What Do Emotions Feel Like In Our Bodies?

Does everyone experience emotion the same way? Do we all carry each emotion in the same area of the body? How can we be aware of which emotion is coming up for us based on the physical sensation. These are some of the questions that we will be discussing in today's episode! This episode, as with all in the month of May, we are working toward building emotional intelligence, emotional awareness, with the goal that each of us can understand ourselves and how we experience our emotional world. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We use our bodily sensations to understand emotional experiences. This means that we literally feel our emotions. I'm your host, Shalee, and I'm your co-host Sam. And you're listening to Pathway to Empowerment, where we believe in thriving, not surviving. Our conversation today is going to be focusing on the physical feeling of emotions within our bodies. So let's jump right in. Shale, what do emotions feel like within our bodies?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

So emotions are experienced physically through what we call the soma or our body. So somatic expressions, somatic sensations, such as tightness, warmth, fluttering in in your system, both in your bloodstream, in your stomach, or heaviness, really, really heavy. I mean, have you ever heard somebody say it feels like there's a brick on my chest? Or it feels like I've been slammed with a locomotive. Those are the emotional responses within your body. So it's caused by a chemical signal which alters the heart rate, breathing, and the muscle tension within our body. These bodily responses are known as interception, which is an act or a warning sign that is triggered through each system within our body to help us really understand what our body needs in that moment and how we can navigate it so that we can get rid of some of the tightness, like the anxiety in your chest, like we just talked about. The heat or the redness within us when we're angry. I don't know about you, but sometimes I when I start shutting down, I feel really cold and distant. So those are all very common sensations that we have within those somatic expressions or sensations that our system has.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

I find with myself after I've had like a super angry or or crying or whatever, like a super intense emotion, once I'm coming down from that, that's when I get cold. And my body starts to feel super cold. Yep. I need to go in the blankets rather than, you know, the 20 minutes prior where I was super mad or super sad and hot.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

You know, the interesting thing about that, Sam, is that most most physicians will tell you that during surgery you your body is is asleep and it doesn't feel anything. But yet that is exactly what happens to a lot of people when when they wake up from the anesthesia, they're freezing cold, and that's because their body has been in this fight or flight response because it's it's almost been paralyzed, right? And so it's still feeling all the things. Our mind's just not connected to it, but our soma, our body is. Yeah. So we have that response.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah. When I delivered my second child, my body was shaking, I was freezing. And that happens as soon as I get the what is it called? The placenta. Are you talking about the epidural? The epidural. Both times with my kids, as soon as they got the epidural, my body got really cold.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

And so even now, right now, the the medical field is using ketamine a lot when they're setting bones and doing some things that are like outpatient services. And my husband went when my daughter broke, she she had a compound fracture on her arm, and he went with her and they used ketamine to set her arm. And he said, Is she gonna feel this? Because they didn't put her to sleep, they didn't num it or anything, they just gave her a ketamine, a little bit of ketamine, and they're like, Oh no, she won't feel a thing. And then he looked over and sh her she was crying. So the reality is our body, our soma, really feels things even when we're not paying attention to that. And we're gonna get deeper into that further on in the conversation, probably, why that happens. But let's let's go back to some of the common physical sensations that emotions have for us. So if you think of the physiological responses that our system have to anger, that could be like heat in your face, your jaw is clenched, tightness around your head where your your your the veins in your head will throb and you can actually see them more often. You clench your fists, your heart is pounding. You might tighten every muscle in your body. So, can you see how like all of those things that we just talked about? That's the reason we're experiencing those kind of sensations. And then if you move to anger and or I mean anxiety or fear, a lot of the time you'll have this fluttering in your stomach, your hands will be cold, maybe even sweaty or clammy. We call it clammy because your hands aren't hot, but they're still wet. Yeah. You might be trembling, like we just talked about. I know for me, I get this huge lump in my throat. And that those are all very common symptoms for the anxiety and the fear. Sadness is a little bit different. Sadness, we can feel very, very much like we can't move because we're tied down, so we're really, really heavy. Um and that leads us to feel like we can't talk very well, right? Everything kind of slows down for us. There can be a lot of numbness or headaches or tightness in your chest, like we talked about a minute ago. And the interesting thing for me is that when I lost when I lost my dad and my best friend, I actually had a physical ache in my heart. There's physical sadness that that is inside of us as an achiness sometimes. Stress also can really manifest in your muscle tension being really tight, feeling like you just can't move very well because everything feels like it needs to be released. That that can be the way that stress manifests. But I also wanted to talk about happiness and love because sometimes we get so focused on some of the emotions that are negative that we forget that emotions such as happiness and love create soma sensations as well. Which are feeling light, fluttery too, warmth, and and that warmth kind of expands just like it does sometimes with anger, just feels lighter.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Different kind of forms. Mm-hmm. You can feel it that with happiness and and love, we feel it differently, but sometimes it floats from all the way through our body, and sometimes it just stays in one major area.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah. I was recently doing a class with sound healing, and she the teacher had paper up that shows how different emotions manifest energetically within your body. And the one for happiness was the most expansive as uh out out of any of them. It was like, you know, concentrated in the heart and then down to the stomach was the more concentrated, but it expanded throughout the whole body. I thought that was pretty cool to see just like the different emotions, how energetically they look on the I think it was an electromatic it's a son like a sonar or electric.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

