Today I'd like to share a number with you - the number of people who took my courses this year. These are the people who took Befriending Anger, Befriending Sadness, Befriending Shame, or Essential Boundaries for Bodyworkers at some point in 2020.
My courses had some of the highest student numbers I've ever had this year, no doubt due in large part to the pandemic, and the online nature of the courses.The total number of students who took my courses this year is 111. One hundred and eleven!
If you've been one of my students, or had a consultation with me, thank you. You are doing the hard work of developing your emotional skills, and making the world a more empathic and emotion-welcoming place.
You are the reason that I teach about emotions: because it is through your emotions that you can change the world. When you listen to your intuition, or decide against a course of action, or look around for another solution, or cheer and jump up and down, you are listening to your fear, anger, shame, envy, anxiety, happiness, joy, and contentment. When you truly listen to your emotions, they tell you the truth of the matter for you, which is often not easy to hear.
For a long time, I was so cut off from my emotions that I didn’t even know when I was having emotions, or what I was feeling. I couldn’t name any emotions, and was only barely able to say that I was feeling “unhappy,” and that I wanted to be “happy.” To me, any emotion that wasn’t happiness wasn’t welcome, and I reflected this with my fake public gaiety and private misery.
I'm sharing this with you because developing your relationship with your emotions is one of the most important things you can do in your life, and it has wide-ranging impacts not only for you, but the people you interact with.
It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I was around people who were willing to talk about a full(er) range of emotions, and this opened me up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, all the intense emotions I’d been feeling weren’t all bad. Maybe I could feel angry without it meaning that I was out of control. Maybe I could feel the sadness I had at letting go of rock climbing, and the grief I felt for myself as I mourned who I thought I should be and slowly moved into accepting who I actually was. Maybe feeling these emotions didn't make me a bad person, but just someone who felt things intensely.
If each of my students interacts with just 2 other people in an emotionally-aware way, then they're sharing a new way of being with emotions, one that's respectful, grounded, and empathic. Instead of showing that emotions are scary and to be avoided, which seems to be what many people assume about emotions, they're showing that emotions are sources of information, inspiration, and personal power.
When people have the skills to work with their emotions, they share them unconsciously. As humans, we are always learning and paying attention to changes in our environment (thank you, fear). When someone begins acting differently, we want to know why, and we pay more attention to them.
You might have been one of those people who wanted to know why. Perhaps you took a course with me or at Empathy Academy because you wanted a different relationship with your emotions. Perhaps now you’re integrating the skills you’ve learned from reading The Language of Emotions, or from a consultation, and now others are beginning to notice that you are changing the way you relate to your emotions. Perhaps you've shifted from being unconscious and incompetent with your emotions to being conscious and competent (at least some of the time).
The people around you are listening, and often, if you say something surprising or unexpected, then people tend to tune in. When you talk about your emotions as if they're there to help you release and rejuvenate (thank you, sadness), or to set boundaries (thank you, anger), or to clue you in to changes in your environment (thank you, fear), then it can change other people's opinions of emotions by presenting a new perspective.
As you become more adept at working with your emotions and listening to the different ways they communicate with you, it becomes easier to integrate what they're telling you into your life. Your words have power, and the way in which you talk about your emotions is powerful.
How do you tend to talk about your emotions?
Which of your emotional skills are the most helpful to you? When have you shared them with others?