Kanika Choudhary: Understanding emotions for a better life

A very warm welcome to my story's podcast. You are in a therapy room and I'm your host, Smitha Amathi. And I'm on your therapist when we talk to a therapist. And today I'll be talking with Kanika Chaudhary, clinical psychologist, a doctor. And on this podcast, well, you know, we got a bit emotional, that is, we talked a lot about emotions. So, grab a comfy seat, a hot beverage, and let's get cozy in a therapy room. And before I go, I'll go to link that this episode is my possible because of our partnership with Dog Beta. Hello and welcome to the mine story's podcast. And of course, this is a special one that we host with Dog Beta and that's the therapy room. And I'm so excited to be in the therapy room again. So I'm happy to have you here, Kanika. The pleasure is all mine, Asmita, and I'm just looking forward for our conversation. Sure. I am too. And particularly because in the little chat of the conversation that we had, before we started recording, we were both speaking about how anxious we were. And that's struck me as something that's so particularly significant in a way because here I am, I am always anxious, I'm evolving nervous before any kind of a podcast. Or even before a presentation or any speech, and then I'm just so reassuring that a clinical psychologist is also thinking I'm a little bit anxious, so that really makes me feel right at home. Yeah. I think for being a therapist, we have to be a human, to be a good therapist also. So how did you become a therapist, Kanika? I love to know this about the mental health professionals I talk to. It's like I was always had that bent towards psychology, understood that I'm a neurodivergent, very early in my life, and actually my psychology teacher understood it way before I did. And but she said that I don't know about anything, but you're going to do wonders in this field. So go ahead and I don't know, I, I'm sorry to interrupt you. How did you know that you were neurodivergent because a lot of us listen to this. I'm sure we first of all wondering about neurodivergences in the first place, but how do you actually know that you neurodivergent? Okay. So I wanted to be a psychologist, but I didn't know the spelling of psychology. And I was putting it on board, a teacher asked to me, okay, what do you want to be? And I was putting on the board and you know our education system. So I was mocked a lot for writing that because the spelling was wrong. And it was at that moment that I realized that, okay, it's one of the neurodivergences called dyslexia, where you do a lot of reversals in language. There are different kinds of dyslexia also, but a lot of reversals, lot of spelling mistakes and other such things, language related that you do. And later in life, I realized a lot of people were like, you know, you are too loud, too active and everything. And I didn't realize it till quite recently that I had another neurodivergence called ADHD. And though how classification of disorder describe it, it is very different, especially in females that it manifests, and especially how in adulthood it manifests. So usually it is hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity. But how it manifests, every neurodivergent has their own story behind it. And I had mine. And that's how I understood that, oh, people were like, oh, you're too loud. Don't you think so? You can sit at one place. And I thought like, oh, this is my anxiety. And for years, I was around mental health professionals and misdiagnosed as having anxiety issues until I found a fit, a match of a therapist for myself who understood that, okay, this is coming from the experience of being a neurodivergent rather than anxiety. And that's how I understood that. Well, thanks for sharing that, Kanika. So you were always, let's say, interested in knowing more about psychology. And since the focus of this podcast is going to be around emotions. So when you first understood that you were neurodivergent, and when did you actually start to seriously pursue psychology? Actually, I found this in the school systems, education system that something that was different was never understood. For example, if a person is not sitting at one place, they don't, they're automatically not interested in studying. If they are not getting good marks, my parents always heard this, she's smart. But I think she doesn't have interest. If she really put her mind to it, she wonders. But no one understood the different narrative, okay. And actually psychology from very early. And in my life, I understood that different people can have different context. So knowing about therapy, knowing about theory of psychology is very different from actually being able to contextualize it. When I understood that whatever little I knew, I was able to contextualize them, understood things about them. I wanted to be that for other people as well. And it's very spiritual for me, this work, because it's like I'm getting chance to change narrative with every client that I meet. You kind of change them, transform them by their emotions. That actually bent me towards, and I was always very talkative. You can actually see that right now. There's nothing more heartwarming for a podcast host than to have somebody who's talkative. So I love it. It just means I don't have to do much, so I'm very happy for that. So I really resonated with what you said, and especially when you're dealing with emotions, the whole day, I mean, you're dealing with other people's feelings and emotions and thoughts the whole day. I do believe that some of that empathy that you seem to have shown yourself, that understanding that you're shown yourself also comes through. Yeah, definitely. And I think compassion and empathy, especially