What’s The Deal With Emotions

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​This is an excerpt from my book, How To Set Boundaries (Without Feeling Like a D*ck)—a guide for anyone ready to speak up, honour their needs, and feel more grounded in their relationships.

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If there's one thing we humans often struggle with, it's our emotions.

No matter who you are or what you do, chances are you spend a good part of your day trying to push your feelings aside. But have you ever stopped to wonder what their purpose is? I mean, beyond making our relationships messy and keeping companies like Häagen-Dazs and Hallmark in business, why do we even have emotions in the first place?

Think about it: we are evolutionary beings, and any traits or habits that don’t support our species' survival tend to get bred out of our gene pool. Yet, somehow, emotions have remained.

Why do you suppose that is?

Believe it or not, your emotions are part of an intricate and complex communication system and they are at the heart of healthy boundaries. While, yes, they can be challenging and sometimes feel overwhelming, it turns out they are also key to successfully navigating our world.

From a biological perspective, your emotions are part of a sophisticated bio-feedback system designed to bridge the gap between your instinctual, unconscious awareness and your rational, conscious mind. This system translates your internal experiences and environmental cues into physical sensations and feelings, allowing you to understand and respond to your needs and desires more effectively.

The Hidden Messages of Emotions
If emotions are simply part of how information travels in your nervous system, and if each one is designed to convey important messages, wouldn’t it be nice to know how to decode them? Well, you're in luck! Here is your cheat sheet to help you start unraveling the mysteries of some of the key emotions that might be showing up in your life.

Sadness: Sadness signals that there has been some loss or change in your internal or external world. Whether it’s something big like losing someone important to you or something small like the coffee shop running out of your favorite drink, sadness draws attention to that loss. Its job is to help you process the experience and find deeper meaning in it. When sadness shows up, we naturally slow down, step back, and become more introspective. The purpose of feeling sadness, therefore, is to help us know when to pause and give ourselves time and space for healing.

When we mistakenly label sadness as 'bad' and judge ourselves for not being able to 'just get over it,' we miss the opportunity to use it as a signal that our soul needs soothing. By pushing away our sadness, we deny life's natural ebbs and flows and limit our ability to access an essential human trait: resilience. If, instead, we can learn to embrace our sadness when it shows up, we can process it, heal, and cultivate our ability to bounce back and grow stronger from life's challenges.

Fear: Fear is a signal that something is threatening your safety—physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Remember that you exist within four interconnected layers of reality, and the feedback from your emotions alerts you to changes or threats in any of these layers.

When fear shows up, it’s your neurology’s way of saying, “Pay attention: something dangerous may be afoot.”

Often, when we feel unsafe, we look around at our external environment and tell ourselves that everything is fine, attempting to dismiss our fear as silly or irrelevant. We forget that the other three layers of reality—mental, emotional and spiritual—also need to be safe for our neurology to operate optimally.

Guilt: Guilt is a signal that we have acted in a way that contradicts our values and what is important to us. For example, if I accidentally step on your foot, I may feel guilty because I see myself as a good person who doesn't want to hurt others. My guilt is my mind's way of acknowledging that hurting someone goes against my values, prompting me to reflect on my actions and make amends if necessary.

Unfortunately, we often place too much value on what other people think of us. When this happens, we start seeking acceptance from outside rather than from within, leading to guilt whenever we try to prioritize our own needs. This guilt can keep us stuck in the cycle of being 'Nice' and constantly seeking validation to feel okay. But here’s the truth: guilt was never meant to trap us in this cycle.

Guilt is meant to serve as a guide to help us realign with our values and what truly matters to us. It’s not supposed to be used as a tool for self-punishment or as a way of seeking approval from others. When we understand and address the real source of our guilt, we can harness it to strengthen and reinforce our own personal integrity.

Grief: Grief is one of the most transformative emotions we experience because it forces us to say goodbye to parts of ourselves and step into the unknown. Much like the Phoenix, a mythical bird said to live for centuries before burning to ashes and rising anew, grief calls on us to let go of Who We Were so that we can step into Who We Are Meant To Be.

I often think of grief as an honored guest no one wants to host. Imagine receiving a call that the King of England is coming to dine at your home. You'd be honored yet terrified, knowing this visit would turn your life upside down. Grief arrives with the same power. It shows up uninvited and disrupts our sense of normalcy, demanding our attention. It comes as a wise guide during times of great change, insisting that we release a key part of ourselves that no longer fits in our evolving life. Grief asks us to endure the fire, to allow ourselves to burn down to ashes, and to find the courage to rise again.

According to Fred Luskin, a prominent psychologist and director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, grief and forgiveness exist on a continuum.[i] Luskin's extensive research on forgiveness suggests that the primary goal of healing from grief involves not just experiencing pain or loss but also embracing forgiveness, both for ourselves and others.

Anger: Ah, anger—the most misunderstood emotion of them all. While most of us have been taught that anger is wrong, it is actually designed to communicate when you are giving too much or not receiving enough. It lets you know when something is unfair and alerts you to injustices in your world.

And—are you ready for it—your anger lets you know where you need to set boundaries.  That’s right—anger is your body’s own built-in “Hey, you need to set a boundary” alert system! And yet, it is the first emotion we are taught to turn off because it’s not “Nice.”

Oops.

Historically, it makes sense that we would be told that anger is wrong and makes us bad people. Since anger is our warning alarm for when we are being taken advantage of, it’s no wonder those in power would want us to believe it’s not okay.

When we suppress our anger, it makes us more pliable and easier to control.

Anger is your own internal alarm that lets you know when your needs are not being met or when someone is crossing your boundaries. It lets you know it’s time to say something and stand up for yourself.

For example, if you find yourself feeling angry because a coworker constantly interrupts you, it’s your unconscious mind's way of letting you know that your core need for respect is not being met. Your anger isn’t inherently wrong, it’s simply a message letting you know it’s time to speak up!

Unfortunately, most of us are taught to suppress our anger. We are told it is inappropriate and wrong and that being ‘good’ means being 'Nice.' We are taught to prioritize the avoidance of conflict over the expression of our needs. As a result, we end up ignoring or bottling up our anger, which can eventually manifest as chronic stress, unexpected outbursts, and even physical illness.

When we are taught to suppress our anger, it might make us more pleasant to be around, but it comes at the expense of our own emotional reality. By swallowing our anger to be 'Nice,' we trap ourselves in a world where we’re not truly allowed to exist.

Yikes, right?

The good news is that by leaning into our anger, we can create space for the emotional aspects of Who We Are to exist.

Now, obviously, we don’t want to vent our anger on those around us or walk around being constantly grumpy or rude. So, how do we honor our anger as the powerful self-alarm it is without wrecking our relationships?

This is where boundaries are invaluable.

With healthy boundaries, we don't have to walk around seething mad or hiding Who We Are to be ‘Nice.’

With healthy boundaries, we take responsibility for our emotions—without making them someone else’s problem.

And it all starts with our anger.

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📚 If you enjoyed this excerpt from my book and want to go deeper, How To Set Boundaries (Without Feeling Like a D*ck) is now available on Amazon, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, and as an audiobook on all your favourite platforms 🎧