Demystify your emotional reactions

As a therapist, a lot of my work is helping clients make sense of their emotional reactions.

Something happens and you snap at someone. Or you leave the room in a huff.
Someone says something and your breath catches in your throat.
You remember something you said earlier, cringe and reach for your phone to distract you.
You wake up and feel butterflies of anxiety in your gut. Or that familiar dread.

Being alive means having emotional reactions, big and small, all the time. It’s just a part of being human.

When you notice reactions that happen repeatedly, it’s time to take a closer look.

Questions to help you identify the different parts of your emotional reaction

Think about an emotional reaction you had recently, and ask yourself the questions below. They will help you identify and name the different parts of your reaction. You’ll see that there’s more to it than a trigger and an emotion.

• What triggered your reaction?

This could be something in your environment, something that happened in a relationship, or something in yourself.

Examples: a firetruck passed by with its siren blaring; your partner made a comment in that tone of voice they use when they’re mad; you felt a twinge in your knee that reminded you that you are having surgery on it next month.

• What was your physiological response?

This is about how your body responded to the trigger. What did it feel like in your body? What sensations did you notice?

For example: your heart started to pound, your muscles tensed, you clenched your jaw. Or you felt your legs turn to jelly and you stopped breathing. Or your mind went blank and you felt yourself shrinking.

• What emotions were present inside you?

You’ll find two layers of emotions:
- Visible or expressed emotions that are self-protective.
- Hidden emotions that are more vulnerable.

For example: you felt angry, and deeper down you also felt hurt.
Or you felt embarassed on the surface, and deeper down you felt angry.
Notice in these examples that anger (like other emotions) can be self-protective or vulnerable depending on the situation.

• What thoughts did you have?

These could be thoughts about yourself: “I’m such an idiot!”
Or about the other person: “They’re such an idiot!”
Or about your relationship with that person: “This is never going to work out.”
Or about life in general: “Life is too hard.”

• How did you behave?

There are many, many different kinds of ways we behave in reaction to a trigger. Here’s just a small sampling: you criticized (yourself or someone else), you raised your voice, you broke something, you ran out of the room, you didn’t react at all (you went numb), you spaced out, you joked around, you became chatty, you became vague with your words, you procrastinated, you used a substance, you self-harmed, you went to hide under the bedcovers.

In sum, every emotional reaction has a trigger, a physiological response, emotions (some expressed, some hidden), thoughts, and an action or behavior.

As you identify these pieces, you’ll notice your relationship to your emotional reactions start to change. They won’t feel so mysterious and irrational anymore. They’ll start to make sense.

Once you’ve become aware of these different pieces, you will be ready to start a deeper exploration into the more vulnerable, hidden emotions that you identified.

Emotions can be overwhelming, and this process of first identifying the different parts of your reaction provides a sort of scaffolding. You can feel into your vulnerable emotion and then place it back into its context. This makes the exploration of the emotion a lot less intimidating because it’s safely contained.