There Might Be Other Emotions Under Your Anxiety
You might reflect and notice that you’ve experienced anxiety for as long as you can remember. You can notice it in your chest – perhaps it feels heavy. Maybe for you, anxiety is experienced as not being able to catch your breath. Some of my clients share their experience with anxiety as a spinning mind. Whatever your relationship with it, could you be curious about whether there might be other emotions under your anxiety?
Are you wondering what that even means? How can you have other emotions under your anxiety?
It’s common to understand anxiety as representing just that…anxiety! However, I’d like to suggest another way of approaching and understanding it. Rather than considering your anxiety as a part of you that always has been (or maybe always will be) a part of you, what about this?:
Your anxiety might simply be trying to communicate with you.
If you can take a few deep (like really slow, count-to-3, into your belly) breaths, you might be able to explore and understand your anxiety in a new way. When you slow down, you create space within yourself to be curious about what your anxiety might be trying to share with you. This might sound strange or a bit uncomfortable, but I can promise you that your anxiety won’t overcome you.
Again, it might be bring discomfort but some of this might be unfamiliarity. Typically individuals strive to push down, ignore or minimize anxiety. If you can slow down to notice it, you can gain a lot of insight. (This takes time!)
Slowing down can allow you the opportunity to ask yourself whether your anxiety (which might be very familiar to you) is keeping you from experiencing a core emotion. Core emotions are emotions all humans are born with – they’re found in your mid-brain. It’s common to have heard or learned that some emotions are bad. I’d like to invite you into a new thought: No emotion is bad (or negative). No emotion is good (or positive). But, some emotions are uncomfortable and some are comfortable. Often, individuals believe them to be one or the other, based on childhood messages or experiences.
These are your seven core emotions:
- Sadness
- Anger
- Fear
- Joy
- Excitement
- Desire
- Disgust
When you read those words, do you notice immediate reactions? If you notice your cringe or feel uncomfortable about some of them, or that you simply “don’t feel” them, this may stem from childhood experiences. It’s common that some caregivers or family members were uncomfortable with you showing a particular emotion and so the message implicitly or explicitly communicated to you was, that that particular emotion was not good. If this is your experience, I am so sorry to hear that. It’s likely your family member felt uncomfortable when you expressed that emotion and so they minimized their experience with it – if even second-hand.
So, when you notice you are experiencing anxiety, perhaps you could be curious about what it is trying to communicate with you. Could it be that you are experiencing some anger, but anger is quite uncomfortable (or unfamiliar) to you, and your anxiety is keeping you from having to feel it?
Anxiety might be signalling to you, that a core emotion is present.
When you can begin to be curious (doing this with a counsellor for example, can feel safer and sometimes a bit more contained) you will notice shifts emotionally. When you can begin to notice, identify, sit with, and become familiar with feeling your core emotions, you can begin to heal.
Doesn’t that sound like such a gift?
This is absolutely possible for every human. While your emotions might feel really big at times…almost too big, slowing down to notice them with your counsellor can give you more of a sense of agency. You can begin to notice that your emotions don’t control you, but that you can sit with them. Here, you can begin to experience healing.
So, the next time you notice that very familiar anxious feeling, I invite you to slow down. Can you be curious? Take a few deep breaths and begin to introspectively (inside you) wonder whether there might be another emotion under your anxiety. It can take time, patience, compassion, space and often the presence of another. But creating space for your core emotions – and yourself – is so worth it. If you’re noticing this resonates with you and you’d like support, I would love to connect with you. Please reach out!
