Naming Your Emotions

Do you know how to name your emotions?

It sounds easy, but it can be harder than we imagine. Often when our feelings are so strong or overwhelming, it’s hard to actually pick out what specific emotions you’re feeling. But learning to name your emotions is important and can help you manage them better so that you don’t find yourself getting as overwhelmed by them. 

Have you heard the phrase name it to tame it? It a phrase psychologist Dan Siegel introduced to summarize a series of studies that all supported the idea that this process of naming our emotions in itself helps us to self soothe. 

Instead of feeling uncomfortable and overwhelmed by your emotions, learning to identify them not only kickstarts that self soothing process, but also helps you to unpack where that discomfort is coming from. When you know how you’re feeling, you can start to get into the why.

What happens when we don’t name our emotions?

Do they just go away? Nope! Ignoring our emotions does not make them go away, so there is really no benefit to not naming our emotions. In fact, when we ignore how we’re feeling, the feeling often intensifies, and can manifest in physical symptoms–your body’s way of demanding you pay attention to what you’re feeling. 

Not naming our emotions impacts other areas of our life as well, not just our physical health. It can also impact our relationships! Our feelings impact our behavior–if you’re feeling anxious, you’ll behave differently than when you’re feeling joy, etc. Without communicating what you’re feeling, your behavior can be interpreted incorrectly by friends and loved ones, or closeness in relationships can suffer. Understanding your feelings helps you understand how they impact how you behave with everyone in your life, and also gives you an opportunity to be open with those around about how you’re feeling so they know how to best support you. 

So how can you practice naming your emotions?

Use the Feelings Wheel

The feelings wheel is a great place to start if you’ve never tried identifying your feelings before. The wheel starts with 7 general emotions (bad, fearful, angry, disgusted, sad, happy, surprised) at the center, and as the rings move outward, the terms get more and more specific. So if you only know that you feel angry, you can use that as a jumping off point and go outwards until you find the specific thing you’re feeling. 

Pay attention to your Physical Sensations

Naming your feelings might feel impossible, so instead focus on how those feelings are showing up. What sensations are you feeling in your body? Physical sensations are also linked to our emotions; things like tension in the neck, clenched teeth, headaches, stomach aches, dizziness, shakiness, sweating, etc. can all be expressions of upset or anxious feelings. When you noticed these sensations in your body, stop and think about them. Is there a reason you’d be feeling those sensations (ex. Did you not have caffeine so you have a headache or are you outside in 90º weather so you’re sweating, etc.) or was it triggered by something and could be reflective of a larger emotional response?

Learning to tune into and understand how we’re feeling is hard work, so don’t be hard on yourself if it take you a while to get to a place where you do it naturally. If you’re looking for support in this, our clinicians can help you.  

How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

How does comparison harm us?

Most obviously, comparison usually makes us feel inadequate. Particularly when we’re comparing ourselves to a carefully curated version of someone else's life (like their instagram feed). We see amazing or exciting things people are sharing, and if we’re not in the middle of something amazing or exciting ourselves, it can make us feel like we fall short. 

But it isn’t just us that it harms. Too much comparison can also be damaging to your relationships. When you’re constantly putting yourself up against someone else–out of either admiration or jealousy–you’re not seeing the other person as a full person. You’re only seeing the one thing that is provoking an emotional reaction out of you (a picture of their vacation, a post about their promotion, etc.) It can lead to jealousy, even resentment in your relationship. 

Another way comparison can cause harm is the way it leads you to over evaluate yourself. While self awareness is good, like all things it needs moderation. Excessive self awareness and self evaluation will get you stuck in your head, overthinking, and preventing you from actually meaningfully engaging in the present. If every time you have free time you’re spending it overthinking how your life compares to everyone else’s life, you’re not living it! Hyper-awareness of yourself and “flaws” will make it so you can only see those things, instead of the full picture. 

So how do we fall into the comparison trap so easily?

A huge factor in modern life is social media. It has never been so easy to see exactly what everyone is up to at just about every moment of the day. That’s an enormous amount of information to take in! Even just on instagram, posts and stories make it so we’re constantly consuming the best looking and most exciting parts of people’s lives, as though that is their normal everyday life. 

Another place to look is the people you surround yourself with. Are you constantly around overly competitive people? While a little competition can be a good thing, if your entire social circle is concerned with besting everyone they’ve ever met–of course you’re going to be constantly evaluating yourself and comparing what you find to everyone else. Make an effort to spend time around people who genuinely celebrate others–because attitudes are infectious! You will start to be able to enjoy other people’s victories without feeling like they are your losses if that is the attitude of the friends you spend time with. 

So how can you stop the comparison game?

