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Feelings vs. Self-Judgments: How to Name What You Actually Feel | Let’s Get Emotional · Let's Get Emotional

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Let's Get Emotional.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tatiana Rojas, and these mini episodes are a little different because it's just me today.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Taking a few minutes to talk through some of the ways emotions show up in everyday life.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to talk about something I think a lot of us do without even realizing it.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to explain how we feel, but instead of naming an emotion, we end up saying something about ourselves.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel dumb.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I feel weak.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I feel ridiculous.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And those statements definitely communicate that something doesn't feel good.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But stupid isn't really an emotion.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Neither is weak.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those are judgments.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an important difference between saying I'm feeling embarrassed and saying I'm dumb.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: One tells me something about what I'm experiencing, the other tells me what I've decided that experience means about me.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you make a mistake at work.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: You send the wrong thing, forget something you were supposed to do, or realize you completely misunderstood what somebody was asking for.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And almost immediately you think, I feel so dumb.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us know that feeling, but if we stay with it for another second, what's actually happening emotionally?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: You could be embarrassed.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: You could be disappointed in yourself.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You could be worried about how someone else is going to respond.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's an actual emotional experience underneath.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I feel dumb.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when we skip over that and go straight to judging ourselves, we end up making an already uncomfortable moment feel even harder.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you're not only dealing with the mistake, you're also dealing with the story that the mistake means something about who you are.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we can do this with all kinds of situations.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: You get emotional during a conversation and think, why am I being so dramatic?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're struggling to keep up with everything and tell yourself, I'm just lazy.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You need help with something, and suddenly the word is weak.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Those words can come out really quickly.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So quickly that we might not even notice we've moved from describing an experience to criticizing ourselves for having it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think the answer is to start correcting every thought you have.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm being ridiculous pops into your head, you don't need to immediately have an argument with yourself about it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you can get curious.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: What am I actually feeling right now?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I feel ridiculous could be embarrassment.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm being dramatic, could be hurt, I'm weak, could be overwhelm or vulnerability.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: That gives you something very different to work with.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because now we're talking about the experience instead of turning the experience into a description of who you are.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there's another piece of this that also matters.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those self-judgments can make it harder to allow ourselves to have the emotion at all.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: If I've already decided that being upset means I'm dramatic, then I'm probably gonna spend a lot of energy trying not to be upset.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: If needing support means I'm weak, I may have a much harder time asking for help.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: If making a mistake means I'm dumb, I might get stuck criticizing myself instead of figuring out what I need to do next.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the next time you catch yourself saying something like, I feel dumb, you can try adding one little question.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: What am I feeling underneath that?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need the most precise emotional word immediately.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can start broad and get more specific from there.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: You might notice embarrassment first and then realize there's also disappointment underneath it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: You could notice frustration and then recognize that you're actually worried about what happens next.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you may realize there's more than one feeling there.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of emotional fluency too.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about having the perfect words every time something happens.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it is learning to notice when we're describing an emotion and when we're actually judging ourselves for having the experience in the first place.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons and one of the things I explore more deeply in the Let's Get Emotional, Emotional Fluency Learning the Language of Feelings course.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: This course is designed to help you build more language for emotional experiences so you better understand what's actually happening underneath some of these automatic reactions that we have sometimes.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can learn more through my new company, OwnYourBloom, at ownyourbloom.com, and I'll be sharing more information about the emotional fluency course there as we get closer to launch.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for now, the next time your first response to something is I'm dumb or I'm weak or I'm being ridiculous.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: See if you can pause for just a moment.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: You might be judging yourself, and there may be a feeling underneath that judgment that deserves a little bit more of your attention.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I will catch you on the next episode, and I hope you have a wonderful day.