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Dr. Joan Rosenberg

Transform Yourself at the Speed of Thought

Archives for October 2019

Book Series 33: Why Accurately Labeling Feelings Leads To Self Love

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

You can’t feel capable, nor confident, until you have a sense that you can handle the feelings associated with things not working out the way you wanted.

As we approach the end of October, I hope you have been able to experience inner peace and self understanding from my weekly reading series. But before we dive in to this week, I would encourage you to join my Facebook “Love My Life” group if you aren’t already apart of it. In a few weeks, I will be doing a live Q&A while going over a chapter in my book that speaks on avoiding pitfalls while identifying and overcoming distractions. I’ll also answer questions that you might have for me! Please feel free to post your question in the Facebook group.

The eight unpleasant emotions I have identified in my book – sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, and vulnerability – are our most common, everyday, uncomfortable reactions to things not turning out the way we want or believe we need. They are central to the decisions we make, the relationships we are in or want to develop, and the goals or dreams we want to pursue, yet we go to great lengths to avoid experiencing them.

A wide range of common emotional problems or challenges can be distilled down to difficulty experiencing and managing these eight unpleasant feelings. Certainly, you are a far more complex person than this, but if you have difficulty tolerating these unpleasant emotional states, then it is possible you are struggling in one or more areas of your life, such as in relationships, with addictions, or in taking risks to pursue your interests, goals, or dreams. You may not be struggling with all eight unpleasant feelings at once – in fact that is highly unlikely. At any given time you are probably just facing a few, or even just one.

Yet, if you can experience and move through the eight unpleasant feelings you’ll feel more centered, calm, confident, and resilient. The experience precedes the confidence, not the other way around. You can’t feel capable, nor confident, until you have a sense that you can handle the feelings associated with things not working out the way you wanted. Being able to fully experience and handle the range of these eight unpleasant emotions is the first step to confidence, resilience, and authenticity, and a first step to loving yourself. Loving yourself is also part of living a life you love!

Next week, I’ll talk about ‘Why Accurately Labeling Feelings Leads To Self Love’.

This weeks questions:

How have you used the 90 Seconds approach and being able to experience and improve through your 8 unpleasant feelings to help build emotional strength and confidence?

How can you take those insights and apply them to experience even more progress in your life?

I’d love for you to respond on my facebook group if you feel comfortable!!

Join my group on Facebook LOVE MY LIFE and let me know. Also, November 11th, I’ll be going live to talk about ‘Avoiding Pitfalls by Identifying and Overcoming Distractions’.  Please join me!

Live Conversation

To A Life You Love,

Dr. Joan Rosenberg

Book Series 32: Why Labeling Feelings Is Important

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

When we put feelings into words, we actually change the brain’s response to the emotions themselves.

Last week, we talked about the window of tolerance. Today it’s all about the importance of labeling your feelings, so that you can better understand them, and you can feel more skillful whenever you encounter them.

Naming or labeling feelings is so important; when we put feelings into words, we actually change the brain’s response to the emotions themselves. It turns out that naming or labeling feelings can have multiple effects, including calming or slowing you down, centering you, decreasing the experience of being flooded with feeling, decreasing impulsivity, and increasing a sense of control. What’s kind of cool is that these same benefits are observed whether you do it through speaking or writing.

If you have avoided feelings for a long time, you may initially start by noticing that you feel either “good” or “bad,” with less ability to distinguish specific feeling states; over time you may move to more general descriptions such as “hurt” or “upset.” As you become more skillful at identifying and describing your feelings, you can change your experience entirely. The result will leave you feeling more empowered, emotionally stronger, more confident, and more at peace.

Across all of my work and also in my personal life, I know that when a feeling is expressed or reflected back more accurately, a greater sense of calm follows. In this case, then, it means going beyond just saying you are hurt or upset, as these descriptions may be too general and vague and fail to fully capture what you are really feeling (e.g., sad or embarrassed). In order to develop your own language for difficult emotions, start by using the eight difficult feelings as a reference point.

Next week, I’ll talk about ‘Why Accurately Labeling Feelings Leads To Self Love’.
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This weeks questions:

WAre you intentional in being specific about labeling your feelings?

Do you feel more calm, centered or empowered after labeling your feelings?

How does labeling your feelings help you enhance your emotional well-being?

I’d love for you to respond on my facebook group if you feel comfortable!!

Join my group on Facebook LOVE MY LIFE and let me know. I’ll post the question and jump on myself to chat and answer questions.

To A Life You Love,

Dr. Joan Rosenberg

Book Series 31: Emotional Tolerance and How Do You Experience Feelings?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

The window of tolerance concept helps us understand why there are so many individual differences in how we experience feelings.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful week, and I’m glad that you are back as we continue this conversation about emotional tolerance, and explore the differences in how we experience our feelings.

The window of tolerance concept helps us understand why there are so many individual differences in how we experience feelings. We may experience each of the eight feelings at differing levels of intensity, which is the wide-ranging degree to which we are stimulated by feelings and how much or how little we experience a feeling once we are aware of it.