It it's an electric film that they're showing that that usually has like red, yellow, blue, green.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Yeah, right. So it was pretty cool to see the different emotions on people's bodies.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Yeah. So we might want to understand a little bit why we actually feel emotions in our bodies. And you have to understand that our emotions, what our emotions do for us, they are just an information system for our body to know what to do next. So that's why we feel them in our body. It's a preparatory action stage so that we can activate whatever system needs to be activated for whatever emotion that we're experiencing. Does that make sense? So it it helps us to navigate things in a way that creates movement for us. If that makes sense. Yeah. It's an internal signal, like we just talked about, these start within our thoughts first, then move to actions and reactions to our environment and the situations that we're going through. And it's also that physical release with whatever we're we need to do to move through it.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Does everyone tend to feel emotions within the same area of their bodies?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

You would think so. But because we're so vastly different, yet so very similar, there's a lot of places we feel emotions differently. And sometimes that has to do with the event that went on when you were experiencing it the first time. So research suggests that while we all really have a similar situation or a map for basic emotions, right? The exact intensity and the location varies vastly. And like we talked about a minute ago, even those physiological reactions or experiences look different. Yeah. So it it's really interesting when people like can have a universal understanding of things. And we talk about some of those emotions that are universally understandable. And the two most prevalent ones, well, the three most prevalent ones are anger, right? And sadness or being calm. And we even use verbiage to address that. I'm so red hot right now, right? And that's like saying I'm so angry, right? There's also I'm feeling really blue today. Yeah. Which is I'm very, very depressed. And so we actually even know that colors play a part in our emotions as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah, it's crazy, huh? Knowing that certain emotions can cause similar sensations or reactions within like sim the same body parts, such as anxiety and excitement might feel in the same body part. Or grief, fear, or stress might be felt in the same area of the body. How can you distinguish between anxiety and excitement or grief and stress when it's when it's felt within the same area?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

So the the easiest answer for that, Sam, is we can't until you personally know your body. So you might experience it completely different than I do, and neither one is wrong. And I might actually experience anxiety and excitement the exact same way. And the only way I can differentiate those is under the situation and the experiences and the people that I'm around. Otherwise, I might not be able to do that. And we find this happen a lot with children, is they will say, Oh, my belly hurts right now, really, really bad. I don't want to do this. And when you when you talk to them a little bit more, it's that they're actually excited about it and it's so overwhelming that it's like, I don't want to do it now. So they don't know how to express them.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah. My daughter will say stuff sometimes. She'll be like, I'm nervous when when we're about to go do something fun. I'm like, Are you are you nervous or are you excited? Well, my stomach is feeling in rounds. And I'm like, Well, it's probably because you're excited to go do this. But she does that a lot. I'm nervous.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Uh-huh. Well, she's starting to learn and identify that, which is great. And you helping her, you know, differentiate those two things is even better because knowing that you have feelings in the same spot and they feel the exact same way can be really challenging. And that's why when somebody is having s a panic attack, sometimes we don't know how to differentiate. Is it is it a heart attack? Is it just panic? Is it excitement? What is it that's going on for you?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

