 Hi everyone, what do you do when you experience unwanted emotions? For some, people resort to talking it out, trying to cope, or simply by just eating something. But for intense emotions, this might not always work. I'm Monica and I'm a first year medic and graduate in neuroscience. During my clinical observerships, I've seen surgical and medical emergencies, things that you could say sometimes warrant some really intense emotions. And so I think it's especially important to have skills to be able to process our emotions so that we're best able to learn and to grow from these experiences. And that's today's topic of the Ask an Expert series, where we chat with experts about topics around mental health, psychiatry, and neurology. I am so honored to introduce you to Emma from Therapy in a Nutshell today, where we'll be talking about how to process your emotions. Welcome Emma. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being here. Could you just introduce yourself to everyone, to tell everyone about the amazing work that you do? Thanks. So I'm a Macadam, I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I am also the creator of the YouTube channel Therapy in a Nutshell. And I just boil down mental health education and skills into little bite-sized packages so that people can learn how to work through big emotions. Wonderful. And I've seen you've had work done on your channel about processing emotions, and it's such a big topic that you even have a whole course devoted to it. So I think we could just probably just dive right in and just to start for those who are unsure or completely new to the area of emotional processing. What does it actually mean to process your emotions? Yeah. So I think a lot of times when people are trying to figure out what to do with a big feeling, like, oh, I feel really sad or I feel really anxious or I'm experiencing a lot of grief, they might wonder, what do I do about this feeling? And if you do a typical search and you look for the answer to that question, you're going to get some kind of Pat answer in some kind of article that's like, oh, you know, take a deep breath, journal about it, talk about it, or reach out to a therapist. And that's like the answers you see like over and over and over again. But what people might be looking for is like the answer, like the single answer, like, oh, you should do this and then it will go away. And the reality is emotions are really big and they're really complex. And that kind of Pat answer usually doesn't suffice because processing emotions involves a bunch of little steps. And what I do is I teach people how to work through these steps. So if people are familiar with my YouTube channel, they'll know I've got a course on it and it's got 31 videos as like the main, like the main steps because that's like the fewest I could break it down to is like 31 little steps. But there is an overall process and the overall big picture process is this idea of when you have really big emotions, you take them and you have to first start where you stand and notice them and name them. What am I feeling right? And then you have to create space because our immediate reaction is to avoid or escape or suppress emotions. So you create space to have those emotions and this next process is called willingness and that's from acceptance and commitment therapy. So you allow yourself to feel emotions and then there are a bunch of other little steps you can use to work through emotions instead of making them worse by trying to suppress them or avoid them. Seems like there is definitely a lot to break down. I think what might be more useful? Do you think we should come up with like a sample situation that people might experience from like, I don't know, anxiety or like depression or do you think it's more useful to talk about general kind of, what is it called, kind of pillars and go from there? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, it's easy for me to work when we do have an example. So if you can come up with an example of someone who's experiencing an intense emotion, then we could definitely break it down into practical steps. I definitely think social anxiety is a really big one. I mean, just when I was starting out to do these streams, it was one where I was like and in motion, I was always feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm so worried and everything. But while things have gotten a lot better, I think it's always good to really know how to process it to improve for the next stream and so on. So yeah, we could definitely use social anxiety as one of them. And I see in the comments here as well that people resonate with that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and social anxiety is one of the most common experiences out there. Like it's one of the highest percentages of disorders that people experience. But even when it's not disordered, the vast majority of people experience social anxiety at some point in their lives. So something that's really common with social anxiety is that people get anxious about their anxiety. They'll be presenting and they'll notice like, oh, I'm feeling shaky or I'm feeling sweaty. They'll be, you know, talking in front of people or even at a party and they'll be observing themselves and be like, oh my gosh, am I making enough? I contact like, what if I get nervous? I can't get nervous. And then if they start to get nervous, then they'll they'll feel bad. And the number one most common thing people do is try to like if they're giving a presentation, they'll try to like suppress those feelings. Like, oh, I