The best words for emotions are often quirky little expressions that may carry personal meaning. For example, if I’m feeling agitated, I might label it “squirrelly” after the little rodent that runs around making jerky movements while it gathers and hides nuts. Some people like the Yiddish expression ferklemt for the lump-in-the-throat feeling, or “going nuclear” for murderous rage. The longer you practice, the more nuanced, perhaps even poetic, you’ll find your use of emotion words becomes.
Psychologists over the past 100 years have attempted to identify which human emotions appear to be more basic than others. There does not appear, however, to be any psychologically or biologically compelling reason to select one set of basic emotions over any other (for example, fear, love, rage; happiness, sadness; or love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, fear). For our purposes, what matters is the function of the word—how well it captures a feeling and opens a little space around it.
The most comprehensive list of emotion words I’ve found in the English language has been compiled by linguist and computer engineer Steven J. DeRose, who organized more than 800 words into categories for easy reference. DeRose prefers to use adjectives or verbs for labeling emotions (“afraid,” “boiling”) rather than nouns (“fear,” “frustration”) because they describe the felt-sense of the emotion. Also, a word ending in -ing is more “ongoing in the present moment” than a word ending in -ed, such as “worrying” versus “worried.” Sometimes, however, a person may wish to have a little more distance from an emotion—not feel it so much as it’s happening—so you should decide for yourself which word is most appropriate for each situation. (DeRose’s complete list of emotion words can be found in Appendix A.)
Although the focus of this book is on dealing with negative emotions, it helps to name all our emotions, including positive ones. That’s because our positive emotions are subject to change, and when they do change, they often morph into negative emotions. For example, we feel disappointment when the infatuation phase of a new relationship wears off after 4–6 months. If we can label positive emotions, we’ll hold them more lightly, just like labeling negative emotions. That protects us from disappointment when our emotions change.
It’s important to remember that emotions are not inherently negative or positive. Rather, they become negative, and ultimately destructive, the more we struggle to make them go away. The formula for suffering given in Chapter 1 (Pain X Resistance = Suffering) can be restated as
Difficult Emotions × Resistance = Destructive Emotions
You’ll discover that so-called negative emotions—anger, fear, hatred—are not so bad when they don’t get under your skin. Instead, we can greet them (and ourselves) with mindfulness and compassion. More will be said about positive and negative emotions in Chapter 5.
Meditating on Emotions
Some of the more intense negative emotions—ashamed, enraged, despairing, numb, forsaken, repulsed, terrorized—can be difficult to identify because they can swallow us up. For example, when we feel “shame” (“I am bad”), it’s as if the person witnessing the emotion has evaporated and there is no one left to do the labeling. Over time, we can get a handle on shame by recognizing how it feels in the body and by giving it a name. When we roll the word around on the tongue a few times—“shame,” “shame,” “shame”—it gets easier and easier to label and the emotion becomes workable.
The same is true for a powerful emotion like “hatred.” Consider the following example:
Caroline was the mother of two daughters, 4 and 5 years old. Her own mother had been very patient and didn’t show Caroline much irritation throughout her childhood years. Caroline had a different temperament: she was an ambitious history professor, and she excelled at sports. She felt most at ease when she was moving around, and she became cranky when things didn’t go as planned.
Caroline’s partner suggested she have a few therapy sessions of her own to deal with her increasing irritation with their older daughter, Emma. Caroline confided to me in therapy that she just couldn’t bear hearing Emma say “I hate you, Mommy” one more time, especially when Emma didn’t cooperate during meals and bath time. Her partner had no trouble with Emma. Caroline found herself resenting Emma and ignoring her in favor of her more cooperative sibling.
Caroline’s role model for motherhood was her own mother, who never seemed to experience what Caroline was feeling. Between sobs, Caroline shared her darkest secret: “Sometimes I just hate Emma and wish she would go away!” It was all too much for Caroline—she couldn’t bear her helplessness and hatred toward someone she wanted to love, and she wondered what kind of person would feel as she did.
I reminded Caroline, a history of medicine scholar, of a famous psychiatrist, D. W. Winnicott, who wrote an article in 1951 titled “Hate in the Countertransference.” Winnicott wrote how caregivers, including mothers and psychoanalysts, put aside their own needs in order to minister to others who are needy and self-absorbed. This naturally creates some resentment, even hatred. Problems arise when hatred is considered unacceptable—even shameful—and drives a wedge between the helper and those she wants to help.
Caroline took this message to heart and went home, ready to allow herself to feel the hatred more openly when it arose with Emma. To her amazement, Caroline started liking Emma more and Emma started behaving better. When I saw Caroline again, she said that her hatred jumped around from one child to the other, depending on who was giving her a hard time at the moment, but she didn’t get hung up on it and she was having fun with Emma again.
