Developing Your Personal Emotional Language

The standard language we have to discuss our emotions is lackluster. It falls short of the complexity and nuance of what we truly feel. As a young woman, I wrote some pretty crappy poetry. When I did, I found that combining two words would better convey the feeling I wanted to express than either of the individual words. I am recommending that you create your own language for talking about how you feel, or to borrow words from other languages that better express your feelings.

For example, in Japan, there is an expression, doki doki, which means “my heart beats,” or “I feel for you.” It expresses a sweet (or maybe sad-sweet) empathy for another. I taught in Japan, and there was an older math teacher who was very kind to me. He always greeted me with a beautiful smile and one day he told me he felt doki doki for me. My understanding was that he appreciated that I was a foreigner, far from my home and at the school, I was the one of my kind almost all of the time. I think he sensed that that with this came a hint of loneliness and for that, he felt compassion. This expression has become part of my permanent lexicon, and I hope that as you begin the work of exploring your emotions more deeply, you find words and expressions like to this express the unique aspects of your personal emotional landscape. Developing the language to express what you mean is a very important part of understanding yourself.

Another useful approach to understanding your emotions and reactions is to go deep — strip them down to their most core elements. I do this by asking myself ‘why’ again and again until I feel that I am at the most basic level, or core experience/trigger behavior. For example, if I feel apprehensive about meeting with a potential employer, I will ask myself why I am nervous. The response will likely be something like, “I am not sure I will answer the interview questions well.” Next, I will ask myself why that matters to me. The answer will be, “because if I answer the questions poorly, I will not get the job.” If I ask why getting the job is so important, a whole mess of underlying fears and insecurities will come up; if I don’t get the job, I won’t have the money to pay for food or my mortgage, I may end up on the street, destitute, alone. Or the even more sinister tangent may come up, they don’t want me because I am not valuable, will anyone want me? Do I have worth? So, you see, chasing an emotional reaction back to its origin, or stripping it to its core will reveal fears that are at the very center of us. Very primal, ancient, ancestral concerns. Once upon a time, if we were rejected by the clan, we’d die. Period. Research in epigenetics tells us that the residue of that knowledge still exists in us at a cellular level. We are naturally cooperative, social, communal beings. This was essential for survival and remains key for thriving. We need to be accepted by the clan. There is no shame in this. It is. Recognizing the deep fears, we have about being rejected, or insignificant can help us navigate the world more successfully.