can't feel anxious right now. I can't get all sweaty right now. My voice can't get shaky right now. And they'll make all these rules about what they can and can't feel. Or if they're at a party, they're like, oh, if I get anxious, I'm not going. Right. They'll avoid. These are our most common reactions to emotions is like, got to make this go away. And in some ways, our society has created this belief that like having anxiety is a bad thing and that it's dangerous to have anxiety. So we get anxious around our anxiety. And so when it comes to processing social anxiety in those two situations, let's say one is like just interacting with friends and the other might be a presentation. First thing to do is to check your rules around anxiety. And if you have the rules like it's not OK to feel anxious, I have to leave. If I feel anxious, I have to make my heart stop beating so fast. I have to make my breathing stop breathing so fast. That's actually going to make you feel worse. So we talked about noticing a name and say, oh, hey, hi, anxiety, glad to see you showed up today. And then we let go of judgment. And this is all kind of this first step in emotion processing. Letting go of judgment and suppression and avoid and say, it's OK to feel anxious. It's OK to feel anxious and do it anyway. I feel anxious about being on YouTube live right now and I'm going to do it anyway. That's just part of living a meaningful life is that things are going to be uncomfortable sometimes. So when it comes to emotion processing, the first thing you have to do is kind of let go of the struggle against emotions, stop labeling them as bad, stop thinking of emotions as being positive and negative and instead describe them. Is this uncomfortable? Or is this comfortable? That's more of a descriptive term than like, oh, this is terrible that I feel this way. OK. And this process with acceptance of commitment therapy is called willingness. It's creating space to feel and you tell yourself, I can allow myself to feel uncomfortable emotions without needing to make them go away. And it's actually a skill that you can practice. One of the ways I teach people to practice it is with like physical sensations so you could practice doing something that's physically uncomfortable, like holding an ice cube or doing a wall sit or even if it's safe for you medically to hold your breath for a little while and to notice what those physical sensations are and instead of being like, oh, this hurts so much, it's terrible. So you're like, oh, I'm so curious. What does this what does this feel like to be doing a deep squat right now? And you can increase your emotional awareness around that. So that's really the big first part of emotion processing. And I've mentioned that quite a bit is like creating space to feel your emotions. And this is so observing what you're feeling and then just being really willing to feel it instead of creating all these labels and rules around it. And is that different for someone who experiences like everyday anxiety compared to someone who experiences maybe a full on anxiety disorder? Are those steps still the same? Or are there slight modifications that one would need to make? This is a really good question. And this comes down to how I personally conceptualize anxiety and anxiety disorders. There are different therapists who take different approaches and and that's OK. I think each person needs to consider which type of conceptualization is going to be most helpful for them when it comes to their anxiety and their anxiety disorder. So for some people choosing to say I have an anxiety disorder and because of this, I'm going to choose to limit certain things I do like, oh, I'm not going to do public speaking is my job. That's OK, right? That might be really helpful for them and for other people saying I experience an anxiety disorder, but only because right now it's dialed up really high for me and I can dial it down and be more functional in this way works. So the short answer to your question is emotion processing works for both. That's that's the short answer to your question. And one of the reasons I think in this way, I use acceptance and commitment therapy and I'm just really, really cautious about labels. So, yes, anxiety disorders are genuine, real experience. They interfere with your functioning and they're very uncomfortable. But I'm very cautious about someone labeling themselves like the helpfulness of someone labeling themselves as being an anxious person or as that's who I am or I have this I have this disorder and it's a permanent trait of mine versus this is an experience I'm having. I'm going to choose adaptive and flexible ways to manage it. So I choose to lean on the like this is an experience, whether it's really severe or not. And I'm going to choose adaptive ways and flexible ways to manage it. And if we if we conceptualize it that way, someone who does have an anxiety disorder like social anxiety disorder, they they increase their options for managing it. And that's what matters to me. I just focus more on like, what are we going to do about it? Then like, is this a permanent situation or not? Yeah, can you still hear me? Yeah. OK. I don't know why, but I can't really hear you very well. I don't know why this like situation is going on. I'm going to I'm going to move my mic a little closer. Perfect. And that might help. Yes, that better. Yes, much better. Thanks for letting me know. OK, perfect. Yeah, that's what I think, too. Like, it's really good to notice the way that you're speaking to yourself. I know I had a stream