The nature of emotions - and how to be an emotion-wise coach

From Nonviolent Communication (NVC), we know that emotions are messengers from our inner system about the state of our needs. Are we safe? If not, we feel a degree of fear. Are we physically nourished? If not, we feel hunger. Do we need people around us? We feel lonely. 

This simple correlation is important to know when we support someone because, without this understanding, we might agree with the client that the emotion is the problem (“Why do I feel so hostile toward my sister-in-law?”) and not the gateway to deeper self-understanding and self-connection.

Emotions are not just messengers, they form our lived experience. Without emotions, life becomes mechanical, and flat. Which it sadly is for some of us if our life has taught us to suppress and not even notice our feelings. Sometimes, clients come to me and say they don’t feel anything. Exploring their inner state closer, there might be some vague colors on their emotional palette, but far from what other people experience. How can it be so? Why is it something to consult a coach about? And how can an emotion-wise coach support clients who hardly feel anything?

Let’s look at the nature of emotions - emotions here are used to describe the bodily felt sense that translates into words for feelings. The work of now deceased Jaak Panksep, further developed by Sarah Peyton, teaches us about the circuits of emotion and motivation and each holds surprising and important information for us.

Physiologically, we have eight emotional basic colours. Each shows as distinctively different neural networks on brain scans. Imagine them as different bus routes. Panksepp called them ‘circuits of emotion and motivation’ because they have each their emotional flavour as well as each providing an impulse, a motivation for movement. 

Early conditioning can make our autonomous nervous system close any network so that they run on low fuel or not at all. This conditioning includes early traumas and the so-called window of welcome for emotions in the family, and it serves as survival strategies. If our father got dangerous whenever we went against him, we forced ourselves to accept what came, and closed for our anger. Or if our mother was depressed, we learned to turn down the volume of our emotions in order to not add to her distress.

With such restrictions, the person has less access to the lifeserving impulse of this circuit. Through coaching, psychotherapy and other healing modalities, the blockages can disslove and open to a richer, more mature life experience. 

In the following, I will speak about five of the eight circuits.

CARE is activated when we love, care for our offspring, and enjoy hanging out with family and friends. CARE comes with the impulse to move closer, hug, express our love, show our care. If our CARE circuit is blocked, we don’t feel warmth for others nor for ourselves.

RAGE holds our life force and connects us, like CARE with what we really care about - and the motivation to actively protect it. Any flavour of anger, from annoyance to fullblown fury are different intensities of the same emotional colour. Without a well functioning RAGE circuit, our life force diminishes, we may become dull, indifferent, with lack of agency.

FEAR is activated when we sense danger. Whether we are nervous, timid, fearful, angst, or terrified, the impulse is to have us seek shelter. We may withdraw emotionally, descretely leave the space, or flee. With a blocked FEAR circuit, we might act naïvely or recklessly, ignoring the danger we might be in or bring to others or ourselves.

DISGUST is meant to protect us against gross and harmful substances and dangerous intruders. In my childhood culture, it was considered impolite to express repulsion against something, even spoiled food; this conditioning of a child, including not respecting their ‘no’ to go or do something, leads to a blocked DISGUST circuit, which in turn makes it difficult to reject what’s not good for us. A well functioning DISGUST circuit equips us with an ability to set and maintain healthy boundaries.

When GRIEF is activated, you feel sad, heartbroken, lonely, or shameful. Grieving is a healthy end station for emotions, supporting us to process and come to terms with the world as it is. With a blocked GRIEF circuit, we may hold on to an idealized past or be constantly activated by the horrors of current times. GRIEF does not make us ignore pain; on the contrary, it allows us to be fermented and mature into reality.

The remaining three circuits are SEXUALITY/ EMERGENCE, PLAY, and SEEKING (getting things done). I won’t cover them in this essay.

As you see, healthily operating circuits let us love, pursue our dreams, take responsibility, protect what needs protection, and staying relevant and present in our lives. So, the question is, how can we as a coach support our clients to notice and fully experience their emotions and find healthy ways of responding to the motivation they bring?

The most important ingredient is that we, as coaches, recognize our own emotional impulses and are able to stay in the experience of them. Our window of welcome defines the work that we can do with clients. If we get stressed by emotions (our own or the client’s), we may unnoticed shift into reassurance, explanations, or advice instead of experiencing the felt sense of what happens. If we shy away from the feeling this way, the window of welcome remains narrow. We as practitioners need to befriend our own emotions, which best happens with an emotion-wise colleague sitting with us while we feel the depth and corners of our present emotions. When we have a welcome for our own emotions, we can offer our presence to our clients, and with our accompaniment, they can feel safe to experience what is present in them, and they will gradually get to welcome their emotions.

We also need to recognize our most common go-to strategies for triggering emotions. If we have a hard time with i.e. boredom, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, or despair, it is so easy to resort to advice, shifting perspective, or even educating the client. Whereas this will take the client to a different place, it won’t grow their window of welcome for their own emotions.

Our warm, curious, unwavering presence is indispensable when the client is touching emotions. We may hold silence and allow the space to expand or ask the client: “What happens if you allow it?” This is not technique, it’s being with. 

The human brain wants to heal and unfold, and once the warm presence of another is available, suppressed feelings like sorrow, anger, and loss can get a chance to surface and be known by the client. It gradually grows resilience and emotional maturity, and it satisfies that ancient longing within to be seen and known, which is utterly rewarding in itself.

Let’s celebrate emotions! Let’s be curious, talk about them, and welcome them.