Reduce time on social media:

This is the big one! It’s also super hard because social media is such a huge part of our lives. But, if you’re willing to put in the work it can be massively beneficial to your inner peace. Here are a few ways you can do this:

• Follow list audit: get really critical of every account you follow. What are they bringing to your feed? How does it make you feel? Unfollow, mute or block anyone that doesn’t leave you with a positive or contented feeling.

• Time restricting app: Find an app where you can set limits on your social media use. Only go on social media during certain times of the day for certain amounts of time. 

• Delete apps or accounts: want to go all in? Quit cold turkey or take an extended social media break and see how you feel. You might find you don’t miss it at all! Or you might miss certain things about it but not all of it–you can use what you learn about your experience to curate your feeds to be only what you like and missed about social media when you return. 

Explore the unexpressed need jealousy is bringing up:

If you’re feeling jealous, it’s most likely because you want something someone else has. This is a totally normal feeling! When there’s something you want that you don’t have but someone else does–well it’s only natural that it makes you feel a bit less than at first. But instead of letting the thought stop there, explore it a bit. Ask yourself, what actually is it that is making me feel “less than”?

A few examples: 

• “I’m not as beautiful as they are” Maybe you want to feel “beautiful” but what does that really mean to you? Could you instead be jealous of someone (seemingly) feeling so at home in their body? How can you help yourself cultivate that feeling?

• “My life is so boring” Maybe you’re feeling a lack of variation. Happens to all of us! What can you do to add some variation to your life? Can you take a class? Try a new restaurant? Join a club? 

This is another really hard one, because it requires us to challenge those comparative thoughts. It asks us to consistently show up for ourselves and say “I’m not less than this person, this feeling is just letting me know I want something I don’t currently have.” It can be really hard to detach that from the feeling of being less than, so use it as a guide map to getting what you want. Here’s what you’re jealous of, now brainstorm how to get it! 

Compliment yourself indulgently:

A good rule of thumb: spend as much time congratulating yourself for things you’ve done well/tried as you do focusing on things that make you feel like you can’t measure up. Our thoughts form our world, so if you’re only thinking about things that make you jealous/upset you will feel that way all of the time. If you force yourself to recognize things that make you happy/proud/excited about yourself you will start to notice them more and more!  

If you're looking for more support to stop comparing yourself to others, our clinicians can help you during this tricky time. 

How to Unlink Your Self-Worth From Your Job Status

How to Unlink Your Self-Worth From Your Job Status

In the United States, we put a lot of focus on work and productivity. When we meet someone new, we often ask “So, what do you do?” right away. We define ourselves by our jobs, and so it can be damaging to our sense of self-worth when we’re not being productive.

However, in the last year, unemployment has soared due to the covid pandemic, and many people are still out of work. We often hear statistics on unemployment, but we often don’t see the reality behind those numbers. Some people are also feeling conflicted because as jobs open back up, some businesses are having a hard time hiring. After the last year, many people have decided they don’t want to work low paying service jobs where they’re treated terribly. Some people aren’t vaccinated and don’t feel safe going back to work. Some people have realized that the path they were on is no longer the right fit for them and are trying to figure out where to go next.

If you’ve been out of work for any length of time, you know that lots of feelings can come up unexpectedly about your job status. Even if you’re happy with your current situation, the expectations and judgement from other people can be exhausting. 

If you’ve spent most of your life tying your self-worth to your work, you’re certainly not alone. Here are some ideas for how to cope when you feel like your self-worth relies on your productivity or job status. 

Be nice to yourself 

This advice is true for so many things. Lots of us are hard on ourselves without really knowing or understanding why. It’s a habit that we’ve formed, and it can be hard to break. Try to talk to yourself kindly and with compassion. If you’re having a hard time with this, imagine you’re talking to your best friend. How would you talk to them about this? Would you tell them they’re worthless because they’re not working right now? Of course you wouldn’t. Channel that same compassion toward yourself. 

Ask yourself: Who profits when I feel this way? 

Insecurity makes the world go round. It’s how advertisers convince you to buy things. When you notice feelings like “I”m not good enough” or “I’m only worthy when I have regular work”, try to dig a little deeper. Where are these thoughts coming from? Are they true? What is the evidence of their truth? Is this sense of insecurity trying to nudge me toward buying something to soothe my discomfort? Reminding yourself that someone is profiting off of your distress can be a helpful way to remind yourself that there’s nothing wrong with the way you feel, but you don’t have to act on it. 