earlier on in the Doctor Conte who was mentioning the importance of using accurate language. Because sometimes if we say things like, oh, I have feelings that I'm, you know, my heart's racing a bit faster. It's completely different than just saying, oh, my God, I'm having a mental breakdown right now because that is not helpful at all. So it's good that you mentioned that because it's also a really good reminder for me as well to kind of in processing my emotions using accurate language and doing so. Mm hmm. Yep. And so we use we use words to describe instead of label. We use words to be curious, a beginner's mind. This is from mindfulness, right? A beginner's mind. We just get really curious about what we're feeling instead of instead of judging it and saying, this is awful, right? And just be really cautious with your language. And then the next step with the motion processing is to clarify, right? Like clarify. And this includes like using a locus of control activity. Like, what can I control? What can't I control or clarifying what our thoughts are, right? If we think, oh, this is a catastrophe or we think, oh, this is hard. That's like two very different ways of thinking about social anxiety. And so that's the next step in emotion processing is really clarifying a lot of times with social anxiety. One of the things you'll see that people need to clarify is their assumptions. People make a lot of assumptions about what other people think. So they're assuming everyone's judging me. Everyone's looking at me. Everyone must be noticing how fast my heart is beating and thinking that I'm weak or unskilled or, you know, whatever it is. And and so with social anxiety, you check those assumptions. And that's the next step. I use an acronym with emotion processing. Oh, we can. Oh, is observed. W is willingness. E is explore. So you're just like, be curious. What's this feel like? And C is clarify, clarify and calm down. So you use. You use you clarify your thinking around this situation. What thoughts am I having? What cognitive distortions am I doing? What assumptions am I making that's that's contributing to my anxiety? And then also using like a lot of body grounding experience exercises and experiences to calm your body down. And I'm just going to overview this really quick. And then we can go back to any specific questions you might have. So then the that's the C clarify and calm down. And then a is act and accept. So I kind of mentioned this in the beginning, right? I feel I feel some anxiety about being live. I feel some anxiety about presenting. And I choose that my values are helping people learn mental health skills. So I'm going to choose to engage in this activity. Anyways, I'm going to accept that anxiety is part of living a full and meaningful life for me, and I'm going to take action to be here right now. And then the end I just threw in the end so that it makes a cute acronym. Oh, we can. That's that. Yeah, that's what the ends for. So O is observe W is be willing to feel let go of your rules and your struggle. E is explore, C is clarify and calm your body. A is act and accept. And then N is just because you can do it. I'm taking notes because this is wonderful. I love acronyms and this helpful memory mnemonics that you can apply. Yes, so O observe W willingness, explore, see, clarify, calm down, a act and accept, and you can do it. Yeah, and because you can. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the acronym I use and there's like a little download on my website if people want to see an overview of the process. OK, wonderful. We'll definitely include a link in the after the stream. And in terms of kind of processing emotions for like different sort of kind of feeling so we have anxiety, but then we also have things like depression, things that sometimes don't have necessarily and an organic cause, you can say, or something you can pinpoint, say, this is the reason why I'm feeling this way. How would you process those emotions? Yeah, so depression, I would consider depression, for example, as being one. Like a like a ball of yarn that has been wound and wound and wound and wound, right, like so you might have a lot of experiences like as a child, maybe you experience some trauma or abuse. And then as an adult, you started creating these conceptualizations like, oh, I'm a bad person. I'm a lazy person. And that's another string that winds around it or you might have like some discouraging experiences or you might have learned that the best way to respond to situations is to to kind of give up to curl up in a ball. All right. To be like, this is like the most of that. I'm not going to succeed at this. So I might as well quit trying. And so like depression is such a huge bundle of consistent experiences that add up to this overwhelming experience. So processing depression looks like breaking it down into tiny, tiny little little snippets at a time. So you might be having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. And if you were to process that experience, you'd say, oh, I'm going to instead of judging myself right now, instead of judging myself as being a bad, lazy person, I'm going to notice that thought. And that's kind of the observing part of oh, we can write. I'm going to observe myself laying in bed and instead of judging myself and labeling myself and beating myself up, I'm just going to be really curious. What does it feel like to not want to get out of bed? And I'm going to be willing to let myself feel that sadness just for a few minutes. It doesn't mean you have to accept that you're going