A Way Out Addiction Treatment Center Newsletter #3 03/2013 | Page 14

It damages your relationships.
The more you distance yourself from your feelings, the more distant you become from others, as well as yourself. You
lose the ability to build strong relationships and communicate effectively, both of which depend on being in touch with
your emotions.
By avoiding emotions we dislike, we distance ourselves from pleasant emotions
When we disconnect from emotions we dislike – emotions that we find uncomfortable or overwhelming - we
automatically shut down intensely positive emotions like joy, laughter, and playfulness that sustain us in difficult and
challenging times. We can overcome loss and great challenges, but only if we retain our ability to experience joy. These
pleasant, uplifting emotions remind us in the worst of times that life is worthwhile and can be wonderful as well as
painful.
Make friends with all your emotions
If you‘ve never learned how to manage stress, the idea of reconnecting to unpleasant emotions may be uncomfortable.
But even traumatized people can heal by learning to change the way they experience and respond to their emotions.
The process of raising emotional awareness involves reconnecting with all of the core emotions, including anger,
sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and joy via a process of self-healing. As you start this process, keep the following facts
in mind:
Emotions quickly come and go, if you let them
You may be worried that once you reconnect to the emotions you‘ve been avoiding, you‘ll be stuck with them forever,
but that‘s not so. When we don‘t obsess about our emotions, even the most painful and difficult feelings subside and
lose their power to control our attention.
When our feelings are freed, the core emotions of anger, sadness, fear, and joy quickly come and go. Throughout the
day, you‘ll see, read, or hear something that momentarily triggers a strong feeling of some sort. But if you don‘t focus on
the feeling, it won‘t last, and a different emotion will soon take its place.
Your body can clue you in to your emotions
Our emotions are closely aligned to physical sensations in our bodies. When you experience a strong emotion, you
probably also feel it somewhere in your body. By paying attention to these physical sensations, you can understand
your emotions better. For example, if your stomach tightens up every time you spend time with a particular person, you
can conclude that you feel uncomfortable in their presence.
With the exception of a headache, physical feelings are usually experienced somewhere below the bridge of the nose.
Examples include:
? Sensations in your stomach
? Tension in your muscles
? Subtle urges to move body parts
? Flashes of insight or ?gut feelings?
You don’t have to choose between thinking and feeling
Emotional awareness functions like instinct. When it‘s strongly developed, you‘ll know what you are feeling without
having to think about it—and you‘ll be able to use these emotional signals to understand what is really going on in a
situation and act accordingly. The goal is to find a balance between your intellect and your emotions. Emotional
awareness will help you set healthy boundaries, communicate well with others, predict what others are going to do, and
make better decisions.