Episode 47: Processing Emotions--The Sweet Spot Between Two Extremes

Most of us were never really taught how to feel our feelings—we either shove them down and smile through it or scramble to do something to try to fix them right away. In this episode, I’m introducing a gentler, wiser way: processing. I’ll walk you through how to hold space for your emotions without letting them pile up or run the show.

Have an emotion that's been sitting in the back of your fridge for too long? I'd love to help you process it in a free mini session. :) 

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 47, Processing Emotions, the sweet spot between two extremes.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hey, how's it going? Today's episode is kind of a continuation of last week, episode number 46, which was about choosing to take the plunge into feeling your emotions rather than resisting or avoiding or reacting to them. So today I want to talk about two different extremes that are not truly feeling your feelings, what each of those looks like, and then I'll give my recommendation for what I see as the sweet spot between the two.

Spoiler alert, it's called processing. As always, my hope is that these ideas will help you to feel more joy in your life. Not that they'll rescue you from ever having to feel negative vibrations in your body.

That's part of the deal of being a human, and nothing I teach is going to change that reality. But these tools can help you feel empowered to make intentional choices as you experience the emotions that are part of life. So one extreme is a negative emotion comes your way.

And as you see it coming, you push it down. You pretend it's not there. You try to get it to go away.

So to explain this, let's use a garbage analogy. Think about garbage in your house for a minute. You probably have lots of different kinds of garbage in your house.

If your house is anything like mine, and we were to examine the content of your garbage cans over a period of a few weeks, we would probably find things like used tissues, dirty Q-tips, potato peels, raw chicken packaging with the slimy juice in it, maybe some clumps of wet hair from the shower drain, food crumbs and dirt from when you dumped the dust pan after sweeping the kitchen floor, maybe some banana peels or a rotten piece of fruit. That would actually be kind of hilarious, wouldn't it? To audit people's garbage cans and see like what you have in common with people in terms of what you regularly throw away and like what items are totally unique to you or unique to them. That'd be funny.

Anyway, imagine if you opened up that raw chicken package and instead of throwing it in the garbage and then washing your hands, imagine looking at the package and being like, Ooh, this is super gross. I don't want to touch it with my fingers. So let's just kick it onto the floor and scoot it under the table and pretend like it's not there.

Or imagine that you have moldy leftovers in the fridge and you see them and you're like, Ooh, those are so nasty. I'm not going to open the lid because then I'd have to smell it. I'm not going to throw it in the trash and wash the rest down the sink and then wash the Tupperware because that would smell awful.

Like, no, let's just shove it to the back of the fridge because it's super gross. And then a week later, two weeks later, when it really starts to smell and your brain is like, Hey, what's that smell? We probably need to address that. You'd be like, what smell? Oh, it's nothing.

Let's go watch a movie. Let's just scroll on our phone. Smelling stuff is gross.

We're not going to do that. We're not going to deal with it. We'll just push it to the back.

Now at this point, I bet you're thinking, well, that is definitely not a smart way to deal with garbage. If you leave that slimy chicken thing on the floor, it's going to leak all over other stuff and attract bacteria and end up affecting your whole house. And that's not even sanitary.

You're right. You might also be thinking, uh, if you push the moldy spaghetti sauce further back in the fridge, that's not going to solve the problem. That's going to make it worse.

And if that's what you're thinking, I completely agree. It seems obvious, doesn't it? And yet people do this with emotions all the time. Like, let's say I feel kind of resentful of my kids when I'm doing the dishes and they're not helping.

And I might be like, no, I don't want to feel resentful. That would be un-Christ-like of me to feel that. So let's just press that down and just keep serving.

I shouldn't feel that way. Good moms don't feel resentful. So nope, let's just push that to the back of the fridge.

But then it festers and grows and gets more and more moldy. So that's one extreme, pushing it to the back, kicking it under the table. And usually we do that because we don't want to feel the emotion.

We think that feeling it is going to be yucky. And so we push it away. But just like all this stuff with the garbage and the food, it actually gets more and more yucky, the less we're willing to deal with it.

That's one extreme. The other extreme, which is a little bit different, but still basically comes from not wanting to feel it is feeling like you have to do something right this second. Every time a negative emotion comes along, like you have to immediately solve for it.

