Do you ever get in a state when you just can’t sit down? You find yourself flitting from one task to the next: wiping counters, checking your phone, making a snack, scrolling through the calendar, making another coffee, checking your phone, sweeping the floor, scrutinizing your face in the mirror, checking your phone. In the addiction world, we call this our ‘warning signs’.
Warning signs are behaviours we engage in to avoid feeling an uncomfortable emotion that needs attention. If we keep moving, planning, and engaging in the busy-ness of our day, then we don’t have to feel the longing for connection in our heart, the loneliness of isolation in our chest, or the fear of uncertainty in our gut.
Subconsciously we know the pain we will have to feel if we let ourself sit in silence. So, we keep jumping from one activity to the next, until we have run so far that our true needs are numbed, or we have an emotional outburst.
An emotional outburst doesn’t necessarily mean a panic or rage attack (although it can), rather it can look like a food or booze binge, reacting to our loved ones during conflict, an increase in obsessive thinking, a strong desire to run away or get wasted, suddenly feeling very fat, ugly, or old, or a bout of depression or apathy.
Huge emotional outbursts are deeply challenging. They knock us down to our knees, and can often be a catalyst for great change. Experiencing them can motivate us to start to find solutions for our pain, and can lead us to learning that the only way out is to begin the process of looking within: attending to our emotional needs, and taking care of our self just as well as we take care of our child, pet, or good friend.
Extreme cycles of running from pain then having an emotional outburst, can play on repeat during a life time. It seems to me that it might be easier on our bodies, psyche, and loved ones, if we were to experience such cycles in a less extreme manner. What if we learned to detect our warning signs, and use them as stimulus for change? What if we noticed our self checking our phone more frequently than normal one day, and understood this behaviour to be a warning sign that we must not be letting our self feel something that needs to be felt?
We do this with our children. For example, we pick them up from school sometimes and notice they are acting erratically, perhaps whining or picking fights with their sibling. When we are feeling very present as a parent, we remember not to get mad at them for their behaviour, rather we say something like, “Hon, how was your day? Did anything happen at school that you want to talk to me about?”. Sometimes they yell at you “No!”, or ignore your invitation to go deep. Other times they open up, and let their day’s experiences spill out, perhaps allowing their emotions to flow. And when this magic happens, their erratic behaviour miraculously disappears.
We can do this with ourself. Rather than reprimanding ourself for eating too much last night, snapping at our partner during a conversation yesterday, or drinking too much last weekend, we follow the breadcrumbs. We acknowledge that we did those things because we were hurting. We were needing something - love, understanding, compassion - and we didn’t get that something, so we acted out by having an emotional outburst. And so, we slowly learn that attending to our emotions on a daily basis, just like we check in with our kids every day, prevents erratic behaviour.
We gradually discover that when we recognize our warning signs as a call for love, and take a moment to give our self that love and hold our self through our feelings, then our emotional cycles flow less like extreme spikes, and more like waves of an ocean.
In The Girl and The Sun children’s book, emotions are represented by the rainbow metaphor. The fearful cloud that floats above our head does not want to feel uncomfortable emotions so it has us moving, obsessing, and running from the present so we don’t have to. The sun in our heart is always there for us and holds us through all our emotions, so when we can connect with our sun then we are in touch with that part of us that can take care of us and help us stay with our truth. Find The Girl and The Sun book: https://www.ashleyandthesun.com/kindness-book-for-children-and-parents