Our emotions are our fuel

Emotions are usually badly misunderstood. Especially the ones that arrive with discomfort or pain: grief, anxiety, shame, anger, guilt. So we tend either to be swamped by them or to dodge them — distraction, addiction, medication, keeping too busy. But dodging them cuts us off from the main fuel we have for changing, growing, flourishing, following what we want. Beyond food, emotions are a remarkably powerful source of energy, and change runs on it.

To understand emotions better, look at them from an unusual angle: digestion. Emotions are the food of our inner strength — confidence, mastery, determination, clarity, motivation. To turn them to our advantage we have to metabolise them. Here is how digesting an emotion works.

1. Observing — the chewing

When an emotion arrives (anger, fear, sadness), the reflex is usually to swallow it whole or to spit it out.

Spit it out, and the damage is usually external: outbursts, conflict, break-ups, making the people around you unhappy.

Swallow it whole, and it sits across your stomach, or your chest. That is indigestion, and the risk is that it comes back up at the worst possible moment.

There is a third option. By placing your attention on it, you chew the emotion. You break it into small pieces — physical sensations, thoughts. It loses its massive, frightening quality.

2. Breaking it down — extracting the energy

Once the emotion has been broken down by observation, it releases what it is actually made of: energy. Under the layer of pain or stress sits an electrical intensity. That is the pure fuel that was locked inside the emotion's sometimes off-putting wrapping. Once that energy is taken in by your attention, rather than endured or numbed by distraction, consumption or addiction, you can finally choose what to do with it consciously — without suffering it, and without inflicting it. It is the principle behind many martial arts: use the supposed opponent's force to take back control.

3. Absorbing — identifying the need

This is the moment awareness — the body, in the digestion analogy — decides what to do with that energy.

For example: the energy of anger becomes a need to set certain limits. The energy of fear becomes a need for safety, or for defining a boundary. By moving that energy from a charge (the emotion) onto a clearly named direction (the need), you stop enduring the charge and finally understand what it is asking you to feed in yourself.

4. Acting — energy in motion

The metabolism is complete when the energy has turned into movement, into something real.

The need you have identified dictates the right action.

The emotion is then no longer stored in the body, where it created the tension that addictions are often used to muffle. It has become a driving force for acting on your own life.

Now, it often happens at the start that even when the mind grasps the idea, we do not actually know how to practise this chewing and digesting. That is where a therapist matters. Like a fitness coach, they teach you to build that muscle in a way that suits your own metabolism. Do ask for help.