Emotional Honesty Made Easy

How To Be Emotionally Honest In 3 Simple Steps

by Silvia Hartmann, Author, Oceans Of Energy

Emotional Honesty is one of those pop psychology terms that can make a person's life a misery. What is that supposed to mean? How is one supposed to be emotionally honest? Fear not. Here follows a simple explanation and a foolproof 3 step technique to become hardcore emotionally honest with yourself and other people. And it doesn't even hurt ... much ...

What is Emotional Honesty anyway?!

Folk use the term "emotional honesty" but have only the vaguest idea what they actually mean by that. Generally, the term is used as a kind of weapon against people who have trouble "expressing their emotions" in so many words, and it is extremely unfair and confusing.

So let's start at the beginning with our 21st Century definition of what emotions are. We have discovered that emotions are movements of energy through the energy body which we can feel in our physical body. Any form of emotion has a physical sensation associated with it, or else we could not "feel" the emotion.

When people are afraid, for example, they feel in their bodies various symptoms and sensations. For example, their hands might grow cold and sweaty; they might feel strong tension in the shoulders and the neck, and a sinking or swirling sensation in their stomach.

• Those physical feelings are THE REAL EMOTIONS.

Now what happens is that people put a whole load of words over the top of that - I'm upset, I'm terrified, I'm feeling trapped with no way out, I'm feeling like walking on crumbling ice, I am procrastinating, and all sorts ad infinitum.

None of that really helps another person understand "how they are really feeling" and none of that helps a person understand their own emotions, or "achieve emotional honesty".

So step 1 on our three step journey towards brutal, full, and complete emotional honesty is:

1. Find the feeling in your body!

When the questions is asked, "How do you feel right now?" simply focus on the feelings in your body and find the places where your body feels wrong in some way. Don't even try to put a word label on how you really feel. Most if not all emotions can't really be described by "off the shelf" terms such as angry, sad, happy and so forth. The combinations of feelings in the body is like a cocktail with numerous ingredients, and one man's anger is never the same as another man's anger.

This is step 2 for emotional honesty:

2. Describe the feeling in your body in the simplest terms possible!

So instead of saying, "I feel trapped," we would say HONESTLY whatever it feels like, right now. For example, "I feel my throat being tight, and a pressure in my head."

That's honest. That's real. Those are the real emotions at this moment, described as directly and as honestly as one can only describe emotions and feelings.

And now, to the most important step, step 3.

3. Refuse to label these feelings!

One of the unfortunate side effects of a hundred years of pop psychology and talking psychotherapy is that folk have gotten used to talking ABOUT feelings, rather than DEALING WITH THE FEELING.

This leads into a labyrinth of misunderstandings and secondary emotions, confusion, misery, and a total break down in communication!

So when you say, "I feel my throat is tight, and a pressure in my head," it can happen that the other person, wife or therapist or friend alike, will say, "So you mean you are feeling trapped?"

At which point you must refuse to go down that path and simply re-iterate, "No, I didn't say that. I said that what I feel, what I honestly feel right now, is a sensation of tightness in my throat, and a pressure in my head."

This does many things.

Most importantly, it stops the communication descending into some kind of pop therapy argument that no-one can win, no-one can lose, and that doesn't help anyone.

It forces people who are used to labelling emotions and then making all sorts of meanings out of that into reality, into what there really is - in this case, a person who feels as though they are being strangled and who has a headache! sitting opposite form them.

Instead of going down their usual train-track paths of accusations and ifs, buts, whys and wherefores, they have to start re-thinking the entire situation.

And hopefully, the question will then arise - what we can we do about that?

How can we make that better? How can we make you feel better? How can we make it so that you DON'T feel these uncomfortable feelings in your body under these circumstances?

The answer to that is not more talking either.

Stroking your throat, your head, that might work ... Even giving you a cup of coffee would change the situation.

It would honestly change the emotions.

Of course, we use EMO to move energy and make people feel better in the true sense of the word, but simply being "emotionally honest" about what you really feel IN YOUR BODY changes the game of "let's you and me psychotherapise our relationship to death!" instantly and replaces it with something far more interesting, and far more useful to all concerned.

In the meantime, I encourage you to practice your "emotional honesty" by yourself and with yourself.

Stop every so often and ask yourself, "How do I feel right now?"

Don't accept word answers like "I'm scared" or "I'm stressed" or "I'm depressed."

Go further into emotional honesty and take note of what you really feel in your body, and where you feel those feelings.

That's the truth of how you're feeling, those are your real emotions.

Once you understand that simple principle and start paying attention to your feelings, you can be a guiding light in emotional honesty - and teach the pop psychologists who are talking, talking still, a thing or two about "emotional honesty".

Silvia Hartmann

September 2010

Also See:

http://emotionsandfeelings.com/control_of_emotions_and_feelings_the_5_top_tips.htm

http://emotionsandfeelings.com/talk_emotions_feelings_understood.htm