What Does Processing Your Emotions Mean?

If you have ever been in therapy, you have probably heard the term "processing your emotions".  It's a term that psychotherapists use often in therapy, but many people either don't understand what that term means or they have only a vague sense of it.

Processing Emotions in Therapy

What Does It Mean to Process Your Emotions?

Processing your emotions means consciously acknowledging, experiencing and integrating your feelings instead of suppressing or ignoring them (see my article: What's the Difference Between Emotional Regulation and Controlling Your Emotions?).

Key Aspects of Processing Your Emotions

• Sense Your Emotions: Emotions are embodied experiences. If you want to process your emotions, you need to have a somatic awareness of them, e.g., a tightness in your chest, a clinching in your stomach, and so on (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: What is Somatic Awareness?).

Sensing Emotions

• Name Your Emotions: Labeling your emotions is essential to processing them ("I feel angry" or "I feel sad" and so on).

• Allow Yourself to Experience Your Emotions: Instead of resisting or pushing down your emotions, you allow yourself to experience them. You are also aware that, unless you prolong the experience by ruminating about them too much or telling yourself a negative story about your emotions, emotions tend to rise, peak and subside in about 90 seconds (see my article: Managing Your Emotions: What is the Life Cycle of an Emotion?).

Allowing Yourself to Feel Your Emotions

• Identify Your Triggers: Understanding what triggered an emotion and the root cause of the trigger.

• Resist the Impulse to Avoid: Resist your usual defense mechanisms, like denial, distraction or overthinking.

• Integrate Your Emotions: Make sense of your experience within the context of your life history, including your family history.

• Take Action: Take action, if needed, to resolve a situation rather than just worrying about it.

How to Process Emotions

Psychotherapy is one of the best ways to process emotions with the help of a mental health professional, but it's not the only way.

You can also process your emotions on your own by:

• Journaling: Writing down your thoughts and emotions to get clarity (see my article: Journaling).

Processing Emotions By Journaling

• Mindfulness Meditation: Observing your thoughts and emotions without judging them or getting stuck in them (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection and Mindfulness Meditation.

Observing Emotions in Mindfulness Meditation

• Physical Movement: Yoga, exercising at a pace that's right for you and other types of physical movement can help you to release physical tension

• Breathing: Breathing exercises, like Square Breathing, can help to calm your nervous system

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have over 25 years of experience helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.