Emotions: How to Read, Regulate, and Navigate Life with Them.

Emotions: The Dashboard Indicators of Our Inner World

Imagine driving a car with no dashboard—no fuel gauge, no speedometer, no warning lights. You wouldn’t know if you were running on empty, overheating, or speeding toward danger. This is what life is like when we ignore our emotions. Emotions are our internal dashboard indicators, flashing signals about our needs, experiences, and survival instincts. When we learn to read and regulate them, we navigate life with greater clarity and purpose.

What Are Emotions? Understanding Their Layers

Emotions are complex physiological and psychological responses that help us interpret and respond to the world around us. While there are many ways to categorize emotions, three key classifications provide insight into how we experience and express them:

1. The 6 Core Emotions

These are universal, hardwired into our human experience, and serve fundamental survival and social functions:

• Anger – A signal that a boundary has been crossed or an injustice has occurred.
• Sadness – Indicates loss or disappointment, drawing us toward reflection and connection.
• Surprise – Helps us pause and assess unexpected situations.
• Disgust/Shame – Protects us from harmful substances, people, or behaviors.
• Fear – Alerts us to potential danger, preparing us for fight, flight, or freeze.
• Joy – Signals safety, connection, and fulfillment, motivating us toward positive experiences.

2. Habitual (Patterned) Emotions

These are the emotions we habitually express, often as learned responses from childhood. They mask our primary emotions to keep us socially accepted or safe. For example, someone might habitually show anger instead of sadness because they were taught that sadness makes them vulnerable.

3. Vehement (Survival) Emotions

These emotions—panic, rage, and terror—are extreme responses that arise when we feel profoundly threatened. They are deeply rooted in our nervous system’s survival instincts and can override logical thinking.

Emotions are like dashboard warning lights—ignore them too long, and you’re bound for a breakdown. The goal isn’t to rip out the wires but to pull over, check under the hood, and figure out what your system really needs.

The Purpose of Emotions: Why Do We Have Them?

Emotions are fast—lightning-fast. They have to be. If our ancestors hesitated to react to a predator, they wouldn’t have survived. Our emotions rapidly assess situations and push us toward action before our thinking brain even catches up.

More than just survival mechanisms, emotions also serve as vital signals that guide our personal needs, boundaries, and desires. They inform us about what matters, where our limits are, and what we require to feel safe and connected.

Emotions also serve a social function. They communicate our internal states to others, helping to build relationships, foster empathy, and create a sense of belonging. When we allow ourselves to feel emotions fully, we are more attuned to both ourselves and the people around us.

If we suppress or ignore them, we end up wandering through life without an internal compass. Emotional awareness allows us to make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and live authentically. Suppressing emotions can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, or even physical illness, whereas understanding and processing them leads to resilience and emotional well-being.

How are Emotional Responses Made: What Happens Inside?

Emotions are not just thoughts or feelings—they are full-body experiences that unfold in distinct steps:

1. A Specific Trigger: Something happens in your environment—a comment, a facial expression, an event.
2. Your Perception of the Trigger: How do you interpret it? What meaning do you assign to it? (e.g., “They ignored me” vs. “They were distracted.”)
3. Bodily Sensations: Where do you feel it? A tight chest, a sinking stomach, tense shoulders?
4. Implicit Meaning: What does this say about you? (e.g., “I’m not important” or “I’m unsafe.”)
5. Action Tendency: How do you instinctively want to respond? Withdraw? Lash out? People-please?

When we become aware of these steps, we can interrupt reactive cycles and respond more mindfully.

Your emotions aren’t the problem; they’re the messengers. The real trouble starts when you block their calls, shove them in the trunk, and pretend they don’t exist—until they find a way to take the wheel.

