Understanding And Managing Emotions To Create More Joy, Love, And Peace | Jude Bijou | Episode 103

Ask any parent and they’ll tell you they want their child to be happy. When you dig deeper that turns out to mean we want them to experience joy, love, and peace. That’s a tall order but emotion expert Jude Bijou has a blueprint for finding it. On today’s Mighty Parenting podcast episode, Jude talks to host Sandy Fowler about the six main emotions and how we can shift from feeling sadness, anger, and fear to feeling joy, love, and peace. She shares the difference between feelings and emotions, how they impact us, and how we can manage feelings and emotions for a better life and a better relationship with our teen.

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A Favorite Quote from the Show: 

“Emotions are energy in motion. When we own our sadness, anger, and fear, we can name it, express it, and release it. Then we experience joy, love, and peace.”

“It’s the moment we react out of emotion, particularly anger, that parents regret. But we can manage our emotions by releasing them safely then we can have a constructive conversation. ”

High Points of Our Conversation on Understanding and Managing Emotions to Create More Joy, Love, and Peace:

According to Attitude Reconstruction, we only have six emotions: joy, love, peace, sadness, anger, and fear. All the other emotions can be distilled down to these core six emotions.

Understanding emotions and managing emotions means understanding that emotions are energy in motion. They are pure physical sensations. 

• Sadness leaves our bodies feeling down and heavy.
• Anger leaves us feeling hot and needing to strike out.
• Fear leaves us feeling antsy and gives us a jittery stomach.
• Joy leaves us feeling light and free.
• Love makes us feel warm and we pull things toward us.
• Peace leaves us feeling relaxed, present, and alert.

Managing feelings starts with understanding emotions. The first step is identifying emotions. We need to look at the physical sensation or where our focus is. Anger is an outward emotions, pushing, shoving, and striking away from us. Love is an inward emotions, pulling and drawing things toward us.

We need to manage our emotions. To do that we:

1. Name it
2. Express it
3. Move it out and release it

As young children we simply expressed our emotions and moved on with our day. Growing up we heard messages about what is and isn’t acceptable. In order to meet those expectations we experimented with managing our emotions and learned to suppress them.

We experience our emotions on a physical level then our mind kicks in. We take those sensations, think about them, design stories around them, and that creates our feelings. But underneath all that is the underlying emotion which we can deal with.

Anger is hot and wants to strike out. To release it we need to push the energy out of us: grab the steering wheel and shake it, stomp your feet, whack a pillow with a tube. 

The key in doing this is to not fall into thinking and the story. You can think or say, “I’m so angry/frustrated” or simply grunt. Do not yell about what someone did or why you are angry. Don’t say, “They’re so _______”.

Fear has to do with time. It surfaces when we go into the past or the future instead of being in the present. In order to release it we shake and shiver—up the spine like a swimmer before a race. We’ve been taught to tighten up but we really need to shake and shiver to manage fear.

We can release sadness by crying. Remember to not use words or, if using words, make simple statements about your emotion or make positive statements: “I feel so sad.” “I’m fine.” “I did the best I could.” We don’t want to say things like, “Nobody loves me” because that stops the release and actually makes us feel worse and can create depression.

After we experience and release our emotions we can have a constructive conversation without taking our emotions out on someone else.

Anger makes us want to strike out and if we don’t manage our anger we can take it out on our kids.

We can’t always handle our emotions right in the moment as there are places where it isn’t appropriate to do that. It’s okay to handle it when you can, just be sure to make time to do that.

Sometimes we have layers of emotions. Express the closest emotion first then the next and the next until you are done.

Create a safe space in your home to express emotions. You can keep things there to help you with expression.

If you’re having a difficult moment with your kids or your family simply say, “I need to go own my emotions”. Go to a safe space where you can express them then return. Or, if you’re at the family table and things are tense, have everyone stand up and stomp their feet, or shake and shiver. You’re likely to end up laughing after a couple minutes which is good.

Eye rolling is a common occurrence with tweens and teens, one that can trigger us. Stomping our feet helps in managing those emotions.

Resources Mentioned in Show:

Attitude Reconstruction: A Blueprint for Building a Better Life

Reliable Truths http://attitudereconstruction.com/changing-your-thinking-is-easier-than-you-think/

Our Guest Jude Bijou:

Attitude Reconstruction offers both practical and spiritual tools for happiness and a unified theory of human behavior. Integrating our emotions, feelings, thoughts, speech, and actions, Jude Bijou, ma, mft has uncovered the jet path to go from sadness, anger, and fear to joy, love, and peace. She has extensive experience with radio interviews and writes a thoughtful, informative, and uplifting monthly newsletter, and articles for publication on a broad variety of topics, from business to relationships, and from personal growth to child rearing practices. Jude is a workshop leader who also teaches adult education classes on both communication and how to change negative thoughts and handle emotions constructively through Santa Barbara City College.

 Jude Bijou MA MFT is a respected psychotherapist, professional educator, workshop leader, and consultant. Her award-winning book is Attitude Reconstruction: A Blueprint for Building a Better Life. 

To learn more or connect with our guest visit www.attitudereconstruction.com and sign up for her newsletter. 

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