Use mantras or affirmations to remind yourself you are inherently worthy 

We are reminded from a young age that our work is our identity. We talk about what we want to be when we grow up and focus on careers, instead of on our values or our emotional state. It takes a lot of work to undo that programming. When you notice those old messages coming up, you can remind yourself that they’re not true. It takes practice, so repeating affirmations or mantras to yourself on a regular basis can help counteract the feelings that you’re not good enough. What you say to yourself matters.

Cultivate interests outside of things you can get paid for

Your worth has nothing to do with the value you create monetarily. While everyone deserves to be paid for their labor, there’s also freedom in finding joy in things you don’t get paid for. Not everything has to be monetized. You can start a hobby without turning it into a side hustle. It’s okay to spend time on things that don’t add to your bank statement. 

Participate in mutual aid groups

If you ever need the reminder that we are not alone, there are tons of organizers doing the work to bring together resources to support local folks. Even if you’re not able to donate monetarily right now to mutual aid, it can be a helpful reminder that there is help out there outside of our traditional systems of charity or government aid. We have the ability to help each other. We have this idea that if you’re not in the traditional job sphere, working 9-5, then you can’t get help, but that’s not true. Local organizations do the work every day to keep people from falling through the cracks. Can you donate time to an organization? Can you drop off some food at a local food shelf? Can you share local mutual aid requests with your network? All of these things help. 

If you are not working right now, for whatever reason, know that you are still a worthy, valuable person no matter what. That will always be true, regardless of your employment status. Your worth is not defined by your productivity or the money you can make. It’s a hard lesson to learn, because we spend so much of our lives hearing the opposite is true. Be gentle and try not to judge yourself for whatever feelings come up.

If you’re looking for more support as you deal with the fallout from the pandemic, including unemployment, our clinicians can help you during this tricky time. 

4 Myths About Grief

In the last year, we have all dealt with an enormous amount of grief. We’ve lost people, community gathering places, jobs, homes, etc. But for something that is so common, we don’t usually know a lot about grief. It is an uncomfortable and difficult feeling to have, so many of us don’t talk about it. 

But grief is common, and not understanding it actually makes it harder for us to navigate our grief and, eventually, move past it. And what’s even harder, is there are a lot of common myths about grief that get passed around as general wisdom in hard times. Today we’re going to unpack some of those myths to hopefully help you understand your grief a little better when it shows up. 

MYTH 1: Grief is just about death 

The death of a loved one is of course a source of grief, but grieving actually isn’t referring to a loss from death specifically. It is any sort of loss at all. You can grieve the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, losing a job, moving out of your house, etc. Grief is simply the recognition that what you once had (or wanted to have) has been taken away. And the grieving process is however you navigate that loss, whatever the loss is. 

MYTH 2: There are 5 stages of grief

There are many stages of grief. Most of us have heard about the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance)–so much so that they’re even mentioned in popular media like The Simpsons, 30 Rock and New Girl. And while one may experience one or some or all of these stages, it’s not the checklist we believe it to be. You don’t neatly go from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance. Some people won’t feel every single one of the five, some people will feel all five at once. Sometimes you will feel angry and accepting at the same time–that’s the complicated part about grief. It’s messy. You might go from denial to acceptance right back to denial. You might be angry the whole time. You might not be angry at all. While the five stages can happen while grieving, the roadmap we seem to think it is is just too neat to really reflect how people process their emotions. 

MYTH 3: Grief looks the same on everyone

As you might have been able to piece together from the second myth–grief isn’t going to look the same for any two people, because we aren’t following a handy little grief recipe. We’re feeling real, complicated, and intense emotions. And every person feels and processes their feelings differently, so of course your grieving process will look different to someone else's. Some might need to cry a lot. Some might not cry at all. There is no wrong way to grieve. The only “wrong” way to grieve would be to stop yourself from grieving at all. Refusing to acknowledge the loss won’t make those feelings go away, it will just make them stronger when they come up later. 

MYTH 4: There’s a clear end to grief

Grief and mourning are not the same. Mourning is the actions you take when grieving (for example, if a loved one died, mourning would be things like a funeral service, a wake, a memorial, etc.) but grief is that feeling of loss–and that feeling might not go away even when you’ve “completed” your grieving process. And by that I mean, you have acknowledged your grief, you’ve sat with it, explored it, allowed yourself to feel it fully. You’ve taken your mourning steps, and you feel as though it’s no longer debilitating, and you feel as though you’re ready to move onto a new stage of your life. Finishing that process doesn't mean you’ve dumped out all of the grief you have for the loss. It might come back in waves later on. You might think you’re “over it” and it might come back later and make you sad. That’s okay. Grief does that–it lingers. While time eases how much it stings, it doesn’t erase the loss. 

If you’re looking for support as you navigate your grieving process, therapy can be a great place to start. Get in touch with us today and we can help you.