Emotions are not Weaknesses

Reframing your Emotions as Strengths

Reframing your Emotions as Strengths .

Emotions are not a weakness. If handled with care they can be your greatest resource for strength.

By regularly asking yourself how you’re feeling, you’ll find that your emotional state bops between 3 categories:

-Core Emotions

-Inhibitory Emotions

-Defenses

Core Emotions are the emotions that we tend to fear and that our brain tries to protect us from. Core emotions are hard-wired (not subject to conscious control) and cue us about our environment. They can be felt as physical sensations that help us answer questions like, “What do I need/want? Am I sad? Hurt? Safe? In danger?”

·      Core emotions include: Sadness, fear, anger, joy, excitement, sexual excitement and disgust.

Inhibitory Emotions help us avoid the discomfort of fully leaning into our Core Emotions. Inhibitory emotions help our brains to protect us from core emotions by offering replacement emotions that *inhibit* us from focusing on our core emotions. Inhibitory emotions include: Shame, Anxiety, and Guilt. When we are preoccupied with a sense of shame, anxiety, or guilt, we are both physiologically and psychologically overwhelmed and therefore unable to confront our core emotions. This is designed to help us cope, but it is not sustainable, and what we call a “maladaptive coping mechanism.”

Defenses are a second way our psyche tries to help our brains protect us from core *and* inhibitory emotions. Some common defenses are denial, rationalization, repression, displacement, projection. Defenses reroute our brains from facing the core emotions, and inhibitory emotions (guilt, shame, etc.) that go hand in hand, by providing a shield of armor against them.

By identifying when and which of these 3 different categories of emotions are at play, we can utilize them as guideposts to help confront and engage emotions in a more adaptive way.