expression. Noticing them gives us a chance to take a step back and decide what to do with them. Sharing our feelings in simple terms helps us to better contain and manage even the most difficult emotions. By naming them out loud, we are effectively taking responsibility for them, making it less likely that they will spill out at the expense of others over the course of a day.
Today I learned that whatever I happen to be feeling can be contagious to my surrounding; for better or worse. More importantly, I learned to simply notice my emotions without being compelled to act on them.
Naturally, during the past period of self discovery, I noticed that I still have occasions where negative emotions rise up in me without my awareness. It usually affects my voice or choice of words. As a solution, I asked a close friend for help: Any time you sense that I might be feeling negative emotions, simply ask me: “How are you really feeling?”. That’s usually all it takes for me to notice. And from now on, once noticed, I will be able to manage whatever is going on inside my world more gracefully.
So… How are you really feeling?