when you come from a therapist point of your goes hand in hand, that you are giving a lot, but you're not losing a part of you, to be honest. That's true. Yeah. But having said that, therapeutic presence also is not a trait. It's more of a state that today, my therapeutic presence will have more compassion and less of a survival response. Did I make it complicated? No, not at all. I mean, it completely makes sense to me. It brought me to this thought, and I know a lot of us actually struggle with this because I started to repeat about two years ago, and as I keep telling repeatedly on my website and wherever I can, I was pushed to it. It was not a, it was not a choice I made in a very calm moment. I just felt I have reached the end, and I really need to find help, which is not in the form of, say, family or friends. I was very lucky in finding the right therapist immediately. I had a good rapport. But I also have seen through my work with mind stories and elsewhere that a lot of people are unsure as to what really happens in therapy. So how long have you been practicing as a psychologist, Venika? So in India, it's different. Right. So basically, we start seeing, in certain institutes that we start seeing clients since Masters, and I was lucky enough to do that. And initial four years, three, four years, you have to be under a supervision. And that was for me also. And then I was working before my M-FIL and then during my M-FIL, I was seeing clients. And then I started seeing individual clients on my own after M-FIL because we get license. Totally eight or nine years, somewhat. Okay. Right. Right. So what exactly happens in therapy? So in therapy, there are different modalities. But if I'm just this completely ordinary person, how do I even know? I was able to understand that, okay, probably I might need a trauma in from therapists, so maybe I might need a therapist who's probably understands neurodivergence or somebody else might need somebody who's a queer affinity therapy. Yeah. There are so many of these, you know, considerations that you need to get to. Before you even start, the therapeutic work, right? So I was just wondering though, I mean, if somebody is just thinking, I need help. What would they do? And how would their conception of this whole therapy process be? So I would say that, first of all, you know, these days there is so much of access of different kind of modalities, different kind of professionals that it gets so confused. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Especially when you're coming from a lay background, you know, you don't know a lot and it's like most of the research that you read also, it's either gibberish or it's completely misleading. Yeah. Okay. So I would say that there is no right way to actually read about it or something like that. You can simultaneously read about them and you can actually go and experience a therapist. Yes. You can ask any question to the therapist, you, there are a lot of places and a lot of mental health professionals that offer intro calls or a main, you can ask them that, these are my problems. Are you an expert or do you have an expertise dealing with, do you have clients like that? Or you can definitely go to first session and ask these questions. You can also ask your therapist that do you go to therapy and if the therapist is evasive, it's not your fault, okay. You have all the right to because you're a service, see what right, if they're service provider. Personally, I don't think so any amount of reading prepares you for a therapy session or a therapy because I'm myself an experiential therapist. But coming from other modalities, it might help. What is an experiential therapist? Like where everything goes around your experiences, in the moment, your memories, your, you know, it's not okay you learn these skills and practice outside. It's also like we are doing it right now right here, what it is happening to you, what is happening to your body, all of that comprises of an experiential exercise, experiential therapist. And if I have to make it very short, like we make implicit, explicit, explicit, relational and relational becomes transformative. For example, my client comes and I see that there is a smile on his or her face. And I say that I haven't seen that smile, can we talk about it from where it's coming? Do you notice that? And then they recall about the thing, what they're feeling in their body, how they are experiencing. For example, the client says that, yeah, I feel, you know, happy today. I feel like there is my body is very light today. And then I say that, yes, I can see that and then I make it relational. I can see that at what, how do you feel that I am able to witness this joy that you are experiencing? And that relational aspect actually make it like it was implicit till now, okay, it became explicit. And my therapist is also witnessing it. Most of the time we concentrate on what is going wrong and what we have to fix, but these are also important. And we do the same thing with difficult emotions as well. Oh, it exists. I have to stay with it. And I'm not alone in staying with it, my therapist is witnessing it. And then that thing becomes transformational, because when this emotion is given space, it either expand or it changes because any emotion is welcome here. So if I have to kind of summarize what you said, then for me, as this person has actually not understood anything about therapy, but I feel anxious and that's all I know. I know that I have been feeling anxious at work for a long time, presentations or meetings or speeches end up scaring me. And I just feel like my heart is pounding before I go meet my boss. I just know these are symptoms and probably I might know a little bit of anxiety, but what you just