Many of us are comfortable dealing with some of the unpleasant feelings, but not all of them.

For example, let’s say you’re comfortable enough with sadness, anger, and embarrassment that you don’t explode or shut down. Yet, any measure of disappointment leads to a feeling that you are unraveling or falling apart. Here disappointment feels too intense and too hard to tolerate as comfortably as you tolerate other unpleasant emotions.

The same holds true of sensitivity – which is the smallest amount of stimulation needed to kick our “appraisal systems” into gear. Appraisal is an aspect of brain function that alerts you to pay immediate and close attention to what’s happening in the moment.

You’ll notice a pattern here: some people respond almost instantaneously becoming reactive or explosive and needing little stimulation or provocation; others, however, may seem like they are impervious to things around them and seem to show little or no emotion to events or situations occurring in their lives.

Next week, I’ll talk about ‘Why Naming or Labeling Feelings is Important’.

This weeks questions:

What differences have you noticed between how you experience each of the eight unpleasant feelings?

Which ones do you experience with greater intensity and/or sensitivity?

For which feelings do you seem to have the greatest window of tolerance?

What do you notice about how people in your life respond to feelings?

I’d love for you to respond on my facebook group if you feel comfortable!!

Join my group on Facebook LOVE MY LIFE and let me know. I’ll post the question and jump on myself to chat and answer questions.

To A Life You Love,

Dr. Joan Rosenberg

Book Series 30: Do You Know The Scary Movie Factor?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How do ‘scary movies’ effect our tolerance for emotional body sensations?

Today we are moving on to what I call the “Scary Movie Factor”. Here’s the gist of it. Think about whether you like or dislike going to scary movies. People who enjoy scary movies often say they enjoy them in part because of the rush of adrenaline or other bodily sensations that they elicit. People who hate scary movies hate them primarily for the same reason: They hate the bodily sensations that are triggered by the threat of violence, anxious anticipation, assaults, or surprise.

In this example, there is no “better” or “worse” reaction. Individuals who hate scary movies have a narrower window of tolerance and those enjoying the movie have a greater tolerance of the bodily sensations evoked by the content they are watching.

Think about how this scary movie idea relates to you and people in your life. And, think also about how you respond emotionally in a variety of other situations and how people know or love respond differently to those same situations.

Next week, you’ll begin to understand why there are so many differences in how we each experience feelings.

This weeks questions:

How are you responding to these “scary movie” reactions right now, and how can you use your new knowledge about the ‘window of tolerance’ to help you build your emotional tolerance?

I’d love for you to respond on my facebook group if you feel comfortable!!

Join my group on Facebook LOVE MY LIFE and let me know. I’ll post the question and jump on myself to chat and answer questions.

To A Life You Love,

Dr. Joan Rosenberg

Book Series 29: What to do with your feelings when you feel them

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

What to “do” with your feelings when you feel them.

Give yourself some credit! You just walked with me through learning about the 8 difficult feelings and I think staying the course on this journey merits a hardy congratulations! As the Aussies would say, “Good on ya!”

Now that you have a better idea about how you experience your difficult feelings and which ones may be harder for you to manage, let’s explore what to “do” with your feelings when you feel them.

Specifically, this involves acknowledging, accepting, and trusting your thoughts, feelings, needs, sensations, and perceptions. So, once a feeling has been triggered, and you are riding the 90 Second waves of feelings, take a mental pause and consider what triggered your reaction; what situation, event or experience it’s connected to; whether your reaction relates to anything in the past; and then, what you might want to do about it. It’s good for you to know that once these elements of your emotional experience are in your awareness, you can make sense of what you are going through, and use this information to make decisions, express yourself, and/or take action.

For instance, when difficult feelings are present, some people move quickly to disconnect from, distract from, or shut down their experience. One example involves conversations I had with two women in their forties who wouldn’t allow themselves to cry, and frankly, hadn’t cried in decades. One shut down her sadness and tearfulness for so long that she suffered from intense headaches and jaw pain. The other woman couldn’t fully experience her emotional life; she would talk about what she thought, never about what she felt. Once these women developed an understanding of the 8 difficult feelings, and each allowed tearfulness to be present; they immediately experienced a quiet calm following the waves of emotion.

Because they were better able to experience and move through their own emotional discomfort, they both began to expand their ability to handle uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. As this ability expanded, they both found that their emotional responses to previously triggering situations began to feel less threatening.

With continued practice, they also both reported a shift in closeness in their relationships, since their partners now had more access to their inner lives.

This weeks questions:

How can you use your access to the difficult feelings to better help you make decisions, express yourself or take action?

How can you expand your emotional tolerance and find that quiet calm?

I’d love for you to respond on my facebook group if you feel comfortable!!

Join my group on Facebook LOVE MY LIFE and let me know. I’ll post the question and jump on myself to chat and answer questions.

To A Life You Love,

Dr. Joan Rosenberg