The Longest Journey: How to Move from the Head to the Heart

Emotions as an Inner GPS

A Buddhist teacher once said that rather than saying "I am sad," we could say "there is sadness." The point, as I understand it, is not to let our emotions define who we are. Rather, we might like them to tell us where we are. Emotions are a bit like a GPS, or if you are more old school, an old-fashioned map. It could be said that the less we engage with our emotional lives, the more lost we feel. Emotions indicate a route and provide a guardrail, without which we can veer all over the place.

Some of us have become very good at detaching from our feelings. During a conversation with my elderly neighbor, she remarked that the longest journey is from the head to the heart. Why might that be? Perhaps because some of us lack emotional literacy, we fail to recognize our inner life. In doing so, we come to view it as something to be feared or squashed. We manage this by leaning heavily on the cognitive, or turning to drugs, sex, alcohol, meditation, or the gym. You name it, we might pick up anything that plays a soothing role in dissociating from our feelings.

I remember a time when I went to see a counsellor. He noted that I tended to hang out in my head, and he asked me what I felt. I remember feeling rather vulnerable. I was good at saying what I thought; in fact, I prided myself on that. But as for what I felt, I had no idea. It was as if someone had asked me to describe a place I had never visited. I find that some of my clients face that same challenge.

Decoding What Emotions Are Telling Us

Why place importance on emotions?

As I mentioned, because they give us direction.

Let’s consider a few examples. The first is anger. Anger might relate to unmet needs or a sense that our boundaries have been crossed. For me, there is usually a feeling of injustice, along with not feeling heard or seen. The second is anxiety, which can relate to a perceived threat to our security and an impending sense of overwhelm. I know this emotion well; it often arises when there is an unknown in my life, haunting my horizon. The third is joy and excitement. When I see this in clients, I feel they have found something that truly aligns with their values and their authenticity. Finally, sadness carries a sense of something lost. When I look at nature in autumn, I feel a melancholy at the passing of another year and the impermanence of life.

What can these emotions tell us?

What can they reveal about where we might need to go?

With anger, we might ask: What is the problem, and whose problem is it? How can I communicate my anger without feeling ashamed, guilty, helpless, or powerless? What am I really angry about, and am I sure it is actually about the object of my anger? There is a very annoying but cogent saying: If you spot it, you’ve got it. A very real question is: Can I sit with my anger? Can I sense its texture? I find it difficult not to strike out verbally. My impatience to expel anger can lead to outbursts, or sometimes to saying sorry just so I can escape the feeling.

Anxiety may tell us that we need more preparation for the unknown. If something is unknown, perhaps I need to understand that factor better. Maybe what I am anxious about reveals what I truly care about. Perhaps anxiety communicates an unfamiliar future and primes us to navigate it. In my own life, I sometimes teach. I have been teaching for twenty years, yet I always feel a little anxious before stepping into a classroom. I try to be okay with that. It helps me navigate a room filled with human beings who, by definition, are unknowable. What is it like to feel powerless over other people’s behavior, and even more so, their thoughts?

Rupture, Repair, and Learning to Sit with Feelings

What therapy tells me is that where there is rupture, there is also repair. Counselling creates a safe, non-judgmental space to make mistakes and experiment with what that feels like. A good counselor can also make mistakes and repair them within the session. Mistakes can happen without us thinking, "I am a bad person." Instead, I can wonder: What can I learn from this? What does this tell me about myself? I can become curious about my emotional life and practice paying closer attention to what my feelings are saying. I can let go of the fear that they will swallow me whole. Returning to our GPS analogy: when we take a wrong turn, the GPS does not say "you are a loser." It calmly indicates that another route is needed. It is entirely neutral.

Trudging the road together

As a lifelong thinker, I am currently trudging the road from the head to the heart. It is not easy, and my clients are trying to do the same. They face their own challenges along the way. But what I can report is that, one day at a time, we are feeling a little more space and a growing confidence that we can navigate the unknown. In other words, life.