Caroline was simply using the power of labeling her emotions with an accepting attitude. It was a shock to Caroline’s self-esteem to discover that she hated her own child, but when she realized that all mothers feel that way from time to time, she could relax and enjoy her child again. First she needed to find the word for how she felt, and then she needed to accept it.
The following mindfulness practice is a way of training yourself to recognize and label emotions:
TRY THIS: Labeling Emotions
This meditation takes 20 minutes. Find a comfortable, quiet place and sit in a dignified posture, relaxed but upright. Close your eyes or leave them partially open. Take a few deep breaths to relax your body.
Bring your awareness to your body by noticing your posture and the world of sensation occurring within the body.
Place your hand on your heart and begin mindful awareness of your breathing. Breathe through your heart. Do this for 5 minutes. Whenever you wish, you can let your hand slowly fall into your lap.
Now release the breath, keeping your attention in the heart region, and ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” Let your attention be drawn to the strongest emotion in your body, even if it’s only a whisper of a feeling. Use your body like an antenna.
Give your strongest feeling a name. If you sat down for this exercise without any strong emotions percolating, you might be feeling “contentment.” Perhaps you’re just “curious.” Eventually you’ll probably find another emotion, such as “longing,” “sadness,” “worry,” “urgency,” “loneliness,” “pride,” “joy,” “lust,” or “envy.”
Repeat the label two or three times, in a kind, gentle voice,and then return to your breath.
Go back and forth between your breath and your emotions in a relaxed way. Let your attention be drawn from your breath by an emotion, label it, and then return to your breath. There is no need to find an emotion if there isn’t one. Then just be open to the possibility of emotions as you breathe. If you feel overwhelmed by an emotion, stay with your breath until you feel better.
When about 20 minutes have elapsed, gently open your eyes.
Our inner life can become extremely interesting if we practice mindfulness meditation like this. If you ever become bored during this exercise, label it “bored.” Boredom always changes to something else when we linger with it long enough, without prejudice. There’s often an unpleasant or unfamiliar feeling lurking in the shadows just behind
boredom. The practice of labeling emotions can transform us into poets, searching for subtle nuances in emotional experience, unflinching in the face of discomfort.
The more accurately we label an emotion, the more effectively we become “unstuck” from it. But please don’t obsess over finding the perfect label; don’t think too much about it. Choose a “good enough” label and return to the breath. Any label will suffice to keep your awareness in the present moment. Perhaps a more accurate label will occur to you later on. If not, don’t worry. Let the practice be easy and take your time.
Also, don’t feel the need to catalog every emotion that comes your way, like a botanist on a 1-day outing to an exotic nature park. In 20 minutes of meditation, you may have no more than three or four emotions, so leave it at that and label those particular emotions whenever they arise. For example, if I’m impatient while meditating and I’d rather be doing something else, I might say “impatience” or “urgency” whenever the feeling arises—whatever captures the felt-sense of the emotion—and then return to my breath. If I doubt that I’m doing the exercise correctly, I might say “doubting … doubting … doubting” whenever that suspicion arises. It can be interesting to find words for how you’re relating to the meditation process itself, which may well be your strongest feeling at the time. The task is simply to recognize the strongest feeling happening in the present moment.
Labeling in Daily Life
Labeling in formal meditation practice is a prelude to labeling in daily life. For example, an anthropologist friend of mine was giving a PowerPoint slide presentation to a large academic audience. To his horror, a slide came up blank—every presenter’s nightmare! He found himself blurting out loud, “fear … fear … fear,” earning a chorus of good-hearted laughter and reversing a potential disaster.
How do we practice labeling in daily life? Follow the basic structure of the mindfulness exercises you’ve been doing: stop, observe, return. Whenever you’re seized by a strong emotion, stop what you’re doing, take a deep breath, bring your attention to your chest region, observe what feeling you’re having, and name it two to three times in a gentle, loving manner. Shift your attention between your anchor and the label until the emotion loses its grip on you.
WORKING WITH TRAUMA
Opening to emotion is especially tricky for people who have suffered from trauma, such as a tragic accident or a violent crime. Over 50% of people in the United States have experienced trauma. Between 20 and 25% of women and between 5 and 10% of men were sexually abused as children. Furthermore, trauma is subjective, so it’s entirely possible that the death of a loved one, a motor vehicle accident, surgery, or a divorce could have left emotional scars. That covers a lot of people.
When we sit quietly and make ourselves receptive to whatever feelings might arise, we’re likely to remember traumatic events. This can be very healing if we can maintain a calm, balanced frame of mind, but it can be harmful if we become overwhelmed and reexperience the trauma as if it were happening again. Mindfulness is a way of meeting traumatic memories without getting swallowed up in them. Mindfulness is not, however, a passive activity. We still need to make intelligent decisions about how to allocate our awareness and attention.
