Emotional Training is for the Stressful Moments

Emotional Training

is for the

Stressful Moments

If you’ve ever competed in anything, you know the work you’ve invested in shows up. You can’t fake it because in stressful situations, your mind is less conscious. Your body will unconsciously carry out what is most real to it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re taking a licensure test or you’re in the NBA Finals; when it’s foreign territory what your soul is most comfortable with, you’ll execute.

The same is true relationally. The work you put in matters. Relationships are filled with stress. Even if you know what you should be saying and doing, whatever is most comfortable for you, you’ll execute.

Therapy isn’t merely to teach someone something new. It’s for those relational moments of stress. Whether that’s your relationship with yourself or another, when you’re stressed, what’s your default mode? To be the victim and make excuses? To avoid reality and distract yourself? To get frustrated and lash out?

There is a repetition of processing something every week or two where, ideally, over time, you’re doing it without needing the aid of a therapist. Healthy processing means that over time, you’re arriving at your deepest feelings and thoughts faster, with less reactivity, and with more accuracy. You’re owning your primary emotions and developing autonomy on what to about it; you’re seeing the same situations with newer perspectives and able to release yourself and others from stuck states.

If a client is newer to therapy (or therapy has previously had limited effectiveness), I find that it may take someone fifteen minutes before they are able to process a deeper emotion of a stressful situation. That may be as simple as saying out loud, “I feel ___(insert deeper emotion such as “angry,” “hurt,” “betrayed,” “worthless,” etc.)___ about how they treated me.” Even though I can clearly see the emotion in their soul, they may be in denial of the emotion, caught up in narrating what they think, or overfunctioning for how another person may feel about it.

Therapy isn’t merely to dig up past dirt. Giving an emotion a voice (often for the first time) is the first step towards leading a different life. As you advocate for what you’re experiencing in stressful moments, now you can also interact with others in a healthier manner…especially in the stressful moments.

The stressful moments are the ones that create these make-or-breaks in your soul. They’re either emotionally corrective experiences or they create trauma. Often you don’t know when the stressful moments will happen. Stressful moments may be in the middle of life’s shitstorm - or - they could be when everything appears to be calm, finally giving people the freedom to reevaluate life. Either way, you want to be prepared. That’s where your emotional training really shines.