to feel sad forever. That's the willingness. I'm going to explore if there's any thoughts. This is the E. I'm going to explore if there's any thoughts that are contributing to this. Like, oh, I have to do everything or else I'm going to do nothing. Like that's a cognitive distortion that might lead to like staying in bed all morning. And I'm going to clarify that. Is that true? You have to do everything today or you might as well not get out of bed. Let's challenge that thought. Let's be really gentle with myself while I do this, like really compassionate, but like say, well, maybe what if I just did one thing this morning, maybe I just get out of bed and wash my face and then I can get back in bed? That's a clarification type activity. And then you choose an action or you accept. And that's the next step, right? Is actor accept? She said, well, maybe I'll get up, I'll wash my face, I'll get back in bed. And that's how you could like break down emotion processing for depression. When depression is such a huge, you know, bundle of yarn, we just take it like one minute, five minutes at a time, something like that. OK, I see. So we're going to kind of progress in the in terms of more complex situations, so that's OK, because I think I understand and hopefully the audience also understands like the idea of, oh, we can for social anxiety or situations that we can clearly identify. This is a stimulus that causes us to feel a certain way and depression where there might be tons of things that cause us to feel a specific way. But what happens for things like schizophrenia when our ability to then process and to understand the world might not be at its full potential? Oh, that's such a great question. I love it. And, you know, acceptance of commitment therapy has been shown to be effective. That's one of my main models. I use a lot of different models, but acceptance of commitment therapy has been shown to be effective to a degree for people with schizophrenia, because it does help them be more accepting of their experiences, including their experiences like hallucinations or delusions, things like that. So those first steps of observing and noticing, you might be like, oh, I'm feeling I'm feeling off. I'm feeling confused or I'm noticing this, this hallucination. And you can still process it in a way. But for a lot of people, when our emotions get really extreme, when we're experiencing like a crisis, we have to include scaffolds around our processing experience, because basically when we're highly emotional, the thinking part of our brain shuts down. And so I'm imagining right now someone having a panic attack. I'm imagining someone having maybe like a severe break. Like someone just broke up with them and they're like super upset. And I'm not an expert with schizophrenia. So I'm not going to address that one as much and hopefully leave that to people who are a little bit more expert in that area. But with really extreme emotions where you can't just calmly work through them. We create scaffolds to support the thinking part of our brain. So when we're experiencing an attention motion, the fight or flight response goes off in our brain and the higher thinking process is shut down and we just go into this kind of more emotionally reactive part of our brains. So we have to turn. We have to have these habits and routines that help us process emotions. And that includes things like talking to someone. So anything that makes processing anything that makes your emotions and thoughts concrete is helpful. So that's like talking to someone that makes it out loud. Instead of putting it in your head, that makes it more concrete writing it down, that helps make it more physical and concrete and makes it more clear. And you might be really surprised at how writing things down really helps when you're anxious or depressed or grieving or hurt or offended or angry. It just helps your brain slow things down because what's going on is the thinking part of your brain, the frontal part of your brain is not as engaged. You'll also see this is helpful with people with ADHD. Right? Like they're having a hard time with executive functioning. They're having a hard time getting the boss part of their brain to tell the emotional part of their brain like, chill out. It's going to be OK. Let's think through this rationally. So all of the scaffolding is really helpful when you're highly, highly emotional or dealing with intense struggles. Other types of activities that are helpful with the scaffolding. And this all includes like I love paper, right? Like I love writing things down physically. Nick Wignall, he's one of my favorite bloggers. He says, never worry in your head. Write it down so you can do an activity like scheduled worry where every day at 12 30, you write down your worries and you put them on paper and that helps you process them. You can do an activity that helps clarify like a locus of control activity where you write, you take a piece of paper and you put a line down the middle and you write on one side of the piece of paper like this is in my control and on the other side you write this is out of my control and you write it down. You just put everything down and that helps clarify. That's the C step in emotion processing. And so did that answer your question? Like when things are really extreme, how can you use emotion processing? Using scaffold to support the thinking part of our brain. Yes, I think so. And I think it's really nice that you wrote out, you said that you wrote things out as well, because I think that's also very helpful. I wasn't even