I’m naturally analytical and curious, and despite these recent art pieces dealing with emotions, I tend to struggle with emotional awareness. Part of my journey trying to integrate all parts of myself is spending time intentionally paying attention to how I experience emotions in my body. What I’ve come to realize is that this is unique and different for everyone. If you haven’t done this already, I encourage you to think about where you feel basic emotions in your body. Go beyond just the chest, gut, and head. Think specifically about what it feels like. Is there movement? Temperature changes? What muscles are activated?
Like so many complicated things, we use metaphors to describe emotions. You’ve probably heard “butterflies in my stomach,” “my heart is about to burst,” or “I have a lump in my throat.” This week, I challenged myself to examine where and how I feel these and then conceptualize them.
Besides exploring your own way of “feeling,” asking others how they experience these emotions is fun. For instance, while I experience anxiety as bubbling boiling lava that starts to swirl like a tornado… my husband experiences anxiety as if someone hit him in the chest and knocked the air out of him.
I picked four “easy” emotions to identify, but there are, of course, so many different ones. For instance, I didn’t include anger, joy, or surprise, which are very generic emotions I experience differently than the ones I spent time exploring. Here are the four I chose to depict: Love, Sadness, Shame, and Anxiety. The reason for the arrows is to represent the movement of the emotion as I experience it internally. For example, with sadness, I immediately clamp down, the force from my brain moving downwards to hold back the tears and tighten my throat and chest to prevent any escaping sobs.
Your turn – how would you describe those emotions in your body?
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