{"id":33805,"date":"2017-01-18T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T16:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=33805"},"modified":"2017-01-17T15:36:07","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T23:36:07","slug":"how-therapy-can-help-with-emotional-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/how-therapy-can-help-with-emotional-expression-0118175","title":{"rendered":"How Therapy Can Help with Emotional Expression"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Multi-exposureI like to think of therapy<\/a> as a place to try on emotions<\/a>. I\u2019m not implying there are emotions we don\u2019t have yet; we\u2019re given the capacity for the spectrum. But fully expressing how one feels in a healthy manner is not always easy to do.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy because it gets socialized out of us early on. As children, we quickly learn what is \u201cappropriate.\u201d This may differ at home, at school, and maybe even with different caregivers. At some point, we settle into how we generally express ourselves, whether it\u2019s with anger<\/a>, sadness<\/a>, happiness<\/a>, amusement, or some combination of emotions. This is part of how we identify our personality<\/a>. Feelings big or small, held in or let loose, comprise an unconscious, growing sense of how we emotionally exist in the world.<\/p>\n

Sometimes people seek therapy<\/a> to learn to express these feelings. Anger management<\/a>, for example, is meant to shift how anger is expressed. Likewise, grief and bereavement<\/a> counseling following a loss can help with those emotional expressions.<\/p>\n

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More often, though, people\u2019s reasons for coming to therapy are different. Feelings and emotions more typically come up with respect to movement toward another goal, such as improving relationships<\/a>, work advancement, or assertiveness. Still, cruelly, it\u2019s often the unhealthy expression of feelings and emotions that gets in the way of these presenting goals.<\/p>\n

In therapy, we travel back in time to see how the ways we emotionally express ourselves were taught to us and subsequently internalized. With these insights, we can make new decisions going forward about how we want to show our feelings.<\/p>\n

Being Taught How to Have Emotions<\/h2>\n

In therapy work with parents<\/a>, one major focus tends to be modeling. This looks at how you\u2019d like your child to act in different situations, of course, but also at teaching your child how to express their feelings in a healthy way.<\/p>\n

In therapy, we travel back in time to see how the ways we emotionally express ourselves were taught to us and subsequently internalized.<\/span><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be a parent to know kids tantrum. It\u2019s how they express anger, exhaustion, fear<\/a>, disappointment, excitement, and other emotions. By labeling emotions\u2014\u201cThat uncomfortable feeling when your face gets all hot and you want to crawl into a hole? That\u2019s embarrassment<\/a>\u201d\u2014we slowly learn we don\u2019t need to throw ourselves on the floor anymore. We come to understand the emotion, how it feels in our body, how it feels in our heart. We can express it and not let it control us.<\/p>\n

Children watch their moms and dads be angry or sad, and in so doing they learn how to \u201chave\u201d these feelings. Parents who hide their tears or never argue (in a healthy way) in front of their children rob them of amazing learning opportunities. When these opportunities arise, with their kids watching, parents can model, \u201cThis is how people settle differences. It\u2019s uncomfortable, but these emotions don\u2019t have to be scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experimenting with Emotions in Therapy<\/h2>\n

Emotions are layered. Sometimes we have to go through a lot of anger to get to sadness. Sometimes we need to locate that anger under strata of sarcasm.<\/p>\n

And this<\/em> is what often keeps people from achieving those presenting goals, from making their relationships and work lives better. We spend time and energy protecting the expression of these feelings. We don\u2019t peel back the layers.<\/p>\n

The therapeutic relationship<\/a> allows for a safe space\u2014and I don\u2019t use that term loosely\u2014to express feelings and emotions, to peel them back, to study them, to see how they work. In daily life, it\u2019s rare we show how we authentically feel, even in our most trusted relationships. Sometimes we think we\u2019ve expressed a feeling because we expressed it the way we were socialized to do. Then we realize how our stomach still hurts, how we\u2019re still replaying that moment with our boss over and over in our head, how we can\u2019t sleep, how we\u2019re eating way more than we need to.<\/p>\n

In the therapy room, we can look deeper. We can unpack our feelings and emotions and see if there is more to express. We can take a chance and get really angry or really sad\u2014or even really, unabashedly happy, if that\u2019s difficult for us.<\/p>\n

Therapy is a place to experiment with emotions we\u2019ve always had but either didn\u2019t know how to express or felt inhibited in expressing. We can try it all on. Because it\u2019s all inside us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ways we’re taught to express our emotions don\u2019t always serve us in life. Therapy is a place to not only try on different feelings, but really feel them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[31,391,49,25],"class_list":["post-33805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-emotional-intelligence","tag-considering-psychotherapy","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}