What are emotions?
Emotions are pointers to Needs (Time-based/at that moment - or Values, which are the Universal version of Needs). So it is important, healthy and useful to feel them! As Brenée Brown puts it, "you cannot selectively numb emotion": if you don't feel shame, anger, fear, or sadness, you cannot feel true joy, true love, bliss.
Feeling an emotion without turning it into self-attack, nor attack against others, is a skill, best practiced in security. Simply feeling it takes focus, and enough emotional security, love and validation - from oneself or somebody else who can 'hold space'.
Then it takes the body maximum 90 seconds to feel the full extent of an emotion, no matter how bad.
This allows you to find out what our Deeper Need is, and to then proceed to attending to it.
You can either:
- give it to yourself,
- ask openly for help, or
- find somebody else to help you with.
What works best is to give yourself the satisfaction (or validation/legitimacy) of the Need first (= 'of course I have a right to that!'); then, you can ask others in an way 'they can refuse' ;)
For example, if you need Connection, you might want to connect with yourself first. Then it is easier to express your vulnerability and wish to somebody, making sure they feel free to join you or to decline; or you might ask somebody else who is available to match/play with you at this point.
Realistically, we don't always know what our deeper need is: we often have to search, go deeper into ourselves, through introspection, conversation, or art, for instance. As long as you try not to blame yourself nor others, but just feel your emotion: it is a fantastic pointer to what the deeper need (or value) is.
What types of Needs do we typically have?
In his Non-Violent (or Compassionate) Communication method, Marshall Rosenberg suggests universal Needs we have (other lists can complement this one, I see it as a starting point to uncovering 'your' words), such as acceptance, community, love, and consideration, or air, food, movement, respect, or peace.
See a non-exhaustive list below from his book, Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life.
Needs are expressed AND timed differently in different human beings:
I might have a need for authentic self-expression, while the other's feelings might point to a need for self-worth & acceptance.
None is better, there is no better way, system, or rule that applies to everyone: we have different needs, at different times. What matters is valuing, and responding to the reality of the person in front of us, beyond fear-conditioning, separation, or judgment. In essence, we want to develop a buffer of love and compassion, a safe transitional space that puts things in perspective. Enough to realize that we all have different, cultural or personal, historical, etc. ways to fulfill the satisfaction of the same needs - and the timing makes it interesting ;)
Let things be different, accept the full reality of the other, and you might just get what you want (the recognition of your needs). We are born to entrain (here described as 'the adaptive function by which we voluntarily synchronize our brains and bodies to the environment): start accepting, and you will get accepted (maybe not straight away, but eventually). And that calls for compassion (self & others'): it is not always easy being human, & we do the best we can through our sometimes intense emotional change curves. When emotions are accepted, they do their job of releasing the tension, and connecting us to our deeper needs (all the parts of ourselves), and to each other.
Feeling our vulnerability without immediately acting out or lashing out at ourselves or others is a skill. When we care enough about ourselves to stay present to how we really feel, we start developing emotional autonomy, one of the most striking attributes of healthy leaders: no matter what you do, they still care about you being well, because they care so much about listening to, and feeling well themselves. It is not a zero-sum game where if one feels happy or good, the other one loses: it is a game of mutual support and inspiration, of flexible and loving self- and other- focus, where everybody wins, collectively.
Emotional leadership is about connecting to our deeper need, and to the deeper need of the person in front of us. This takes inner & outer security to be able to listen. And you get inner security from peaceful love of all that is: from yourself, from loved ones, and from a larger perspective, from a feeling of Unity with the All.
The goal is becoming whole again: reconciling all parts of our identity, and reconciling with all others in all their ways: (we always were made of the same 'stuff' in the first place).
One word of caution: you cannot push someone (nor yourself) into opening, learning, or growing.
You can allow others (and yourself) to open, to grow and learn, through love and acceptance of what is, as it is, now.
What helps (listen to difficult emotions or information) is to relax and expand your focus to a safe, stable whole. The difficult part becomes smaller, in perspective: it can be contained.
Control yourself, be aware of what you stand for, keep your mental climate clear, yet flexible. All you can do for others is to give them a safe framework to play in, because you are clear about how you want to feel - so not threatened by their expressing of different values.
Remember the North American Indian tale of the two wolves: one aggressive, one kind - fighting. The one who wins is the one you feed the most. So pay attention to your thoughts, about how you talk to yourself, what image you have of yourself, how do you react when you fail, when you need a break, etc.
So instead of judging or feeling guilty, try this:
- I am responsible for finding what works for me, and to make an open request (a 'non-violent' one, something the other can say 'no' to). Here are a few tips on what you can ask for (for example: are you willing/able to listen to me for 10 minutes, without speaking? I would really appreciate the opportunity to get my story out, while you hold the space for me. If you can't, or it's too long, it's fine, just let me know.)
- If the other person cannot help me right now, I am free to ask for help somewhere else.
- If no one can help me, help myself: Heart Coherence.
Collectively, we are responsible for finding ways to work together based on the recognition of common AND complementary values.
What might be a good relationship for you to look at?
What are the seemingly conflicting values? Or ways of expressing the same one? In which way might they be complementary?