described, I think would help me to understand that if I go to therapy and if I find the right therapist, then it's a process of understanding all these different emotions that we go through right and not necessarily with the act of trying to fix anything, but just with the process of observation and awareness. And how does this help us? So I would like to give answer to this by talking about emotions. I believe it's very difficult to quantify emotions, right? So fundamentally, emotions are construction of self and it's very important variable of organising ourselves. It gives us an information about the world and it orients us in the world in a way that what actions to take. For example, at 3 a.m., if your doorbell rings, before you think about something, you will experience something in your body. You'll be going towards the door with caution and things like that. This is how you orient and your emotion oriented you, your felt sense oriented you, towards before you could give any meaning. So that's why emotions help in orient you towards the world, your relationships, you understanding the unsaid things in a relationship and it enhances your connections and everything. So because why I'm talking about it is because there is a lot of vast variety of people who say that thoughts organise this thing but thoughts are actually the explanation of emotions. For example, we might have a lot of tacit and implicit information when we experience an emotion. It kind of bound with our memory. So a lot of time in life, the things that you were talking about that, if the smallest of things happen, I feel anxious. So maybe explicitly, you are not able to word them but you are having an implicit memory of it. For example, if we experience something, if something happens to us and our gut response, our first gut response that we experience is our primary emotion. For example, if someone invalidates your needs, you're feeling angry or across in your boundary you feel angry or someone, you lose someone, you feel sad. These are primary emotions which are very appropriate. But sometimes growing up, like for example, if a child is grown up in a family where they need to be vigilant about, oh, this is how my dad talks when he's angry, this is how he is when he is happy, especially when there is abuse and neglect involved. And I needed to be fearful and vigilant about my environment. And that time, it was a primary emotion. But throughout your life, you when you notice that there are certain patterns of anxiety over, he comes when, for example, a boss shouts at you and you get so flustered, it could be coming from a primary emotion that is maladaptive, why it's maladaptive in childhood. You needed to be vigilant of the authority because you were dependent, but it carried forward to today's situation where you have a lot of agency. And now you are experiencing the shouting of your boss in a disproportionate manner. And we notice that, oh, it's a small thing, why I am experiencing so much and things like that, it's because that is primary, but at one point of time it was adaptive, it's not adaptive any longer, but I didn't get any chance to resolve it. So I learnt for my safety, this emotion is responsible, okay, this emotion is making me safe, kind of orienting me to the world and that is primary maladaptive. It is an emotion that triggered an emotion scheme that was very prevalent in your memory, okay, that was in the past. And what we do is be aware of it that, oh, it's happening repeatedly. And it is, I know it is not very proportional to what the situation is, but I feel it. And most of the time, clients in therapy comes with this primary maladaptive emotion. Okay. But if I'm going to ask you there and you know, a lot of people will also get confused and I think I asked my therapist during my own sessions, what's the difference between, sounds a very basic question and she did say she started it in her own psychology, MA years ago. So, but as a person who was going to therapy, I found it really difficult to just distinguish or to examine emotions versus feelings, are they different? And how are they different because the standard question is, so how are we feeling? And I always used to freeze, it took me some time to understand and to come up with the answers that you mentioned, you know, whether, in the example that you are so beautiful telling us about the boss and you know, he is angry with you and you have other things that are coming up because of the anger, so it's easy to identify anger. But how do you distinguish between emotions, feelings, are they the same? So emotions, I personally feel that all of it depend on the narrative of the client. We don't need to change their narrative, we need to understand when they are saying feeling and emotion, what is the difference that they are feeling? So that as a therapist, I'm not here only to teach you, I'm here to be present and understand your narrative. Okay. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah, I mean, that's precisely why I think behind this conversation we were talking about, what happens in a therapy room, so I think this is so important when you say you're not here to teach you, but that, you know, you go with your own narrative experiences as a client. