Do You Ever Get Overwhelmed By Your Emotions?

What do you do when you feel so many different things at once that it is all too much? A student felt anger, then disappointment, resentment and loneliness within moments of a hurtful message from her daughter. Ann shares a simple use of the word "and": "I am sensing something in me is angry, and something in me is disappointed, and something in me is resentful, and I am here with all of them." It lets all those feelings sit side by side so you do not feel small beside them. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

Hi, It's Ann. Nice to be talking with you again. Always a pleasure. Let me ask you, Do you ever get completely overwhelmed? Like it's all just too much? What do you do then? Anxiety, For example, How does your body feel when you get anxious? I tend to feel anxiety as a gripping in my stomach, Very uncomfortable. And what I do when I feel that is I pause. I notice how I'm feeling. Hey, That doesn't sound like much, But it's really important. And then I say hello to something in me that's feeling anxious. You know, A lot of my favorite stories are about people who've used this method with feelings from irritation to embarrassment to anger and how they were able to shift their relationship to those feelings which resulted in new thoughts about their situation and a lot more possibilities for action and interaction and basically not having to be so stuck. Well, Let's pause. Noticing how you're feeling. And acknowledging it. And then feeling yourself get bigger than your feelings, Right? It works. What happens when you're feeling so many different feelings, One right on top of the other, That it's overwhelming? Well, That's what happened to my student, Sonara. Sonara's relationship with her daughter. Hasn't always been easy, So she treasures opportunities to share common experiences. Books, For example. They sometimes recommend books to each other and those are precious shared experiences. And recently, Sonara was really moved by a book and so she recommended it to her daughter. And then for whatever reason, This time her daughter. Dismissed it. No mom. I'm just not interested in that. And that really stung. This exchange happened through email, So Sanara had time to do the steps I teach for being with strong feelings. She paused. She already knew she was having a strong reaction, So she paused and she asked herself, Okay. How am I feeling about my daughter saying she's not interested in my book recommendations? The trouble was, It wasn't just one feeling. Pursuits and anger. And before she could acknowledge the anger, It was also. Disappointment And then right on the heels of disappointment, Something like resentment, Like anger. I've done so much for her. And then a big feeling of loneliness crowded in. And at that point, Sonara threw up her hands and stopped trying to acknowledge any more of her feelings because she could tell There were even more. She simply felt overwhelmed because there were too many. So how does the method of pausing and acknowledging how you feel work? When you have too many feelings. That's what Sonara asked me the next time we met in class. And what I shared with her that day. Is something called the power of and. I developed it along with Barbara McGavin as part of our method called Untangle. The word and is a very powerful word when it comes to creating a relationship with a number of feelings at the same time. And is like a spacer. It allows you to have a lot of feelings next to each other without them having to compete with each other for your attention. Let's use Sonara's story and I'll show you what I mean. So the first thing she felt in response to her daughter's email was anger. She says to herself, I'm sensing something in me is angry. And then right away she also feels disappointment. Okay. So she added disappointment to her first sentence using the word and. That would sound like this. I'm sensing something in me is angry. And I'm sensing something in me is disappointed. If there'd been a moment to do so, She would then have said hello to each of them. But no, Before she could do that, Resentment arrived. Okay. I'm sensing something in me is angry. And? Something in me is disappointed and something in me is resentful. Yeah, The sentence is getting long. But the sentence structure itself allows a feeling of inner space. These feelings are here. And. . . I am here. I am the space where all these feelings can be as they are. You see, What overwhelms us is not the fact that we have more than one feeling. It's that we ourselves start to feel small and inadequate under the onslaught of all those feelings. And you don't have to. No matter how many feelings you have. You are big enough to acknowledge all of them. If you do it one at a time using the magical word and. So, What was that sentence again? I am sensing something in me is angry. And. Something in me is disappointed. And something in me is resentful and. I am here with all of you. What a difference that makes.