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On Emotional Processing
A skill not everyone learns in childhood, but that everyone still needs.
Emotional processing is a skill that has to be learned as a part of growing up. Unfortunately, not every parent is equipped to teach this skill to their kids — and this tends to be particularly true when neurodivergence runs in the family, because neurodivergence can greatly complicate emotional processing. ADHD, Autism, and Bipolar, to my knowledge, directly impact emotional processing. Emotions are senses, and can be subject to sensory overload just like vision or hearing. Feeling too much can be genuinely painful for us, which means we have to learn to work through the pain to process our emotions successfully.
Simply put: neurotypical people assume everyone just learns how to process their emotions, but not everybody had that education. If you didn’t, here’s a primer that may help you get started.
Note: this is HARD at first, it can be REALLY SCARY and it can feel really pointless. I promise, as someone who has gone through it, that it’s worth it.
Processing looks like this:
I wrote above that emotions are senses. Unlike the traditional five senses, though, they’re pointed inward and they’re giving you information about your inside reality instead of your outside reality. Each emotion has meaning, and once you learn how to read them you’ve got step one of processing down. Let’s look at a few examples:
Emotion Meanings
Emotion
Meaning
Notes
Relevant Essays
Anger 😠
Someone has wronged you
Anger is telling you that you didn’t receive what you were owed, that someone endangered or harmed your loved ones, that someone is taking advantage of you. When you feel anger you can begin to process it by asking yourself, “In what way do I feel wronged?” Then you can decide whether or not that’s a valid response to the situation.
A lot of people with a lot of privilege tend to struggle with anger because they feel entitled to things that everyone else has long since accepted are contingent. If this is you, it’s not a moral failing, it’s just a part of your role in the giant late capitalist hellscape we’re all living through, but it is your obligation to work through it so that you can lead a richer life and stop scaring the other people in your life.
Sadness 😦
You’ve lost something
Sadness is telling you that a part of you is no longer there. People, places, objects and ideas all become a part of us when we engage with them, and when they mean a lot to us they become important parts of us. Losing them — through death, estrangement, relocation, misplacement or growth — is painful, because it’s losing a part of ourselves.
Sadness is just trying to make sure we know that this has happened. We can process sadness by asking ourselves “What have I really lost?” and then deciding whether or not your emotional response is appropriate to the situation.
Fear 😨
You are in danger
Fear is complicated, because it’s primed during childhood to define signs of danger and those are all specific to our individual upbringings. But if your parents were angry a lot, for instance, you may experience a lot of fear when people in your life get upset.
This feeling is just telling you that it doesn’t feel safe, and you can begin to process it by asking “What am I so afraid of?” and then deciding whether or not your emotional response is appropriate to the situation.
Disgust 🤮
Something is a potential hazard
This is useful for things like rotten food, but sometimes we feel it in the presence of people who have experienced disease or disfigurement.
NB: Though the feeling is trying to keep us safe, it’s really important to understand that it can flag disability or deformity as danger, and we have to be cognizant of what we’re allowing ourselves to be disgusted by. Ask yourself, “What hazard or risk is this feeling trying to protect me from?” and determine if the answer is actually a threat.
Trust 😄
You feel safe with someone
Trust is an affirmation that the subject of the feeling is a safe social connection. Humans are pack animals, we need other humans to co-regulate our emotions and validate our experiences. Trust tells you, “this person is in the in-group and is safe to be vulnerable with”.
Note that like other feelings trust can be wrong, and this can be used against you — autistic people in particular tend to trust more easily than others, and this can lead to abusive relationships and exploitative friendships.
You have to ask yourself “Is it really safe to trust this person, based on their words and more importantly their past actions?” and go from there.
Joy 😂
Your needs are being met
Joy is pleasant and important to appreciate. We have to process our joy like any other emotion because it’s a strong signal as to how to live our best life.
Kurt Vonnegut, in a lecture I attended near the end of his life, advised us to remember to ask ourselves, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” during the good times, and that’s really good advice.
Ask yourself: “What need was met that I’m appreciating so much?” and then build systems in your life to make sure that need stays met.
Guilt 😓
You have caused harm
Guilt is difficult to live with and compels us to repair the harm we’ve done. Sometimes when we’re abused we learn to feel too much guilt, or to take on guilt for other peoples’ actions — it’s important to process guilt and understand whether you’ve actually done something harmful, and then if so you can alleviate the guilt by figuring out how to repair the damage done and making amends.