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, you go on. Yeah. So basically emotions, you might have seen that we try to avoid emotions, painful emotions, difficult emotions specifically, and I mean, yeah, that, okay, I will deal with it later, but it never goes away, actually emotions are intricately linked with memories, so when you feel something strongly, you seem to remember it, okay, stored in your body and your experiences. Okay. For example, there was this client of mine, they said, but I know that I'm experiencing difficult initiation of work and a lot of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and I was like, okay, what else? And they're like, a lot of things that happened in my childhood. I don't remember, but I know that something was very heavy there. I don't have the intricate details about it. So here we need to understand, emotions are related to memory and we feel strongly felt that it stays in our memory, so it's not just explicit memory, things that we remember, but also implicit memory, a tacit knowledge about the world that our experiences give us, that stays in our body. So and that's why a lot of time, when you were talking about emotion, why we need to see the narrative of the client is because even sometimes they interchangeably use emotions and feelings. Okay. So you cross-check with them that this is what I am understanding when you are saying emotions. This is what a lot of times people say about thought, when we feel like I was like, okay, how was your childhood? And they're like, I think it was like that. And they're talking about the whole story without feeling them, right? And that's what you're experiencing when you're talking about it right now. And that's your emotion. That's what you are feeling and then we sometimes it's very difficult to name an emotion that you say sensation and we kind of navigate through that. Where is it? What it is? Because we use thoughts and language to make meanings of things that we experience. But we experience a lot of things in a way. We know a lot of a lot more things that we actually can, you know, language to. Yeah. And that is what in therapy I do, I make implicit what is inside into explicit because there comes our awareness that, oh, you know, it exists. Oh, my God. It feels like an aha moment, not only through thought, but I felt it inside when this aha movement happened, right? So that's how it helps understanding difference between emotions and feelings. It's more about me as this casual first time person who's going to therapy, who's able to understand that, okay, here we are. I have this, I have these emotions and the therapist is going to nudge me along gently towards acknowledging and embracing these emotions, things which I probably don't know helped me to also see what's narrative around it. That also brings me to the next thing, which is that there's a lot of stigma also around therapy, right? And if I like to very openly keep stating that I go to therapy only so that, you know, we even in my own little way, I can reduce some of the stigma. But while there is stigma around therapy, there is also, I think there is a certain stigma around certain emotions also, right? Some emotions are just considered as bad, you know, don't feel depressed, don't feel angry. So why do we have these emotions which we think are bad, are they in the first place bad, are there any emotions that we can say are bad that we just shouldn't feel, okay? First of all, Smitha, thank you for saying that you go for therapy to as many people as you can, because health helps to hear other people narratives in therapy to be able to say that I don't have to go through the worst of my life to be in therapy, it's not fair. Yes. Yes. So it's beautiful that you do that. And when you said bad emotions, so there are difficult emotions, there are emotions which are right now functional and right now might not be very useful, but there's bad emotion. I will tell you this that I talked about primary adaptive emotions that happens in right now, here what happened with me right now, what is my first response, emotional response. What is my first gut response that is orienting me to act, that is my primary emotion and my primary adaptive emotion. And my primary maladaptive emotion is something that is coming from past that was appropriate at one point of time, but no longer is appropriate right now or disproportionate to current situation. This comes as a repetitive emotional, negative emotional reaction and that's why we say, oh, we need to avoid them. There's another form of emotion that is we call secondary emotion, this feeling you have about your feelings, okay? So what you said when you said depression, anxiety, when we see from an emotion theory, there was a core pain, okay? And I am restricting to feel that pain and that's why these emotions are coming. These emotions of anxiety is coming, this emotion of depression is coming, okay? And for example, if a person lonely, okay, they shift it to a new place and they're lonely, they express sadness. This is very appropriate, if someone feels lonely, obviously they will express that sadness, they will express to people around them and they understand this and give feedback in the form of validation, okay? And which is very important, okay? But sometimes this emotion is invalidated, like people say, oh, you are such a sensitive person, oh, you are such an emotional person. And expressing of emotions actually help us understand what is our need. And this particular thing was love and belongingness is in this person's case. Now when they are mocked or they are bullied or something like that, they kind of have emotional reaction of this sadness, like they were expressing this sadness. Now they have a reaction of feeling rejected for expressing this. Now they express anger, okay? Oh, I don't need people because people have hurt me, okay? But this person whose need was core need was love and belongingness is not being met by expressing anger because it's pushing people away, right? And when they push people away, they are expressing this anger again and again and again. But they are feeling like, I am still not feeling content, I am feeling, yeah, I needed this protection for myself, but why I am not getting what I needed? Now I