Mindfulness of Emotions
On wise anger and the weight of choice
Mindfulness is about being aware and choosing how we react to things, while meditation is its formal practice.
When you do one, you’re doing the other already. And by the end of this post, you’ll have portable practices for working with emotions.
Mindfulness in Short
To be mindful is to notice our freedom to respond. As Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Frankl argued that we always have a choice in how we respond to our circumstances. This choice is our birthright, our agency, our freedom.
I hear you. “Freedom?” I’ve said it myself. “This guy doesn’t know [what I’ve been through/modern day capitalism].”
And we’d be right! Frankl probably didn’t know you and definitely not me.
And yet he continued to insist, “It is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent.”
Awareness of that “space between stimulus and response” is mindfulness.
What you do next is the topic of philosophy.
Mindfulness of Emotions
Earlier, I wrote meditation and mindfulness were the same thing on different ends of a spectrum of formality.
A meditation is a time where one sits. There’s a beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes there’s a bell.
But what’s the beginning of a mindfulness practice? And what do we do after?
I like to make emotions an anchor. When I feel stress, I try to make that my “bell.” Complex feelings inform and guide, making them great bells.
Have you ever felt happy about a day off but also worried about all the work piling up? That’s an example of co-occurring, complex emotions. That moment the flash of email, or that weird comment your colleague made comes into mind, that is your bell.
I’ve gotten better at recognizing emotions like acute stress and how it can co-arise with other emotions. Certain emotions can take sensory precedence, like an acute stress. But, in my experience, emotions often co-occur (secondary anger or self-judgement), and arise with or as physical sensations.
The other day I lost my wallet. Losing the wallet was the problem. My mind then spiraled into anxiety-driven self-judgement. This is a secondary issue that didn’t need to exist. It was my mindfulness bell.
Ding! You’re making this shitty situation a lot worse. Thank you, self-judgement, for trying to protect me from future hassle. Noted. Do better. I will….once I get a new driver’s license.
Mindfulness provides space to choose which emotion to emphasize and embody.
Discovering emotions in the body
When we notice how our emotions feel in our body, it’s easier to understand and manage them. Speaking for myself, anxiety can feel like an upset stomach, a tight chest, a rapid heart rate, brain fog.
You might even check in right now — how do you feel? There are usually at least two emotions happening at once. Slight curiosity and fatigue? Mild overwhelm from the day with a splash of boredom for right now?
If you struggle to locate or name your emotions, you are not alone. Many people, for even more reasons, find navigating the layers of conditioning and “discipline” to “control” emotions effortful.
In Love and Rage, Lama Rod Owens argues that owning emotions is a foundational form of activism, especially for people who have been alienated from their bodies.
Writing as a Black American, Owens states
Without agency of the body, we have no agency over emotions and thus we lose a vital tool not just for the disruption of oppressive systems, but we lose a strategy that can support our mental health. So when we own the labeling, then we are more likely to notice our body and its role in the production of the material we are owning. Sometimes to practice this, I tell myself: “I am experiencing this. This is mine. It is happening in my experience and in my body.”
With all the associations tied to the word “mind,” some teachers prefer “heartfulness” to get to essence of mindful agency that happens after the flash of recognition. Once you’ve got one or two or five emotions to work with, mindfulness gives us an opportunity to act with heart.
Practice Focus: Anger
Acting out of care is less easy when the emotion is raw.
Challenging emotions serve an important purpose; this is our overstimulated limbic system trying to protect us from future harm. This is why I strive to avoid calling sadness, anger, guilt “negative” or “bad.”
Without permission to feel or express anger, how can we possibly harness its message? There is a part of us trying to care for us.
In this sense, and from an anatomically Asian female, queer-identified, adoptee and survivor perspective, anger is embodied wisdom. Anger is my body’s response when it believes my boundaries have been violated, encroached upon, treated unfairly.
Is it right? For all its good intentions, the answer is situational.
Hence: mindfulness of emotions.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl
Anger is Dangerous Because Anger is Bad Because Anger is Dangerous
Unfortunately, even the idea of anger represents fear, pathology, a lack of discipline to a lot of people. Smile more.
Denying this base emotion, and its pair, compassion, causes it to become dangerous. Be grateful.
That we have taught ourselves to ignore or deny or feel shame for feeling angry is a violence. Be quiet.
By rejecting or denying naturally arising emotions like anger, people learn to mistrust themselves. Without outlets, anger fuels addictive, reactionary behaviors.
As Owens writes, “when I don’t have agency over my anger, it actually has agency over me. Or in other words, I am a slave to my anger. […] Anger is full of wisdom, and that wisdom is deeply liberating. But as with anything else, we have to practice.”
So let’s get practical, but stay simple. After all, we’re just practicing.
Takeaway Practices
Remember that the point of all practice is to take care of yourself. If formal meditation gets overwhelming, cease the practice. Let your experience be easy.
Beginners: See if you can begin recognizing mindful moments. There’s nothing to do with them. Just notice.
Everyone else: Identify moments of ease. You caught the train. There was no one in line. You hit three green lights in a row. Notice what you do next.
…And that’s what I think today. Thanks for reading.
Logan Juliano, PhD (they/them) is a mindfulness and integration coach at Light Hive Integration and continuing lecturer in Writing Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Be kind to someone today. And don’t forget, you absolutely count.