Attention can be directed internally or externally, and it can have a single focus or an open-field focus. When we focus attention on a single object again and again, such as the breath, we become calmer. That’s because we’re abandoning disturbing thoughts and stopping the mind from jumping around like a monkey. When we open the field of our awareness to other thoughts and feelings, we’ll inevitably discover memories and feelings that stir us up. It’s helpful to learn about our inner landscape to establish a new relationship to a wide range of feelings that occur in daily life. We can become overwhelmed, however, if we don’t balance open awareness with single-focus awareness—that is, return to the breath or some other anchor.
External focus is generally easier than internal focus for traumatized individuals. As our attention is drawn into the body, where trauma is stored, bad memories are more likely to surface. When attention is focused away from the body, for example, with the sound of birds singing, we will feel calmer. The surface of the body, such as the sense of touch, is also relatively calming compared to internal awareness.
George (in Chapter 2) wore a rubber band around his wrist that he snapped when he became engulfed in traumatic memories. He said “I want to draw a line in the sand between the past and the present, and snapping a rubber band brings me into the present.” He also found that labeling his strongest emotion—“fear … fear … fear”— kept him from becoming entangled in the story line of his fear.
When truly overwhelmed, the best way to stabilize attention is to focus on a single external object, like a candle or a piece of music. If you feel comfortable moving closer to the body, then the sense of touch, like George’s rubber band or his “here and now” stone, can safely ground your awareness in the present moment. Later on, you might try single focus on the breath. Once you know how to work with focused attention to regulate how you feel, you can gradually expand your field of awareness to body sensations or to labeling your emotions. Even when you’re ready to explore your emotions, continue to take refuge in the anchor (breath, sound, touch) every few seconds. We’re cultivating mental stability and emotional awareness.
If a trauma memory should arise during mindfulness practice, please don’t feel the need to push through it. Timing and safety are critical. Many people with childhood trauma have a habit of gritting their teeth and doing what they think they should do, even if it feels bad. Always practice mindfulness with an attitude of self-kindness. Kindness is slow and patient. If you feel overwhelmed, please discontinue your practice for a while—that too is a form of self-kindness. The following chapters will explain more fully how to bring kindness to yourself when you need it the most. But please remember, if you have doubts or concerns about the practice, it’s best to consult with a qualified mindfulness meditation teacher or psychotherapist.
In the last chapter and this one, you learned mindfulness of both the body and the emotions. Mindfulness is the practice of skillfully managing our attention and awareness. Attention regulation leads directly to emotion regulation. In the next chapter, we’ll begin an in-depth exploration of self-compassion. Having a background in mindfulness will be a great help. Self-compassion contains all the healing properties of mindfulness practice—awareness of present experience, with acceptance—but its truly unique character comes out when dealing with intense and disturbing emotions.
4
what’s self-compassion?
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
—NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, poet
If you’ve been practicing mindfulness for a few weeks now, formally or informally, you’ve probably noticed more peace and contentment in your life. But you might also be feeling discouraged, thinking you don’t have enough time or discipline to make it work. Especially if you’re living in a tough situation, you may doubt whether this approach can help you. If so, please don’t give up yet. Adding self-compassion to the mix is just what’s needed when the outlook is bleak and we have only a faint whisper of hope left. Sometimes it’s better when you have given up hope and just curiosity remains about what could happen next. If that’s you, please proceed gently into the following chapters.
There are three mindfulness-based skills we can use to handle difficult emotions: (1) focused awareness, (2) open-field awareness, and (3) loving-kindness. So far, you’ve learned the first two. Focusing on a single object calms and stabilizes the mind, and open-field awareness helps us respond to daily challenges in an even, balanced way. Those two skills can help us see what’s going on in our lives; then, by applying loving-kindness, we “hold” our experience in a warmhearted, comfortable way.
Loving-kindness is wishing happiness for another person. Compassion is wishing for that person to be
free from suffering. We can experience loving-kindness anywhere and anytime, but suffering is a prerequisite for compassion. Compassion is therefore a subset of loving-kindness.
Compassion occurs when “the heart quivers in response” to the suffering of another, giving rise to the wish to alleviate that suffering. When we’re suffering and feel the urge to help ourselves, we’re experiencing self-compassion.
HOW SELF-COMPASSIONATE AM I?
Mindfulness is a subject of rapidly growing interest in academic psychology. Research on self-compassion is following close on its heels. One goal of self-compassion research is to determine how it’s related to other personal qualities, such as life satisfaction, coping with failure, self-esteem, and wisdom. Kristin Neff, a psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, developed the Self-Compassion Scale that is used in most studies on self-compassion. This scale has six subscales that measure key elements of self-compassion, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness, and their opposites, self-judgment, isolation, and overidentification. You can access the Self-Compassion Scale, as well as a wealth of related research, on Neff’s website: www.self-compassion.org. You might want to take the test now to get a good measure of your current level of self-compassion, and again 1 month later, to measure the impact of your mindfulness and self-compassion practice.
Self-Kindness
The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion Page 9
