The R’s Of Emotions
Have you ever had something happen where it triggers a past experience and you begin to cry?
Or when you're thinking about something that could happen in the future and you instantly become anxious?
Or it’s just happening right here, in the moment…. And well emotions show up there too.
What’s so interesting is that we can experience all of these emotions in three different ways.
I call it the 3 R’s of Emotions.
Real Time
Replay
Rehearsal
Let me explain some more…..
If you’ve been following me for sometime than you will know that your thoughts create your feelings right?
That being said, we can experience ANY emotion at ANY time.
Yup, that could be good or bad. Right?
What I want you to take from this is if you understand this concept and have a little awareness of it, you feel like you’ve got a little more control in your life.
Real time…. Something happens in the present moment. For example a death occurs in a family, a child breaks your brand new iMac (nope that’s never happened to me), or your husband yells in the house.
You instantly have a thought about what has just happened and you experience an emotion. Grief, disappointment, fear, whatever it may be. Your body is experiencing that in Real Time.
Replay… This is fascinating. You can “replay” any experience in your life at any moment in your brain and feel something. You could replay that moment when your husband proposes to you, and think about how wonderful it was and feel joy or love.
Or you can replay a moment when you first heard some terrible news, and the thoughts that came and feel that sting of sadness, or that pit in your stomach.
Your lower brain isn’t actually conscious if it is “real time” or “replay” all it knows is it needs to create an emotion based on your thinking. So if you're thinking about the past, those emotions are going to show back up.
And lastly… Rehearsal.
Us anxious moms favorite.
Yes, we sometimes find ourselves playing out things that could happen in the future. We imagine our kids getting bullied at school, or that our car could go off the road with the snow storm, or that our plane will crash on the way to our family vacation.
Our brain is practicing, its rehearsing what feeling we will experience with those thoughts before the actual real time event.
Here is the cool part about all of this….. We have TOTAL CONTROL of it all.
Yes, it’s true because thoughts are optional. You don’t HAVE to think about any of it, it doesn’t HAVE to make you feel anything.
Now let’s not get crazy here, that doesn’t mean that you can just choose NOT to think about something. Truthfully I like to think and feel.
If someone dies, or if I make a mistake… I want to feel sad.
I want to experience these emotions, I want to process them and have the real, raw, vulnerable human experience.
But I want you to know this truth:
You are in control of your own emotions. Whether it be realtime, replay or rehearsal.
It’s all very real, our thoughts create our feelings, feelings are real. But they show up because of our thoughts…. That’s the empowering truth.
So when these strong, unbearable emotions show up…. Notice them.
Understand which R of emotions it is, and take control of what it creates in your life. This is where your power comes from Momma, you got this.
