Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met

Image by Alissa Bryant from Pixabay  

As someone who writes frequently, it gave me pause to consider whether I currently use a limited emotional vocabulary.

Let me give you an example I heard this week from Briana MacWilliam as she was doing a class for people who are choosing to recover from relationships in which they felt neglected, abandoned or dismissed. She talked about a client who had felt a big jolt around a change in their life, in this case a new partner, which caused a sense of overwhelm and spiralled into anxiety and panic and she was thinking of ending the relationship.

Her vocabulary was vague and it was difficult to pinpoint the issue, but with some work, she could articulate that she was a little bit excited, a little bit nervous, a little anticipatory (all quite positive feelings), but maybe there were also some doubts creeping in, she felt a little challenged, exhilarated but also worried, and all of this was going on at the same time.

This is normal.

However she had not been taught growing up how to sift and sort through all those energetic states, emotions and inner experiences with any amount of sophistication. As a result she had become overwhelmed by the emotional charge of all those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in her mind and body, which is what had caused her to spiral. I can relate to this.

In this state she became scared and confused and lumped all those (similar but nuanced) feelings into one big category – “bad”. I experience this quite regularly, particularly around those who appear to chronically ignore what I have said or fail to take into account how I feel.

As Briana said “It’s important to recognise the energetic states moving through our bodies. By focusing firstly on the physical sensations (we are having in relation to those emotional charges) it helps mentally organise them, initially through symbols rather than words”. This is some of the most critical work Briana says she does with her clients and it requires practice over time.

This then leads to being able to describe the feelings more accurately which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed – and in turn this informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries. And certainly I would agree that defining and communicating boundaries is critical to ensure I do not attract relationships in which I am neglected, abandoned or dismissed.

The other point Briana was making in the pursuit of more healthy relationships, is that by confronting past relationships defined by this, I am also confronting my attachment anxieties.

Attachment theory and styles are well known in the world of developmental psychology, Briana describes them as an instinctual blueprint in the survival part of our brain and nervous system that determines how much closeness or distance we need to feel comfortable that our survival needs are met.

However, depending on the extent to which the parenting we received was supportive and loving versus critical and demeaning, many of us grow up with insecure attachment and here is an example of why. She describes a young child pretending to be superman. On one hand supportive parents might say “Hey check you out, go you!”, and the child might think “Yeah I am capable of great things”.

On the other hand, a harsher parent might bristle and yell “Stop that noise! Sit down! Look at how your stupidity is ruining my rug and my furniture. I don’t want to hear from you unless spoken to. Idiot!” That child hears that they are worth less than the rug and furniture, and that the natural self exploratory process they were innocently playing with in that moment was offensive, damaging and it inspired punitive repercussions.

If that pattern is repeated, in time the child learns not only to distrust their own intuition and creative impulses but to feel distaste, shame, anger and guilt for even having an inner life. Again I can relate.

They may also doubt that they are capable of great things. So as the child grows and the parent reinforces the idea that the child is bad, a burden, not good enough, not measuring up to some standard of behaviour or condition of love, that thought process gets internalised and psychologists call it our wounded inner child.

It is these subconscious patterns that create and trigger the instinctual blueprint in the survival part of the brain and nervous system and cause people to react in flight, flight, freeze or hide. Fast forward to adulthood and an angry spouse may translate to the person who has grown up with this type of narrative as “I must have done something to upset them, this must really be about me, therefore it’s my fault, I have to fix it to earn their love back and feel worthy of love”.

When really, it’s an insecure attachment blueprint in the brain and nervous system that is sending this message as it has flared up in survival mode. Briana says quite pointedly “Until we can become aware that our attachment impulses are survival impulses (rather than authentic needs of our true self) they are always going to trump our good sense until we can raise our consciousnesses around this issue and mitigate it”.

That might seem obvious but I know from my own experience it’s not easy to do when being flooded with emotions.
This week I received a draft agreement that I had been awaiting for some time, and had requested on several occasions should include a paragraph reconciling this particular agreement with the previous agreement (which was settled on vastly different terms).

When I finally received the draft from the office of the person I had sent two texts and an email to about this very paragraph in the previous 24 hours, in addition to the prior comments, and saw that – again - no such paragraph was included, I was flooded with emotions. This was a deal breaker for me and I will admit I fired off an email in response “Please do not contact me again until this is sorted. I do not appreciate being ignored. What a waste of time and money”.

It is quite unusual for me to be so abrupt but, as I said previously, I get triggered when I feel chronically ignored.  Not long after, I then received a phonecall from their office so, pulling over to take the call, was caught off guard when it was the person’s personal assistant on the line rather than the person I needed to make the change.

They were equally as triggered, challenging me to explain my accusation of “being ignored”. I was at that moment at a loss for words because I had literally attached a screen short of the two texts to that email and felt I was living in an alternate reality. Gaslighting is another form of deliberately being ignored and triggers me even more.

I ended the call at that point as my brain and mouth were not going to say anything calmly and confidently anytime soon. Once I got home I followed this up with an email attachment with screenshots showing the many times I had requested this paragraph in various communications in the weeks prior, both to my representative and the other party’s.

Thankfully the process of writing, a much more focused form of using words than talking, made it a lot easier to convey what I needed to – the facts – rather than simply feeling that I was drowning in floods of emotions and unable to take a breath never mind speak.

And it was with that in mind that when I heard Briana’s sage advice on developing a rich emotional vocabulary I realised the missing link in my recovery. There are four steps not three:

1. Become consciously aware of the unhealthy patterns that get triggered and dysregulate my nervous system
2. Regulate my nervous system – whether in fight, flight, freeze or hide – my priority is to help my body feel safe so my rational thinking comes back online
3. Become aware of those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in my mind and body and learn how to describe the feelings more accurately, which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed
4. This then, in turn, informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries

For all the words I have in my vocabulary, assigning them in to emotions that are flooding my body was not something I learned to any sophisticated degree as a child. However, I am learning now as an adult how to do this and how important it is in order to be truly heard and create and communicate healthy boundaries.

How often do you feel overwhelmed and unable to express what you are feeling with any clarity? Can you imagine how your sense of health and wellbeing and relationships can improve if you could? Is it time to take a closer look at you inner world and learn how to name the surge of emotions that course through it simultaneously?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, How to Take Things as They Come When You Have Learned Not to Trust  and Taking Your Own Space. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.