Understanding These 6 Emotions Can Change How You Take Care Of Yourself
Learn about the different types of emotions and how they feel in your body.
unsplash Many people may not realize that they're suppressing their own emotions instead of practicing self care and being present with their emotional states during life challenges.
There are many different types of emotions, however, and the only way to become better at emotional intelligence and embrace self love is to recognize your various negative emotions and learn how to face them — rather than avoid them altogether.
What is emotional intelligence, and why is it important to learn how to practice it to get through crises and issues in life?
Emotional intelligence is defined as "...the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s)."
Without emotional intelligence, you may avoid your feelings, and fall into patterns of overeating, binge drinking, overworking, and many other negative means of avoidance. This limits your ability to practice self care and leaves you feeling upset and frustrated.
It may seem too scary to feel your uncomfortable feelings, so you stay stuck in your head, convincing yourself how horrible a certain situation is, even making it worse than it is. Then you become over-emotional, perhas even sabotaging your relationships.
It's all because you haven't learned how to take care of yourself emotionally, or practice real self-care.
What is self care, exactly, and how does it tie into your emotional needs? Self care may often get misunderstood or confused with simply "pampering" yourself, but this isn't the case. It's having an understanding of what you need mentally, emotionally, and physically, and making sure that you're giving yourself the time to do what your body and mind crave.
If you want to access the power of your feminine side, embrace your full potential, and create better relationships, then catching yourself and recognizing when you're in your head creating unnecessary drama and ignoring your own self care is vital.
The best emotional intelligence and self care tips are for you to become aware of when you're shutting yourself off from feeling your uncomfortable emotions.
Don’t run from them. Get to know the different types of emotions you experience on a daily basis. You can run, but you can’t hide from your emotions. They don’t go away.
For discussion purposes, I use the words “feelings” and “emotions” interchangeably, even though there is a difference. Feelings are a result of your emotions. Emotions are a construct of the mind. They come from how you perceive things. Emotions are triggered from your thought processes and belief systems.
Your emotions, in response to life and the world around you, form feelings. Feelings are not as long-lasting. They come and go. Emotions involve changing our beliefs, perceptions and how we think about things, therefore emotions can last longer and in a sense become chronic if you are not willing to look at your beliefs and change your perceptions if they're not serving you.
Feelings and emotions, whether they are good or bad, have a tremendous amount of life force and energy in them. Your feelings and emotions can create both good and bad things in your life depending upon how you navigate them, consciously or unconsciously.
Understanding different types of emotions
There are many types of feelings and emotions. For simplicity and a better understanding of them, I categorize them into six types:
- Sadness
- Anger
- Happiness
- Fear
- Shame
- Numbness
If you become familiar with these six words, you'll be able to better identify and manage your emotions. In moments when you feel uncomfortable, notice that discomfort and attempt to recognize what feeling or feelings are causing it.
You can make it simple by narrowing those feelings down to one or more of these six primary types of feelings. Getting in touch with these core emotions, acknowledging them, and experiencing the feeling in the body is important.
When dealt with constructively, they support your empowerment.
"Numbness" isn’t actually a feeling, but I included it because it's part of how you cope in stressful situations and it's very prevalent in society.
When you're numb, you don’t feel anything. You're walled off from your body, power, and aliveness. Though it is, in a sense, void of feeling, it still counts as an emotional state.
Of these six types of feelings, only one of them is good. The rest are uncomfortable feelings, which doesn't make you wonder why you don’t want to experience those feelings!
Your feelings are far and wide … vast and deep … extremely complex, and extremely important. There're many of them. Categorizing them into six basic types of emotions should help you mentally make sense of an emotional thing. These are only categories to help your mind make sense of what is happening in your body.
Read each description of the different types of feelings and how they may feel inside the body. Go through each description and compare it to how you perceive these feelings in your body. Get familiar with the nuances of these different types of feelings and how and where they are experienced.
- Sadness is a heavy, slow, and dark feeling. It has a lot of energy to it because it grips you, but it's heavy energy. And it's a lot for you to carry around.
- Anger is a fiery, fierce, and even destructive energy. When you're mad (or angry) you're typically hiding a more vulnerable feeling like sadness or fear.
- Happiness is something we all want to feel more of. It's a light, open, and flowing feeling in the body. Energy isn't blocked.
- Fear is a cold, prickly energy. It can be paralyzing in a sense of unable to move forward in life situations. Similar to anxiety.
- Shame is a dark, withdrawn, and contracted feeling, almost as if you want to hide and not be seen.
- Numbness is being void of feeling. When you are numb, you're energetically cutoff, stiff, rigid, and disconnected.
By having these feelings categorized and giving brief descriptions of the different types of emotions, you'll increase your emotional intelligence, learn how to practice real self care, and be better equipped to manage your emotions as they come up in the future.
Anna-Thea is an author and divine feminine educator who educates women in cultivating a deeper sense of self-love. You can sign up for her easy-to-use online courses to give yourself the tools and know to create more love in your life.