aware of this, the term for it, but I've always been a really big fan of journaling and I think scheduling time during the day to just think and just to write things out and make things concrete has been very, very helpful. So thank you for also bringing that up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So at this point, I just thought I would summarize kind of the points that we've mentioned and then I want to introduce a very special guest to everyone as well, Michelle, who has been helping out with this Ask an Expert livestream. She'll be interacting with you all and picking some of the questions that you've asked. So if you have questions, feel free to put them in the chat now and they'll possibly be answered. So for the summary, essentially, we explored, oh, we can observe willingness, explore, clarify and calm down, act and accept and for you can do it as a good way for processing our emotions. We've also used some concrete examples. So we talked about social anxiety. We mentioned depression and more complex situations like schizophrenia. So with that, I am going to introduce you all to Michelle. Hi, Michelle. I think she's muted. Hey, everyone. I'm super excited to be here. Welcome. So I'll give this to you for the last little bit to just interact with the audience and see if anyone has any questions about processing emotions and yeah. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Michelle and I'm going to be hosting my own livestream in a few weeks for Ask an Advocate on topics about mental health awareness and access to health care. So I'm going to be taking some questions from the audience. I have a few right here. And so the first one is, Emma, how do you suggest getting out of a bad relationship, especially if it causes you anxiety? This was asked by a heli. So I guess my first question is, does the relationship cause you anxiety or leaving the relationship cause you anxiety? And I know we can't really clarify that. But if the relationship causes you anxiety, I might have an answer that people don't don't like. How do you get out of a bad relationship? If you know the relationship is toxic, you've got to start with an affirmation and saying like, here is like real clarity on who you are and what you want in your relationship. So you clarify your values. I want a relationship where we were able to talk about difficult problems in a healthy way. I want a relationship where I am treated with respect. I want a relationship where we share mutual goals or whatever that is. Right. So you, as long as you're centered in your own belief of who you are, what you want your life to be about and what you are and aren't willing to accept in a relationship, that's got to be your first step, because then you can know what those those boundaries are. Now, if you're anxious about setting those boundaries, if you're anxious about like the boundaries, like I will leave because this isn't getting met, then it's not going to be very popular. But a lot of people want the anxiety to go away before they take the action that they need to take. Oh, when I'm not anxious, then I'll do a presentation. When I'm not anxious, then I'll set this boundary. When I feel comfortable, then I'll say no to my boss. Right. And instead I say, you got to reverse that. You've got to say, even though I feel anxious, I'm going to make the right choice for me. Even though I feel anxious, I'm going to give this presentation. And that's what acceptance and commitment therapy is all about. Right. And emotion processing is saying I'm going to allow these emotions to be here and still choose to act on my values. So I would just, I love values, clarification activities. What do I value? What do I believe in? And maybe you believe, maybe the reason you're anxious about breaking up is because you really value being kind and then you have this false rule in your head that says being kind means never making anyone else sad. That rule is false, right? Being kind includes telling people no, because that's kind to yourself. And it's probably kind for them, right? If the relationship is going nowhere, breaking up with them is actually a very caring and compassionate thing to do because you care about their happiness. So you say, I value kindness. I'm going to do this even though this hurts and I can handle feeling uncomfortable emotions. That doesn't mean it's a bad choice. No, that's a great explanation. I agree with you, like valuing kindness. That's extremely important in anything. Another question, and this was asked by Liam and it's been asked by a few people, but he asked, Emma, can you give advice to someone on how to help a friend or a sibling that has thoughts of self-harm? Hmm. Good question. It's a big question. How to help a friend or sibling who has thoughts of self-harm? First thing to say, I would say is ask them about it straight up. So there's good evidence showing that if you ask someone directly, are you feeling suicidal? Are you having thoughts of hurting yourself? That's not going to make them like this brand new idea come into their head and they're suddenly going to be more likely to self-harm. So get be willing to ask the really hard questions. Second, I would say is like know what your resources are in your area and know what resources are available for people. So in the United States, we've got the 988. That's the new Suicide Prevention hotline. You can call them for specific advice for you. Like, oh, how can I help someone? And a therapist can give you their time to talk you through some options. And in addition to that, your friend or