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Delayed Emotional Reactions: Why You Understand Your Feelings Later & What It Means | Let’s Get Emotional · Let's Get Emotional

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Let's Get Emotional.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tatiana Rojas, and these mini episodes are a little different because it's just me today.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to take a few minutes to talk through some of the ways emotions show up in everyday life.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get started.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever walked away from a conversation, gone on with your day, and then hours later thought, oh, that bothered me more than I realized.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing dramatic happened in the moment.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: You finished the conversation, went back to work, picked up the kids, answered messages, figured out dinner, or moved on to whatever came next.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then later, when your day slowed down, the conversation came back to you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: A comment sounded different than it did earlier.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You started thinking about the way someone responded or realized you had been carrying a reaction around with you for the rest of the day without fully noticing it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think we often assume that if something affects us, we should know it while it's happening.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not always in a position to process an experience at the same time we're living through it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Think about a difficult conversation at work.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Someone makes a comment that catches you off guard.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: You respond, finish the meeting, and keep going.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, you're focused on staying engaged in the conversation, you're listening, thinking about what you need to say next, and trying to get through the rest of the meeting.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Later that evening, the comment comes back to you.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now that you're not sitting in the meeting, you hear it differently.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: You realize you felt dismissed, the tone bothered you, or the conversation touched on something you had already been carrying into the day.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The reaction didn't suddenly appear hours later.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: You just had some room to recognize it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: That distinction matters because when we understand something afterward, it can be easy to look back and judge ourselves for not catching it sooner.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't I say something?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: How did I not realize that bothered me?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why did it take me so long to understand what was going on?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But hindsight gives us something we didn't have in the original moment: distance.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you're no longer trying to respond, manage the situation, or move on to the next thing, you may notice details that were harder to pay attention to before.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: That happens with more than conversations.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can get through an incredibly busy week and realize on Saturday just how drained you are.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can spend weeks preparing for a major change and feel the emotional weight of it after the change finally happens.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can get through something you were worried about and only recognize afterward how much tension you had been carrying.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: The experience has already happened, but your understanding of it is still catching up.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's value in allowing that.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to treat every delayed realization as something we missed.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: It can give us information about ourselves.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back can change the way you understand the moment.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You might finally see why you got quiet, why you needed space afterward, or why that conversation stayed with you for the rest of the day.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're not looking at it from the same place anymore.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: You have some distance from it, and that can make things easier to understand.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: That new information can help you make sense of the experience without turning it into a critique of how you handled it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than going straight to why didn't I realize this sooner, there's a different question we can ask.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: What makes more sense to me now?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: The question keeps the focus on what you've learned rather than what you think you should have known before.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So before we wrap up, I want to walk us through a guided reflection on a moment like that in your own life.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're driving, keep your attention on the road and listen along.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're somewhere you can sit quietly, get comfortable, and give yourself a moment to focus.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Think about a recent situation that made more sense to you afterward.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it manageable.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a conversation, an interaction, or something that happened during your day that stayed with you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Bring that moment to mind and think first about what was happening while you were actually in it.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: What were you focused on at the time?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Were you trying to respond to someone?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Were you thinking about what needed to happen next?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Were you moving quickly enough that there wasn't much room to think about your reaction at all?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the moment.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: What did it look like from where you were then?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing about what became clearer later.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: What did you notice once you had some distance from it?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Did a comment land differently?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did you recognize that you were more affected than you thought?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did you understand why you kept thinking about the situation?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Stay with whatever comes up and now ask yourself, what makes more sense to me now?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself some time to deal with that question.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You may understand something about your reaction, see the interaction differently, or recognize that there was more going on for you than you could pay attention to at the time.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer though still isn't clear, you can leave the question open.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now notice how you're talking to yourself about the earlier version of you.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you criticizing yourself for not saying something, for not responding differently, or for not recognizing your reaction sooner?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you notice that kind of judgment, try shifting the focus back to what you know now.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at the moment with more information than you had while you were living it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't change what happened, but it can help you understand the experience differently.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: As you move through the rest of today and throughout the rest of your week, pay attention to those moments when something from earlier suddenly clicks.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of going straight to how did I not see that?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Try asking, what am I understanding now?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that may be the information you needed from the experience.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if this reflection brought up the thought, I wish I understood this part of myself better, that's also part of why I created the Let's Get Emotional, Emotional Fluency, Learning the Language of Feelings course.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: In the course, we spend more time exploring how emotions show up, how to better understand your own experiences emotionally, and how to put what you're experiencing into words so you can communicate them better with others and understand them for yourself.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: These mini episodes give you a place to pause and think about some of these ideas.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The course gives you more space to explore them and work through them at your own pace.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get emotional.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional fluency, learning the language of feelings will launch in September through Own Your Bloom.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to keep up with the course and what I'm creating there, you can follow Own Your Bloom on Instagram and TikTok.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be sharing more about the course as we get closer to launch.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, if you're not sure what you're feeling, that's 100% okay.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself some time to make sense of it.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can figure out the rest as you go along.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of your day and take care.