So if we use the garbage analogy, imagine every time you change your baby's diaper, you take the diaper, you roll it up. And then instead of just putting it in the diaper genie, you put on your shoes, you take it outside to the garage, you put it in the garbage can, and then you take that can out to the curb and you call the waste management company. And you say, excuse me, I have a poopy diaper.

And so I need you to come by and pick up my garbage. And they'd be like, well, it's not garbage day. But imagine that you said to them, well, I can't have a poopy diaper in my house.

I can't have it in my garage. I can't have it in this garbage can. So what do you expect me to do? Just like have it there.

Maybe like, yeah, we do expect you to just like, let it sit there for a couple of days and then we'll come get it. Okay. Or imagine if every time you blew your nose, instead of putting the dirty tissue in a wastebasket in your bathroom, every single time you blew your nose, you got in the car and drove to the dump because that dirty tissue is gross.

You can't have it sitting in your house, right? It has snot and boogers in it. Ew. And imagine if you did that, got in the car and went to the dump for every potato peel, every watermelon rind, every crumb, every mail catalog, every empty shampoo bottle, every used bandaid.

Imagine if every time you produced a piece of garbage, you would get in the car and drive to the dump to dispose of it because you don't want to have it in your house. Like, isn't that so absurd? But sometimes we do this with emotions. We don't want to feel it.

And so we jump from the feeling line to the action line to see if we can get that feeling to go away. So think about a CTF AR model, right? Circumstances are neutral. Stuff happens.

People say stuff, do stuff, things happen in our lives. Then you have a thought about it. And then those thoughts create feelings.

So if you're feeling an emotion and it's an unpleasant vibration in your body and you don't like it, what a lot of people do is it's like, Oh, let's just skip over this part. I don't want to feel this. And so then they jump to the action line.

What can I do that will make this feeling go away? So reacting can look like I feel lonely. So I need to text someone right this minute. And I need them to respond to me with something validating so that I'm not going to feel lonely or I feel super frustrated right now.

So I need to tell this other person what they did that I'm really mad about right this second so that they can apologize. And then I won't have to feel frustrated. Do you see how it's urgent? Like we have to do something right now to take care of this negative emotion because we couldn't possibly sit with it for a few minutes.

We have to do something now. And that to me is like driving to the dump. Every time you use a Q-tip it's over action.

It's more action than what's really appropriate for the situation overreacting, right? So the sweet spot in between these two extremes is holding the emotion for a time and then eventually processing it. So we're not kicking the slimy chicken juice wrapper under the table, pretending it's not there. We're not pushing the moldy spaghetti sauce to the back of the fridge, but we're also not getting in the car and driving to the dump.

Every time we have a piece of garbage. And think about this in real life with garbage, you have holding places for your trash, right? Waste baskets throughout the house. It's a holding place.

It's not a permanent destination, but it's a place to hold it for a few days. I can tolerate having garbage in my trash cans because I know that every Friday I'm going to take the garbage out. We used to call it the garbage monster.

And my little kids would help me with this, go around with a big trash bag and empty out all the waste baskets and then take the big bag to the garage. Once a week, all the garbage cans get emptied. And then on Mondays we take the garbage to the street and the garbage man comes and takes it away, right? We have systems for processing the garbage.

It goes from a waste basket to garbage in the garage to the street and then to the dump. But at any given time, there is a certain amount of garbage that sits in my house. There are banana peels and used feminine supplies and Amazon boxes and all kinds of stuff.

But each of those things has a holding place where I can put it. And then there's a system to ultimately dispose of those items. There's so many things we process in our lives, laundry.

You put it in a hamper and it stays there dirty. And then once a week you wash it and then you got to fold it and put it away. Okay.

So the sweet spot processing, it's not avoiding, it's not ignoring. We're also not going to react and freak out and try to solve immediately for the emotion. You begin processing an emotion by first just noticing it.

Take a look at it. What is it like with actual garbage? You'd be like, Oh, this is a banana peel. Okay.

Well, I'm not going to put that in my bathroom garbage because I only empty that once a week, but I can put it in my kitchen garbage. I'm going to empty that tonight after dinner. Or you might be like, this is just a used tissue and we can process that at the end of the week.

So in the example of feeling resentful, you might go, huh? I feel that vibration of resentment. That's interesting. Okay.