sibling can also call that line. I would say get really good at the skill of empathic listening so where you can listen without needing to necessarily give a lot of advice or tell people what to do or talk about yourself, like learn to listen well and ask a good, good open-ended questions like, oh, what's that like for you? You know, ask questions like that instead of just feeling like you need to give them a lot of advice. Yeah, those are the first things that come to my mind, but you can call that 988 number yourself and ask a counselor there for suggestions for your specific situation. And then of course, you know, always try to help them get the resources that can support them. So if they're in school, there might be resources in their school. In your local community, there might be mental health resources in their local community or in your church or in your network. So get more people involved. Like if you're the only person who knows that this person is suicidal, that's very heavy for you. And I would say get get more people involved, more friends, more parents, more teachers, more administrators, more community support. Thank you so much. And then Tristan asked, how do I process my emotions in an argument with my girlfriend if she doesn't want to continue the argument and it's left open-ended? Whew, that's hard, right? It can be really hard to tolerate those those relations like like a fight in a relationship because I think for a lot of us, we want our relationships to always feel good and to always be happy and never have any problems is really hard for me. Like if I have a disagreement with my husband and it's left open for me to not want to just keep going back and fixing it. So I think the first thing to recognize is that processing emotions is an internal process and your half of this disagreement is what's in your control. So I do the locus of control activity, right? What's in my control? What isn't and just clarify that right off the bat. I can't change how she feels. I can't change what she thinks. I can't change how she acts. I can't change what she does, right? And you change like, what can I do? I can work on myself. I can learn what to do with my own feelings in regard to this argument. I can learn new ways to communicate on my half of this relationship. And, you know, when I was in training, one of our trainers used to say this all the time, he said, a good relationship is not 50 50. A good relationship is 100 100. Each person just puts in 100 percent of their half. And that's it. You can only focus on on your half of the situation. So again, I would I would encourage you to write about it. I would encourage you to find someone safe who you can talk with. Because that is a hard thing in a relationship, like when you have a fight with someone or a disagreement, you don't want to necessarily break their trust and go to like their friends or your family members and talk bad about them. So find someone else who you can reach out to and and talk about it with. There's a couple ways. No, I totally agree with that. Like that's like a big one that was asked like throughout the chat. But another viewer asked, how do you manage anger? I've suppressed it for so long for the sake of self-preservation. Good question. I love I love it. First thing to think about is anger is often a secondary emotion. So for a lot of people and especially men, they've been taught like all of their emotions are a sign of weakness, but anger is acceptable. And it sounds like this person's kind of the opposite, right? Like they've been suppressing anger. Now anger, all emotions serve a function. That's one part of observing and being willing to feel emotions is to recognize emotion serve a function. So what's the function of anger when it's honest and just to be clear, 95% of the time anger is a secondary emotion covering up other more sensitive emotions, but 5% of the time anger is about protection. So if someone's hurting my child in a very severe way, I'm going to feel very angry. I'm going to run over there and try and, you know, make them stop hurting my child. In that situation, anger is a functional response that is helpful. Now the other 95% of time anger is covering up more sensitive emotions like sadness, guilt, grief, hurt, disappointment. And in those situations, you want to really explore what's this anger about. Research shows that I and I would say this is true that most of the time expressing anger, like, oh, people tell you hit a pillow, punch, you know, punch a pillow, hit a go, go do some punching or go to one of those like anger rooms where you break TVs and stuff. Research shows that's not really that effective, usually. And I think that's because a lot of times anger is about something else. Check yourself, what's this anger about? Is there an action you need to take to create safety? And if not, like, is there a boundary you need to set? Are you angry because your boss is taking advantage of you? Then you need to like that anger serves a function and you need to create that boundary to create safety. The rest of the time, though, maybe you're feeling angry because you're actually guilty and you're feeling guilty about something you did and you need to fix that. Or maybe you're feeling angry because you're really, really sad and you don't like feeling sad, so instead you get angry at someone else to cover up that feeling. And so as you process emotions, explore like, what's underneath this anger? Now, every once in a while, anger really is valid. And I'm not saying ignore the anger, suppress the anger or make it go away. But