have changed how I feel because it is not linked to your core need, it is your reaction of feeling something, right? Feeling about a feeling, that's why no matter how much you express it, you feel like you are in a rut and it goes on in a rut continuously. So at this time, it's not, oh, avoid it, don't see it, it's very important to see through that anger that, oh, that person is so much in need of love and belongingness, they wanted to express a lot more than in my experience at least, I have seen that there is a lot of pain and sadness when you actually surpasses that anger and as you know, there is so much that, you know, heights behind anger, that's something that I have heard quite frequently, you know? Like anger is, it's like an indicator, it's like a sign, it's telling you something, anger, you know, anger is a vessel that's carrying something for you, it's going to see what the vessel is, right? So it's a true, this anger, like I said, you know, it's merely on the surface and behind it are probably layered different emotions. Every emotion actually is something like sadness, all of it. No, no, not anger. So as I said, different narratives have different things, right? Someone can have some other secondary emotion and even we pass them, we understand, oh, this is what it was coming like, right? Lot of times, even in case of abuse and neglect, even anger can be a primary emotion, right? Because it is like that anger helped you no longer back off. I don't want you to do that, even if it's coming from past or now, anger, like just imagine someone who's been neglected and learned to survive by fear. It's understandable that fear could be there, you know, secondary emotion, which is restricting to experience anger, right? When you surpasses that fear, you find anger and when that anger expresses, it doesn't have to be destructive. When it's stored and tried to be controlled, at that time, it can be destructive because at that time, you don't know when it will blow out and you're like, oh, I didn't have a control, but when you make that implicit anger inside, that your fear or restricting you to feel, you go inside it and then you have access to it. So when you have access to it, you're like, you have more agency towards it. You express, you make it more explicit in the therapy when another person is listening to you, understand, validates your anger that at that time in childhood, you need it to hear everything that the person said because you were dependent, you need it to be scared, you need it to revolve your whole life around people. Now you don't have to be a people pleaser, okay? And this anger need to be felt and express in order for that person to leave that pattern of being people pleaser. I'm just giving an example here, like, okay, I don't have to revolve my life around people any longer now. And that starts with validation that anger gets. And this emerging anger doesn't sound, doesn't act as a out-of-control I will kill someone or something like that. This anger is more of assertive of self assertion or, you know, these are my boundaries. I can say no to you. I can say, I am not interested. I can say, I'm sick today. It does. If I had to ask you again from my, I'm sitting here in this therapy room and I say, I have this intense anger towards somebody and I'm really, really angry. Right? Let's take my hypothetical boss and he or she or they have said something. And I'm really angry that they passed away over for a promotion. And I really intend to barge into this boss's room and say exactly what I want to say, okay? Now, where I'm really angry and anger is a very intense emotion, right? Like you rightly said, you don't pause, you don't think when you're really angry, we say a lot of things that we regret later. We do things that we regret later. I'm not talking of destructive anger where we think, okay, I'm just going to kill this person not at all. I'm just talking of ordinary ways in which we might just go and yell at our boss and that might lead to something else or so. How can we actually express anger in a healthy manner when you feel so angry? So say, a lot of time, does it happen when you're saying this hypothetical concept? Yeah, do you mean that it happens, you know, like it repeatedly happen as an emotional reaction to such invalidity? In this particular situation I'm putting myself in, yes, I do have certain, let's say, anger issues, I seem to be fairly short tempered and two, I think this boss has repeatedly, I mean, how it is in this state that this was the last straw that broke the canals back, right? So in this sense, I would say there have been a series of things that have led me to this one moment where I'm just completely angry and I want to go and take it out on this boss and it goes with my nature, I tend to snap at people, I tend to express my anger because in ways that are unhealthy, where I just lash out, I might slam a door instead of engaging in a healthy conversation with somebody doing a time of conflict or as in the case of this boss, I just want to go and throw my resignation letters. So this comes from experience, but it also comes from what friends have also told me so, I find this anger is an emotion, sometimes stuff to deal with. So, we all have these different patterns in our lives that most of us have certain emotional experience that happen again and again, and we get into that state, we a lot of time like we feel like, oh, we feel small or worthless or a loan or anxious or angry or do something about it, like really bad, but it feels like it comes like an uninvited guest that comes again and again, I don't want him, I don't know, but it comes again and again. But sometimes it's just the first step towards this guest is getting really curious, rather than, okay, you