How to Regulate Emotions: Turning Down the Volume

Emotions are not the enemy; dysregulation is something to be curious about. When emotions feel overwhelming, moving towards tracking and softening our inner experience helps us find balance. Here’s how:

1. Name It to Tame It

Get specific about what you’re feeling. Is it just sadness, or a blend of hopelessness and frustration? Labeling emotions accurately provides self-awareness, validation, and calms the brain. The more detailed you are, the more effectively you can address the root cause of your emotional state rather than reacting blindly. Naming emotions accurately allows us to recognize what needs are unmet inside us, helping us offer support to ourselves or seek connection with others who can help.

2. Track It in the Body

Emotions don’t live in the mind; they live in the body. Every emotion has a somatic template—physical sensations that accompany it and fuel its intensity. Our body experiences emotions before our thinking brain fully registers them. By focusing on these sensations, we can recognize early signs of emotional dysregulation and intervene before escalation. Ask yourself: Where do I feel this emotion in my body? What sensations come with it? Is it a tight chest, a lump in the throat, or tension in the shoulders?

3. Regulate from the Body First

If you’ve successfully tracked your emotions in your body, you can tailor your regulation strategy accordingly. Since emotions live in the nervous system, we regulate them best through body-based techniques. Here’s a few examples we teach and practice in therapy:

• Deep, slow breathing: Engages the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body.
• Grounding techniques: Noticing the texture of an object, feeling your feet on the ground, or tuning into your surroundings can stabilize overwhelming emotions.
• Movement: Shaking, stretching, walking, or dancing can release stored tension and restore a sense of balance.
• Temperature changes: Splashing cold water on your face or holding something warm can quickly shift emotional states.

4. Differentiate Core vs. Habitual Emotions

Are you reacting with your “go-to” emotion, or is this a core feeling? If your automatic response is anger, check if sadness or fear is underneath. Habitual emotions often serve as protective masks for more vulnerable emotions. By identifying and working with core emotions, you can heal deeper wounds rather than simply managing surface-level symptoms.

5. Therapeutic Approaches for Emotional Regulation

Different therapy modalities help regulate emotions by providing a space to access, feel into, and process emotions safely. Many of us struggle with emotions because we’ve learned to suppress or intellectualize them rather than fully experiencing and integrating them. Therapy can give you tools and guidance to reconnect with emotions, allowing for deep emotional digestion and healing. Here’s a few examples of the Types of Therapies we use at our center to help our clients work through their emotions:

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): Helps process traumatic memories and reduce emotional distress.
• Somatic Therapy: Focuses on bodily sensations to release stored emotional trauma and regulate the nervous system.
• Internal Family Systems (IFS): Helps identify and integrate emotional “parts” within oneself to foster self-compassion and balance.
• Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): Strengthens emotional bonds in relationships, fostering safe emotional expression.
• Mindfulness-Based Approaches: Cultivate awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance of emotions, reducing emotional reactivity.
• Neurofeedback: Uses brainwave monitoring to enhance emotional regulation and stress resilience.
• Breathwork Therapy: Uses controlled breathing techniques to influence the nervous system, helping to release emotional blockages, regulate stress, and restore a sense of calm and clarity.
• Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR): A trauma-focused therapy that targets the brainstem’s early response patterns to reprocess deeply held emotional wounds and restore emotional balance.

Last Words: Learning to Read Your Emotional Dashboard

Ignoring emotions is like ignoring warning lights on your car’s dashboard. The longer you avoid them, the worse the problem gets. But when you learn to read and regulate them, they guide you toward clarity, connection, and a sense of control. Emotions are not something to fix—they are signals to understand.

Therapy and self-awareness practices can help you not only decode these signals but also process them in a way that brings relief and understanding. Learning to sit with our emotions, rather than fear them, is a skill that can transform our relationship with ourselves. Healing doesn’t come from numbing emotions—it comes from feeling them fully and finding ways to integrate them into our personal growth. So, next time your emotions flash a warning light, don’t ignore it. Instead, get curious, slow down, and tune into what they’re trying to tell you.