How to Ride an *Emotional* Rollercoaster
The past few weeks have been feeling akin to the slow, arduous, anticipatory gut punch that is climbing the tallest peak of a rollercoaster. And if you know me, I’m not usually great with rollercoasters. I’m terrified of heights and being upside down and going fast and letting go of control. The magnitude of a rollercoaster really gets to me—it’s huge! It’s technologically crazy and mathematically dependent on so many factors to be accurate to be safe! And people do this for fun?!
As I watch the days go by, closer and closer to another presidency that it rife with unpredictability and discontent, I feel so much dread that I’ve been numb. The fires in LA struck my heart and I made efforts to focus in on who is helping, while acknowledging such endless grief for how climate change will be affecting us all in the coming years. This is also my first year completely on my own as a solo practitioner - being my own business is quite daunting. Part of me is thrilled, ecstatic, excited, proud, and confident; part of me is shaking in my boots horrified. What have I done?! 🫠
As we ascend at both the slowest and fastest pace known to man, the clicking of the wheels underneath the rollercoaster car remind me that I chose to be up here and I’m supposed to be having fun.
On a rollercoaster, the ups and the downs make it thrilling, inducing feelings of flying and falling, of risking your life and coming out on the other side okay (or throwing up but you still lived). Emotional rollercoasters are so similar in so many ways but often we find ourselves frantically pulling on the brakes and refusing to ride when we are already strapped in. Since we are anticipating going on possibly an entire 4 years of rollercoaster (yet again), it’s worth knowing what to do.
Step 1: Breathe In and Exhale
No one tells you to hold your breath on a rollercoaster. Even if you don’t know anatomy or really anything about life, you could anticipate flying in the air at 100 mph requires you to breathe. This is so basic and so ordinary, we are literally all breathing right now all day long, but when going through difficult emotions we are often breathing in patterns that increase our anxiety or depression.
Stress breathing and fear-based breathing place emphasis on the inhale. We gasp for more oxygen, the body misinterpreting that we need more when we actually need variability. “Happiness and related positive emotion produces significant respiratory changes, which include increases in the variability of the breathing pattern and decreases in tidal volume and inspiratory time (Boiten, 1998).” We don’t necessarily need more or less - we need our breathing to flow with our circumstances. Stress forces rigidity, which is great for emergencies. But when we are living in a constant crisis within the news cycle while living our ordinary day to day lives, regulating is essential.
Step 2: Name the Feeling
What do you feel right now? Only 30% of us can answer that question in the moment accurately. The majority of us need a moment to dig deeper, to uncover the socially unacceptable feelings underneath the surface.
I think of this like prepping yourself for what’s to come and consenting to what is actually happening. Imagine if you thought you were going to ride a merry go round and instead you got in line for the tallest 360 degrees turn rollercoaster instead or vice versa. That’s what feelings are like when we don’t name them.
To help my clients identify feelings and increase our vocabulary, I show them “feelings wheels”. You can Google other feelings wheels and I don’t think any of them are perfect so it’s most important that it works for you, but this is one that I’ve used before - I really like that it says when needs are met and not met and differentiates feelings from evaluations or judgments of others.
Step 3: Move!
The word is literally “e-motion”. Feelings NEED to move. When they don’t move, they cause pain, distress, and more emotions compound. Some movement is internal, most are external. Once you’ve identified an emotion, it’s helpful to notice what that emotion’s movement is like. Examples of motions:
Facial expressions
Body postures
Speaking
Wiggling or shaking
Walking or running
Putting your hands or face in water
Jumping up and down
Hugging
Dancing
Singing
Laughing
Crying
Stretching
Writing
Cooking
Cleaning
Building
Crafting
Climbing
Yelling
I could keep going. Literally every motion could be an emotion, and as long as it is a transfer of energy from one place to another - it is movement. When you consider emotions you may have a harder time with: sadness, anger, fear, disgust, depression, anxiety; what movement goes along with these feelings? Do you have access to them? Do these feelings often feel ‘stuck’ inside you?
Rollercoasters do the work for us. They take us along for the ride, whether we like it or not. If you tense your muscles and hold your breath on a rollercoaster though, it will hurt you. When my family and friends dragged me onto rollercoasters, I would freeze up and hold it all in. “SCREAM!!” they would say. I found it hard at first. “PUT UP YOUR HANDS!!” Absolutely not. I felt dizzy and sick afterwards. The tension inside me had built up and I was learning how painful it would be if I kept doing that. I could avoid rollercoasters forever, but none of us can avoid emotions.
Community
It’s important to note here: though our experience of emotions is internal and individual, our processing doesn’t have to be. Learning to manage emotions balanced between independence and support from others is an essential practice. I would never have tried rollercoasters without my friends and family. I would blissfully have existed my entire life without ever touching one. They challenge me to go beyond what I know, what I feel comfortable with, and I am better for it. When we feel stuck, our community helps us move. When we feel lost, our community redirects us. When we feel alone, our community reminds us that others have felt our pain.
Our movement can be with others. Calling our friends. Hugging our loved ones. Snuggling, communing, daring to share what we are holding inside of us. Sometimes, I will just go to a cafe or library to work on my own because being around other people moving and talking is enough for me.
Step 4: Release
Every emotion has a job. It exists to send its message and to be understood. They then shift, they are released, and they step back and take turns with your other emotions. We are often staying stuck in what is called the “stress response cycle”. We hold our emotions in, unaware they even exist, and then they leak stress hormones into every ounce of our bodies.
Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, twin sisters who wrote and researched for their book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” say: “Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle.” It sends the signal to your body that the stress is completed. You are safe.
Letting go is easier said than done. I could give you 100 things to do on this list and some people could complete all 100 and still not do the one thing that is most necessary—let go. Practice somatically first. Start by holding an object to represent the emotions within; grip tightly, without hurting yourself, and then release and open your arms and hands. Breathe into that sensation. Repeat to allow your body to notice the difference between the sensation of holding on, and then the sensation of letting go.
Progressive muscle relaxation meditations are my go-to when practicing this with clients and also for myself when I’m realizing I have stuck emotions too.
Like I said at the beginning, this year is already bringing in so much stress and anxiety for many of us. We knew this would be coming, and yet we are experiencing it, embodying it, and learning how to move through it. We will all need our skills and each other to get us through.
