Emotions Are Communicators
Emotions are communicators. They are telling us something about our heart, about what we are needing and learning to listen to the message begins the uncovering process of your true self.
When we learn how to listen to our hearts and to the communicators they use such as annoyance, frustration, anger, loneliness, hopelessness, or helplessness, we are invited to go deeper. Beneath every emotional signal is information: something that needs to be felt, or an emotional need that is asking to be met.
Most of us were never taught this. Instead, we might have been taught to dismiss emotions, override them, explain them away with logic, “just think positively”, or judge them as irrational. But emotions don’t disappear when they’re ignored. They remain in our bodies, our nervous system until they are listened to by feeling them or learning the message behind them, what’s needed.
A helpful way to understand emotions is to think about the lights on your car’s dashboard. When a light comes on, you don’t cover it with a sticky note and pretend it isn’t there. You don’t shame the car for having a problem. You recognize that the light is communicating something important.If the gas light turns on, you know the car needs fuel. If the tire pressure light turns on, you know the tires need air. The light itself isn’t the problem, it’s the message to the root of the problem. Emotions work the same way and that is the work I do to help people learn the message behind the signal.
When you feel annoyed, frustrated, angry, lonely, or sad, those feelings are not flaws or overreactions. They are signals. They are communicating either unfelt pain or an unmet emotional need. Fear often reflects unprocessed pain from the past. Anger often protects the more tender emotions such as sadness, fear, or loneliness. Sadness points toward a loss or needing to grieve someone or something you never received but deeply needed.
Amidst emotions, there are emotional states. We can be emotionally “okay” and still feel sad, grounded, present, and compassionate within ourselves. In those moments, sadness moves through us naturally, authentically, tenderly.
But there are also emotional states where we are “not okay”. When we feel dysregulated, reactive, desperate, or consumed by the belief that someone or something must change in order for us to be okay. That internal state is often revealing something deeper. It is pointing to unprocessed pain and unmet emotional needs from childhood. When we feel that we are “not okay” unless the external world changes, emotionally, we are little. This isn’t a criticism. It’s information and I was once there myself. I’ve learned how to listen to the signals and what’s needed to bring me now to a place where my internal emotional state is no longer dependent on a person or situation needing to change when it’s difficult. I know how to be at peace amidst the chaos and I help lead others in this process. Not perfection, but a growing presence of peace.
When we learn how to identify what our emotions are communicating and how to tend to those places with presence and compassion, something shifts. It’s an uncovering, a revealing of our true self, away from fear and pain.
