This week, I’m thinking about the above quote I found via psychologist and author Nedra Tawwab.

I couldn’t agree more. I'd even venture to say that we USUALLY have complex feelings about people.

It's easy for a particularly captivating emotion to drown out some of the quieter feelings, but I've found that even if I’m experiencing something that feels overwhelming, other feelings are usually there, too, if you dig deeply enough.

So, something I've found helpful is that if I'm feeling a particularly "loud" feeling... say, anger or infatuation or hopelessness or something similarly attention-grabbing... I'll take some time to investigate it; I'll do some detective work to figure out where it might be coming from and what, if anything, that emotion is asking of me.

And then (here's the big change I've found surprisingly useful), I'll ask myself:

What other feelings are here?

If I answer with more of the same feeling, that usually means I have some more digging or processing to do.

If my first impulse is to answer with something sassy or counterproductive, that’s usually a helpful clue that I need to work on physiologically calming myself down. If that happens, I’ll take some time (if at all possible) to exercise, or at very least, I’ll take a few deep breaths.

But, eventually, if I keep asking myself what other feelings are there, I can always find something else. And usually, those feelings have even more important information for me than the big loud ones.

If you're feeling inspired, feel free to take the next time you're feeling something overwhelming as an opportunity to hunt for some of the quieter feelings that might be trying to tell you something, too. Let me know how it goes if you try it!

A unique strategy for big feelings