I'm saying like, spend a minute with and get really curious. Mindfulness has a tool called the beginner's mind and you pretend like anger is the planet Mars and you are the first person to ever walk on that feeling. You say, huh, I'm so curious, get really curious about anger. What does it feel like to be angry? Where do I feel this anger in my body? What what what kind of thoughts do I have when I'm angry? And this is hard because when you're really angry, your front, your thinking party brain turns off. So this is asking you to kind of pendulate back to the thinking part of your brain and swing into that and explore those thoughts. So I would say that's the next thing I'd say, get really curious about anger. What is it was like? And as you lean into that, it might give you more opportunities to explore what it's about and to work through it, see what action this is asking you to take, or what problem it's asking you to solve, or if you're thinking around this situation is really distorted, that's making you angry. Like if you think everyone's out to get me or life is so unfair, that kind of thinking is going to make you feel angry when maybe you're actually quite safe or you're distorting the problem. That is a really like, how do I answer this question in two minutes? And it's like, oh, you could spend a couple hours on this question. Right. Yeah. A lot of questions on anger. And Sylvia just asked a very she has two very interesting questions. She asked, how do you process jealousy or the so-called bad emotions in a healthy way? And she asked, are there is there such thing as bad emotions or are they just socially labeled that way? Good question. OK, I personally do not believe there are negative and positive emotions. I believe every emotion serves a function when it's being really honest. But often we create distorted emotions by thinking in the best way I can say is an exaggeration or a lie, like a cognitive distortion might make us feel a so-called negative emotion more often than is valid. So like I said, with anger, right? If I'm running around thinking everyone's out to get me, life is so unfair. The person at McDonald's didn't give me ice cream not because the machine wasn't broken, but because they hate me or my eyebrows are too thick or whatever it is, right? Like if you're having this kind of running dialogue in your head, you're going to interpret a situation falsely and that's going to lead to intense emotions that aren't as helpful at living the life you value. So I don't ask the question, oh, is it a negative emotion? Is it bad to feel this way? I ask, is this emotion helping me act in a way that lines up with my values? And if that emotion is not helping me act in a way that's lining up with my values, then I'm going to choose to work through and process that emotion or notice that emotion and accept that emotion and choose to shift my focus to something more helpful. So instead of using words like positive and negative or good and bad or right and wrong emotions, I use words like comfortable and uncomfortable, helpful and unhelpful or accurate and distorted. Those are the kinds of words I use to describe emotions. So jealousy, let's take jealousy. Does jealousy usually help you act in a way that lines up with the kind of person you want to be? Does jealousy usually help you build a healthy relationship that's really positively oriented toward happiness and growth and love and support and commitment? I can think of a couple situations where jealousy might be helpful, right? Like a committed relationship usually involves excluding other people from that relationship. So in that way, like jealousy can motivate us to say, I will not accept an open relationship. For example, I will only accept a committed relationship. In that way, jealousy can be helpful. Now, jealousy can get really distorted when we think, oh, you know, my guy can't look at anyone else or else. I'm going to blow up and scream and yell at him. Like that's probably not going to lead to a really healthy relationship. So how would I process jealousy? I would ask, what's the core that you really want? Like, what do you want in a relationship? What does it look like? And then I would say, what kind of actions lead toward that relationship? And I would kind of disregard the emotion as a motivation. I would say, OK, I'm going to notice that. I'm going to notice that I'm feeling jealous. I'm going to notice that I'm having intense emotions. I'm going to describe it. I'm going to get curious about it. I'm going to pretend like it's Mars and I've never felt it before. And then I'm going to say, what do I want? And I'm going to clarify my values in that relationship and choose action that lines up with those values. So in some ways, jealousy can be healthy if you're like setting boundaries or like communicating those boundaries in a healthy way. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so let's say you're dating a guy and you are you want to be exclusive. Maybe you haven't clarified that and you see him like spending time with someone else in a way that you're not comfortable with. Jealousy might motivate you. Emotions are about motivation. They ask us a question and they ask us, what are you going to do about things? So it might motivate you just to clarify that relationship and say, look, I'm only going to be in a relationship with you if we're exclusive from now on. And if you change that, if you choose to not be exclusive, then I'm going to choose not to be in a relationship with you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I totally agree with that. That's like a good way of putting it. And then this is the last question. So how do you support someone who's experiencing grief? Such a good question and also a hard question. And I think I'm learning more and more that grief is a universal experience that most of us have gotten like no education on. That's what I'm learning. Like I've made a couple of videos on grief and I've just had tons of people watch them because I think a lot of people are really struggling with this. So it's it's normal. OK, so grief, educating yourself as much as possible. The first thing I want to say, and I don't want this to be like a shameless promotion, but I just worked with a grief expert to make a couple of courses on grief because there needs to be education about us. The first thing I would say is like learn about it and learn that you can experience grief in all kinds of situations. You can grieve like a divorce. You can grieve the loss of a pet. You can grieve the loss of a job or a future or even your past that maybe you lost to depression or anxiety. So grief is normal. Grief is the internal emotional experience and mourning is the external experience. And so how can you support someone who's grieving? I the first thing I would say is be willing to ask them about it. Say, would you like to talk about what you're going through? It's OK if you don't. If you just want to sit, hang out, do something fun. But if you want to talk about it, I'm here for you. And don't just say like, oh, you know, let me know if there's something you need. Ask them specifically, can I make you dinner? Can I come over and sit with you? Can I do X, Y, Z for you and like propose something specific? I think people worry a lot about doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing. But I think people who are grieving. Actually wish people wouldn't tiptoe around them as much and we just ask them. You don't have to say, hey, tell me about what's going on for you. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of things not to say like, oh, have you gotten over it yet? Hey, like if someone like lost their husband, if their husband died, hey, when are you going to start dating? Are you over it yet? You know, things like that, like that's not super helpful, but asking an open-ended question like or asking a question like, hey, would you like to talk about what's going on for you? It offering to spend time with them can be helpful. The other thing I would say is like acknowledge that grief isn't something people get over in a week or a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Like the grief process for really big losses is often a year or more or longer. There's no time frame on this, right? And so I would also say, ask them how they're doing three months from now, ask them how they're doing four months from now, ask them how they're doing five months from now and develop the skills yourself to be a good listener. So like again, like I said previously, like empathic listening, like learning how to listen without needing to give advice or talk about yourself or ask a ton of questions is a really valuable skill. And increasing your emotional tolerance, like I use this phrase all the time. A lot of times people like their goal is I just want to get feeling better. I just want to feel happy. I just want to feel good. And I would say what if instead you get really good at feeling? What if you get really good at handling like feeling anxiety or sadness or grief so that when you feel those things, it doesn't bother you anymore. It's like strengthening your muscles instead of taking off your backpack because feeling is part of living and grieving is part of loving. So if you want to help someone grieve, I would say, like develop the skills to feel feelings and make that rule that it's OK, like it's OK to feel sad. It's OK to cry with someone. It's OK to be distraught for a little while. And that's like a framework shift more than just like, oh, here's the here's the thing to say. So I hope that's helpful. Of course, absolutely. And I actually wanted to say that the misconception sometimes is that everyone experiences grief the same way, and that's not true at all. Like it's different for everyone, honestly. Totally, totally. And some people like want to talk about it and hug and cry and be around a ton of people and some people want to just like listen to sad songs and like look at pictures and that's part of their process. And that's OK. And some people just want to go for a hike or work on their car. Right. Like exactly. A lot of different ways to process emotions. Well, thank you so much, Emma. Thank you for answering all these amazing questions. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. So thanks for having me. Thank you so much, Michelle, for interacting. Thank you so much for your expertise and for the audience for engaging with us in this very special stream, because we've never done something like this before. So if you guys like this format of getting to chat about theory and then getting to actually apply this in your situations that you're experiencing now, then yeah, please leave your thoughts in the comments and what you'd like to see next. So again, thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Emma. Would you like to share a bit about your course before we head off or about your channels just for people to watch next after they watch the stream? Yeah, I mean, you can find me on YouTube at TherapyInanuchelle or that's my website as well, therapyinanuchelle.com. Perfect. So until then, bye. See you guys. Bye.