felt this, okay, getting curious that there is some state that tends to recur when I notice and it kind of changes like it's it's not, oh, I need to notice, label and remove or know, just curious, it happens all all of the time, where is it coming from? And then seeing, is there any particular memory that is that I'm coming to? Usually it's better to do it with other people or writing about it actually helps, right? When I'm thinking about, when I'm really curious, giving yourself time to actually feel this anger, right? Like you don't have to at that time go and smash him, but you come to your room and you can really yell and say that, oh, it's so not fair and giving some place in your body and seeing that where am I feeling? And just validating that, I'm allowed to feel that because it needs to exist not so that you can control it. But to understand, where is it coming from? A lot of time when it's validated itself, a lot of time you might have understood that people have said like, I understand and oh, it's like, you're like, okay, the person starts to cry instead of they were so angry and either they were validated and they're like, they start to cry. Oh yes, I know this. I, for example, you might have seen a lot of people find it difficult to accept compliments, right? Now understand that where they are coming from, their reality was at some point of time or their experiences in their life, in their implicit memory, they have felt that they're not good. For example, in my case, I'm a neurodivergent and for a very long time I felt I was made to feel that one not better than other people, right? And oh, I am some they're lagging because I need it to act in a certain way to be equal to them. And I didn't try to live a lot, but I couldn't. That stayed with me. Now, every time someone compliments me, I was like, okay, it's not matching to what I know about myself. Am I misleading that person? Do I have to fake? And a lot of people feel like an imposter, a lot of times because of like, oh, am I an imposter because what I know, what emotion was associated, maybe explicitly, I don't remember if something like that. I might remember a lot of my achievements, but implicitly in my body, something that has not become explicit yet, it's still telling me that, oh, I am because someone is praising me. Why am feeling uncomfortable? Because it's not matching to the reality that I felt according to my experiences throughout my life. I just heard something past over it and said like, oh, someone said something like that, but it because the emotion was associated with it, it stored somewhere in our episodic memory, in our tacit knowledge of the world. So when this happened, when someone gave me compliment, I was like, oh, wait, how much I have to do? What are the things that made them compliment me? Do I have to repeat them? And that whole thing of I'm an imposter comes. In that way. So a lot of people go through this and particularly on social media, people keep saying that people say, oh, yeah, this was lovely. Or even in my case, people say, oh, you're right, so well, and I'm like, no, no, not really. That's my instinctive response. And I realize I'm completely invalidating the other person's opinion in doing so. But I have noticed so many people have difficulty in just saying, thank you, and somebody compliments them. So what you have said is meaningful, but how do we move past this? When you say, okay, explore this, there is this something hidden which is coming up, or probably it's a felt sense of an experience that you're talking about or the felt sense of emotion. How do you actually just stop saying no, no, no, no, not really? And then just accept a compliment and say, thank you for without feeling so bad about it. So, Smitha, I would say that it's very different to talk about an emotion than to actually experience an emotion. And you can change how you're reacting to it by actually experiencing it. And that's what I meant when you get curious. It might be coming from a place where you doubt yourself and our action tendency to know I have to fight that inherent feeling comes from a fact that I have to work extra at times to be more than other people. I have to take more pain to be that good. Here also you're saying, I'm invalidating the other person, but the first thing is you're invalidating the effort that you talk, right? And actually staying with it and let yourself experience it and see it in your body where you're feeling it. And keep a compassionate, sometimes keeping hand there or rubbing it with compassion, not so that it goes away, but only because it's there and I'm letting it, I'm giving it space in my body to be experienced. That is what gonna change your reaction towards that because then you have your relation with yourself need to change in order to, you know, your relation need to change with others. It starts with at home. So I need to validate me and I need to do it authentically. I can't, I can't just think positive. People say think positive. You can't, I always say to people that your ways to glimmers cannot go without crossing some of the triggers. So, so you need to give space to feel those difficult emotions. Then you feel them, it's, it's not that scary, you know, then you feel it on your face that today I could feel only this, okay? I could give myself compassion. You can ask that compassion from other people because you felt that, so the thing that keeps coming up repeatedly from in this conversation as one as you have said quite frequently, be curious about your emotions, right? Be curious about where you feel this emotions. And if, for example, I, when I feel angry, I always describe it to my therapist. It just feels like there's a red little ball that's sitting somewhere, you know, in my chest. