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away. On the other hand, don t hold onto the emotion or
amplify it. Just let it pass through you like a wave.
" If the feeling doesn t fade, try stepping back from your emotion.
This experience of simply witnessing an emotion will put you
in a better position to detach from it and to let go of the intense
energy you may have invested in it. Once you are more
detached from the emotion you can begin to let it go it has
served its purpose.
Why It Is Important Not to Judge Our Emotions
Whenever we judge our emotions as bad the natural consequence is to
feel guilt, shame, anxiety, and/or anger. The addition of these second-
ary feelings simply make the distress more intense and intolerable.
Often you will find that you can tolerate a distressing situation or
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Learn to Identify and Manage Your Emotions 79
painful affect a lot better if you refrain from feeling guilty or anxious
about feeling the painful emotion in the first place. Think of some
occasions when you have had a secondary emotional reaction to a pri-
mary emotion (i.e., getting angry or feeling ashamed for getting
angry, getting depressed about being depressed). Which causes you
more pain or trouble the primary or the secondary emotion?
How to Observe an Emotion Nonjudgmentally
1. Simply observe the emotion where you feel it in your body,
what sensations it elicits without any kind of judgment or
evaluation whatsoever. Restrain from labeling it good or bad,
painful or pleasant.
2. Notice the thoughts that go through your mind as you feel this
emotion, the associations you have with the emotion.
Acknowledge the helpful, the healthy, but do not judge it.
Acknowledge the harmful, or unhealthy, but do not judge it.
3. Notice the opinions you have about this feeling and about the
fact that you are feeling it. Let go of your opinions and simply
feel.
4. When you find yourself judging, don t judge your judging. Just
stop and move on.
Further Tips to Help You Not Become Overwhelmed
by Your Emotions
" Remember that you are not your emotions.
" You do not necessarily need to act on your emotions.
" Remember times when you have felt different.
" Remember times when you have overcome the emotions.
By learning to observe your emotions, you learn to be separate
from them and also at one with them. In order to be in control of your
emotions you must be separate from them so that you can think and
use coping strategies. But you also need to be one with your emo-
tions, in the sense that you identify them as part of you and not some-
thing outside you.
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80 Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
Step Four: Determine Whether It Is Appropriate to Be
Feeling This Emotion at This Time
Our emotional reaction how we respond to a given situation often
has to do with the meaning we have given to the experience. In other
words, it is the way we interpret our experience that determines how
we will feel about it. For example, let s say that you are out running
errands when you spot a friend across the street. You feel happy to see
her and wave and call to her enthusiastically. Your friend looks your
way but she doesn t wave back. How do you interpret this? Some
people will interpret this experience as rejection and feel immediately
shamed. Others will interpret the very same experience by telling
themselves that their friend simply did not see them and they will
move on feeling perhaps a little disappointed but not give it a second
thought. And so we can see that a friend not waving back doesn t
actually cause you to feel a prescribed emotion, even though many
people in your situation might interpret the experience as you did.
How the Past Affects Our Interpretation of the Present
We often base our interpretation of an event on our previous experi-
ences. Let s say that you are one of those who interpreted the experi-
ence of your friend not waving back as rejection. Most people in your
situation would feel a momentary pang of shame in reaction to feeling
rejected and exposed in public but the feeling would subside within
minutes. But let s say that you have a childhood history of being
severely rejected and ignored by your parents or by other children. In
either case your immediate and automatic response would be a far
more intense shame reaction than the average person s. In fact, the
incident may trigger a full-blown shame attack so intense that you
may be unable to complete your errands. You may feel so bad about
yourself that you need to return home and to bed. When your husband
comes home he finds you in bed. When he discovers that you didn t
run the few errands he asked you to do for him he becomes angry with
you and accuses you of being lazy and selfish. Too shamed to defend
yourself, you just take in his criticisms as the truth, causing you to
feel even more shamed and even worse about yourself.
If you are the kind of person who immediately turns shame to
rage, you may become irate at the person who didn t wave back at
you. You may storm off, cursing at the person under your breath. You
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Learn to Identify and Manage Your Emotions 81
rerun the incident over and over in your head feeding your shame and
your rage. By the time you get home you are really worked up. You
tell your husband about the fact that your friend snubbed you and
what a bitch she is. Your husband tries to console you by suggesting
that perhaps your friend didn t see you. You dismiss your husband s
suggestion with an air of contempt after all, he s always in la la land
as far as you re concerned. When he suggests you call your friend on
the phone to check it out you become enraged with him and tell him
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