So it's kind of taking a moment to yourself to like analyze the situation around it so that you can understand what you're feeling.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yes, and we need to start paying more attention when things happen so we can identify and differentiate the differences as we gain experiences in life.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Okay. So how can someone recognize their body, how their personal body experiences each emotion? What are some specific techniques that I could use to improve my awareness of my experience of emotion in my body?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Mm-hmm. So one of the biggest things that I have people look at, and we do it for a period of time, but we have to qualify this first. And that is that more often than not, we are judging our feelings and emotions as either good or bad. And what we need to start doing is just putting our investigator cap on and just starting to notice what emotions we allow in our system, where they fit in our body, before we can then do something different with them. So to do that, what I always suggest is start by identifying your emotions five times a day. Okay. And the fur the first and the last time, starting with a physical feeling first, because it's easier for us to identify the physical feeling first, and then move on to the emotional feeling. Okay. Okay. And once you have that, you're you're better able to identify where it lives in your body, how how to move forward with it. So that's the biggest one. And the first two, like I said, the the first and the last one always have you do that body scan. So really scanning your body from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet back to the top of your head to check in to find the pain, disturbances, tension, any of those things that are outside the norm before you try to find the the emotional feeling. Okay. And then do grounding techniques. Allow yourself to sit and just do some grounding techniques, visualize your body as well. Allow yourself to see what it feels like without judging, right? Because we are going to judge, and that's the hardest thing. So those are those are the ones that I particularly like to use.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Okay. What should I do if I feel numb, disconnected, or I'm just unable to identify any emotions within myself, within my body?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

First and foremost, we uh we may be a person that has stuffed and stuffed and stuffed and stuffed and stuffed so long that we don't have the ability to recognize emotions. And so again, if we go back to what we just talked about, starting slow and really processing what you are allowing to come in and moving on from there. Because we all have emotions, we have over 900 a day unless we get stuck in them. And so starting slow, allowing yourself to identify what you do know feeling-wise is there. And what you'll start understanding is there's certain times of day, events or things, people, places, and things that create that numbness for you because it feels safe to be in that numbness instead of allowing feelings to be present.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

So the more often or the more practice somebody gets with trying to identify what they're feeling, the easier it'll be.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

The easier it becomes and you don't judge yourself as bad or wrong for feeling. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

When an emotion feels uncomfortable, what is the best way to sit with it rather than be reactive?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

So again, more often than not, we judge ourselves because we we tend to react instead of just experience. So it does take practice to just when you s when you start feeling feeling the physiological effects of an emotion, allowing yourself to sit with it and figure out what is going on with it. Where is it coming from? What's coming up for you? Are you feeling panic because there's a threat to your survival? Are you feeling panic because you're going to be embarrassed? Allowing yourself to sit long enough with the feeling to let it tell you what it needs from you and then moving out of it. And it takes a lot of practice and it's not something that just happens overnight.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Okay. Once I've identified the physical sensation, what is the best way to process and release that emotion so that we don't get stuck in it?

SPEAKER_01 19:29

So again, when we start to understand what the physical feeling is and then the emotional feeling, we can then allow ourselves to go, oh. I know for me, anger was a hard one. But now I go, oh, hello, old friend. I wonder why you're here to visit me. Okay, I'm feeling very irritated because this is happening or that may have happened, and I didn't know what to do. So allowing myself to identify it, welcome it, and then do whatever it needs you to so that you can move on. Sometimes that the emotion just needs you to identify it. Just like I said, welcome old friend, you know? Because more often than not, when we're when we're growing up, someone has told us anger is bad and not it's not our friend. But it is our friend. It's there to do something for us, and we need to understand what that is. And when you sit with it long enough, it will help you be able to do what's next, and then then it will just move on.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Being in tune with yourself and your emotions is a crucial part of our mental health and emotional well-being. We have to be aware of something in order to manage or improve it. Hopefully, today we have all learned some ways that we can recognize our body sensations, the emotions they are attached to, so that we can listen to what our body is communicating and really learn to thrive. Tune in on Friday for our discussion about where emotions live within our bodies. We'll see you next time.