A Simple Process for Understanding and Changing Your Emotions
Two Powerful Questions
For most of my life, I hadn’t paid much attention to my emotions; I was never taught how to introspect. On many occasions, I’ve felt sad, anxious, afraid, or angry with only a vague understanding of why. I got unreasonably mad at loved ones because they did something that bothered me, and I bottled up these feelings until they spilled over. At times, I wanted to talk to a girl, state a boundary, or share something I loved but was paralyzed by fear without clearly knowing why. I often felt like a slave to my emotions. Only within the past eighteen months have I taken my emotions more seriously, and I’ve learned a simple method to understand and slowly change them over time.
Contrary to popular belief, we can fully understand the causes of our emotions, and we can retrain our emotions over time—provided we know what they are and how they work. Emotions are automatic, instant psychological responses that arise from our beliefs about whether something is good or bad for us.1 Our emotions can accurately reflect reality—they can signal what is in fact good or bad for us—but they don’t do so automatically; we have to bring them into alignment with reality over time by correcting our thinking and behavior.
For example, when someone cuts us off while driving, usually we’ll feel a surge of fear and anger. We believe that if the driver hits us, he could destroy our car, injure us, or even kill us; we judge him as a threat, and our emotions are appropriate because that judgment is correct. The emotional response is subconscious, and it happens in an instant—but it arises from our past thinking.
The mere fact that we don’t like an emotion doesn’t mean we should try to get rid of it—it depends on whether the beliefs underlying it are rational. When a friend moves away or a loved one dies, it makes sense that we feel sad, and we shouldn’t try to numb or gaslight ourselves into believing we don’t care. Conversely, joy and pride are appropriate emotions when we ace a hard test or land a great job.
If we’re feeling emotions that don’t seem appropriate to the situation, we can introspect to understand their causes: the beliefs that give rise to them. If those beliefs are irrational, we can change them and thereby slowly change our emotions over time.
A simple, effective way to analyze our emotions is to ask and answer “What am I feeling?” and “Why am I feeling it?” “What am I feeling?” helps us to clarify what specific emotion we’re experiencing. I may vaguely know that I’m feeling bad, but what particular emotion am I feeling? Is it anger, sadness, exhaustion, or something else?
“Why am I feeling it?” helps us to clarify the causes—the underlying beliefs. Then, we can gently critique those beliefs (I say gently because being a jerk to yourself only makes you feel worse and adds more emotions for you to untangle). You can ask further questions such as:
What values (i.e., what important things or relationships) are at stake?
What are the beliefs underlying these values?
Are my beliefs about these values true? In other words: Are these values actually good or bad for my life?
Once I know whether they are good or bad: Should I change my thinking and behavior in these areas?
Over time, this kind of questioning can help you better understand your psychology, which helps you to be more empathetic with yourself and to bring your beliefs more in line with reality.2
Let’s walk through an example: A man sees a woman he has a crush on and wants to talk to her. His heart rate jumps, he starts sweating, and he fumbles his words. If he asks “What am I feeling,” he’ll identify a specific emotion: fear. If he then asks “What am I afraid of,” he might get a few answers. He likes the woman and wants the conversation to go well—there’s a genuine value at stake, and he’s afraid of losing it. The man also lacks experience talking to women and feels unconfident. Perhaps he’s been rejected a few times before and has internalized the belief that he is a person who gets rejected by women, and so he is expecting to get rejected. For all these answers, he can continue to critique (Are these beliefs true? Are they irrational? What evidence do I have to support them?) or make a decision. In the moment, he may acknowledge his fear and decide not to let it govern his actions, in which case he strikes up a conversation with her. In the medium- and long-term, he may introspect more deeply: If he thinks his beliefs are irrational and suspects they’re deeply rooted in his subconscious, he may get therapy. Slowly, over time, the man can correct his irrational beliefs, reframe the way he’s judging these kinds of situations, and stop feeling afraid.
A few ways you can answer these two questions are by writing, talking to yourself out loud, or thinking silently. I find that writing leads to deeper insights and is most effective at clarifying my thoughts. On the other hand, talking to yourself may be more useful if you’re short on time; don’t have a notebook, phone, or computer on hand; or want to quickly brain dump all your thoughts. When I talk to myself, I find it helpful to record it in case I want to review it later. Thinking silently is my least effective method for discovering insights, but it’s the most convenient if I’m around other people and don’t want to look crazy.
Understanding this process has given me a newfound clarity around my emotions. While I still have erratic emotions that I would rather not have (it can take a long time for our emotions to catch up after changing our beliefs), I now have the tools to understand them and their underlying beliefs and change them if necessary. I hope these tools are as valuable to you as they have been to me.
Emotions also often provoke physiological responses such as sweating, increased heart rate, etc. But these are consequences of the psychological response—i.e. of the emotion.
Emotions can have a mixture of rational and irrational causes. For example, a man might feel incredibly anxious before a job interview. At least part of his reaction makes sense: He deeply wants the job, and it’s possible he won’t get it. But let’s say he’s also unconfident despite being qualified, which is contributing to his anxiety. That belief is irrational and should be changed.