integration — EMPOWERED TIMES BLOG

How to Process Your Emotions

“I don’t know what processing my feelings means,” he said matter of factly. “People say that, and have no idea what they mean.”

We talk about processing our emotions like there is some kind of step-by-step protocol. Unfortunately, the most sustainable remedies for complicated feelings like anger, grief, and anxiety don’t come with easy-to-follow directions or guaranteed results. The processing of our emotional experiences requires significantly more exploration and trial & error. The good news is, our body is a natural processor. It is constantly processing toxins, chemicals, electrical energy, and nutrients. The way our body processes our feelings is similar to the way it processes the food we eat. When we eat too much or eat too fast, we end up with indigestion. When we become overwhelmed with emotion, or avoid or deny our feelings, we can experience emotion indigestion. Though our emotions don’t necessarily follow a narrow course like the digestive tract, our body has an innate capacity to turn a raw experience (like the death of a loved one) into something that nourishes us and facilitates healing. As we learn to integrate our emotions into who we are, we become less fragmented and more authentically whole.

Memory Part 2: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Memories make up the story of our lives.

We each possess a unique ability to consolidate, store, and integrate memories depending on how we process information. How and what we remember about our experiences becomes an evolving narrative. Our narrative consists of implicit and explicit memory and is influenced by the collective and cultural context in which we dwell. These narratives (with varying degrees of accuracy) contribute to our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. We can harness the malleability of our memory and the meaning we attribute to our experiences to support healing and internalize a more empowering story.

Explore six unique ways to tap into the transformative power of memory and the stories we tell ourselves.

Rooted in Self-Trust

We typically associate the concept of trust in relation to other people—how credible, believable or reliable we find someone to be. However, we often struggle to develop that same trust, confidence, and belief in ourselves. We can grow self-trust by deepening the roots of understanding of who we are, strengthening our trunk (or core) by honestly accepting, forgiving and being present for ourselves, and extending branches of ourself that respond to life’s challenges with flexibility and perspective. It is a process. Yet, cultivating this kind of deep inner trust is enduring, irreplaceable, and self-perpetuating.

The Olympics of Relationships

Navigating relationships should be its own Olympic sport! It requires endurance, practice, perseverance and commitment, not to mention to ability to skillfully overcome hurdles. We bring our own values, beliefs, aspirations and expectations, and we speak our own respective “love languages.” Finding ways to interconnect and interact with one another is not always smooth, easy or straight forward. Exploring five basic categories of romantic partnerships (independence, mutuality, interdependence, dependence, and co-dependence), we are reminded that relationship dynamics fluctuate. Sometimes we need more closeness. Sometimes we need more space. Experiment and discover what feels right for you in your relationship... it's an ever-evolving process.

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