If you feel like once you’ve done something wrong no repair is ever possible, that’s trauma my friend and you don’t have to live like that! :)
Shame 😰
Others are upset with you
Shame is a , because it’s easy to confuse with guilt but it works completely differently. We feel shame when we are instructed by other people to feel it. It’s an emotion that exists purely in the social space, and it means “someone disapproves of something I did”.
There are times — like when we’ve caused harm — that it’s appropriate to feel a small amount of shame until we make amends. But abuse often causes its victims to feel what’s known as “toxic shame”, e.g. an unbearable amount of shame just for existing. If this is you — you don’t have to carry all of that shame.
A big part of healthy life is putting down shame that other people tell you to carry when their demand is inappropriate.
Shame ultimately shouldn’t be a huge part of your life — if it is, really ask yourself why you’re carrying it. It’s okay if some people disapprove of your choices — never accept criticism from anyone you wouldn’t go to for advice. Here’s a great twitter quote bomb of , it’s glorious!
On Shame
There are no rows in this table
This stuff is hard and it’s extra hard when you feel everything with 300% intensity. But I used to completely ignore my emotions, and they grew to be overwhelming. Now I understand that if I just accept the message the emotion is trying to give me, and thank it, the emotion goes away.
It’s an internal messaging system, and when you ignore the messages the mail gets backed up. That’s all it is.
So by learning to accept the messages I release the emotion to go back to a resting state, and I’m able to get to a more regulated place more easily while at the same time having a much richer set of information about myself and my world to work with.
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Friday
Accepting that emotions are just messengers giving you information is one of the most important things I’ve learned on my mental health journey. This is a fantastic resource for those of us who have had trouble processing them. Thank you so much.
@furiouspuffin
This really resonates with me. I really had to learn to connect the externals with how I was feeling - particularly with depression. It took me years to learn that my depression was triggered by feeling like I hadn’t been heard or understood - basically because I hadn’t advocated for myself or fully articulated how I was feeling (I think this comes partly from being quite compliant and valuing the other point of view over my own - probably because, like you say, I got so much feedback that my reactions/emotions/opinions weren’t appropriate). I learnt that all I have to do is say how I feel - it doesn’t matter if the other person agrees or acts on it necessarily, I just have to express myself and then I avoid falling into the hole. For me, depression is definitely linked to feeling a lack of self-efficacy and/or a rupture in a relationship. Now, I take an outside to inside approach - using behaviours and body language to match up with the feeling. If I can do it for my cat I can do it for myself! Thanks for these articles, they are really helpful.
@maddoodlek8
“An unbearable amount of shame just for existing”. Gosh, I hadn’t realised I was carrying that. Thanks for that distinction between guilt and shame. And the difference between limited deserved shame and toxic shame put on us. I’d never separated the two.
identify-x
This page is extraordinary. I can not tell you how much these definitions have meant for my grappling with late ASD diagnosis. I only wish this page would extend to include all the 27 emotions that have been identified. I am only now realising how much I rely on neurotypical definitions of reality, when my personal reality is on a completely different sensory level to begin with. It feels liberating to start reading the world through a lens that was made for me. A page like this is one such a great lens.
@TheCerpent
When I was 19, I was still deep in the throes of self-loathing and depression, and still trying to bottle up my anger issues. I was afraid of my anger, and I saw it as this monster inside me I had to keep caged. But I had a sort of spiritual epiphany where I realized that, if I wanted to love myself - TRULY love myself - I must love those things about myself that I dislike as well. My anger wasn’t a monster. It was me. It was part of me, and by hating and fearing it, I hated and feared myself. So I let it out of its cage, embraced it, and let it know I loved and understood it.
This experience made me realize the exact things you’re talking about here. There’s no such thing as a good or bad emotion. You feel what you feel, and you feel it for a reason. The feeling itself is not within your control - though what you do in response to that feeling is still your responsibility and choice, so be mindful.
In the 20+ years since that moment, I’ve worked constantly to understand and be mindful of my feelings, because I knew there was a logic to it if I would only take the time to listen. Getting diagnosed inattentive ADHD at 37 taught me more about myself, and I’m starting to realize I may be autistic, too. I’m so thankful I learned this lesson when I did, because it probably saved my life. I hope the info here will save someone else’s, too.
Sara Berg-Johnson
A really good resource for identifying your emotions via feeling your body is Amelia Nagoski's 6-episode series titled How To Feel Your Body, she's autistic and alexythymic and didn't believe emotions were real until she was in grad school. She provides concrete steps on how to learn this and what to practice to do so. I loved this series!
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