I can do resentment. I'm not maybe going to process that right now and fully take a look at all of it, but let's just call it what it is. And let's just hold it.

We're going to ignore it, but we're also not going to try to get rid of it. We're just going to let it be there. And then maybe make a note that eventually I actually would like to process that.

Maybe jot it down in a note in my phone or write it down in a notebook really quick and note. I do want to process that, but it's not an immediate problem. We don't need to get rid of the feeling.

We can just notice it and become more aware of it. Then at a later time, you can choose to process it like emptying the garbage cans and taking them into the garage, right? And that happens. Sometimes you can process your emotions by exercise and those chemicals literally move through your body and that takes care of it.

Or sometimes we process emotions by talking to somebody. I love coaching as an Avenue to process my emotions. So sometimes I'll do self-coaching, which I take a CTF AR model, and then I just write.

And if I had said, you know, I want to explore that resentment. I want to process that. I want to understand what that's really about.

Then I would write down resentful on the feeling line. And then I would do a thought download and just kind of brainstorm. What are the thoughts that I'm having when I feel resentful? Then I can take a look at those.

Then I can understand, okay, what are the actions that I take when I feel resentful? How, what result is this creating for me? Where is this coming from? Right? Like I really examine it. Then I can make some intentional choices and go, huh, I don't think this is serving me. I think I'm going to cultivate some new thoughts about these same circumstances so that I can feel a different emotion in there.

That's really different. If I open it up and I learn about it and I really gain an awareness, that's really different than like, I feel resentful. I don't want to feel resentful.

Push it to the back of the fridge. It's like, no, actually let's make a note that we want to process this. Let's put it in the hamper or in the wastebasket or whatever you want to call it.

And then at a regular time when I'm doing my self-coaching or when I'm praying or when I'm journaling, or when I'm having a session with my coach, then I say, Hey, I want to take a look at this. Let's see if we can process this. Cause I don't want it to sit in the back of the fridge and get moldy.

So if you're one of my clients and you're listening to this, I want you to start making a list of emotions that you'd like to process. When you feel them come up, you don't have to run away. You don't have to try to go to the dump right now and get that emotion to go away.

And you also don't have to shove it under the table. You can just go, Oh, that's interesting. I think I have some fear about that.

I think I have some insecurity there that would be fascinating to take a look at. Let's see if we could process that. Okay.

So just to summarize, most of us spend a lot of energy trying not to feel our emotions. We might be on one side of the extreme, which is, Oh, I don't want to have to deal with that. I don't want to have to feel that.

So let's push it away. Let's push it to the back. Let's pretend like it's not there.

Let's distract ourselves. Or maybe on the other side, it's like, Oh, this is a negative emotion. So I need to do something about it.

I need to do something to fix it. I need to do something to solve for it. Rather than just saying, okay, yep, this is a negative emotion.

I can feel it to some extent right now. And eventually at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of this month, I'm going to intentionally process it. And processing might involve it feeling intensely, this emotion processing can involve crying, processing can involve other things where you really feel this emotion.

You take a look at it, you understand it, and then you can move through. So my challenge to you is to simply start noticing so much of what we do in coaching begins with awareness, just understanding, Oh, that's so interesting. Every time I feel anxious, I try to stuff it down.

That's fascinating. What would happen if I just allowed that? And then as you allow it, think of it as like a holding place. Like I can hold this.

I don't need to get it to go away. There is a place I can just hold on to this. And then I have a system in place.

I'm going to, I'm going to process this. All right. Churn you on as you aim for that sweet spot.

And I want to just challenge you to get more comfortable having some negative emotion in your life. Just get more comfortable allowing it to be there. And then set aside some time to write about it, to pray about it, to journal about it, or maybe get some coaching.

If you're one of my current clients, make a note. Ooh, I think I want to be coached about this in my next session. If you're not one of my current clients, jot down a note and then schedule a free mini session with me.

And let's process it. Let's process that emotion. And let's see if we can help you move through it.

So you don't have to push it to the back of the fridge where it gets more and more moldy. All right. Give it a try.

You don't have to push your emotions to the back of the fridge and you don't need to take them straight to the dump. I promise you, you can hold them. And if you want help processing, schedule a free mini session.

I'll take you through one emotion. You can see how it works. All right.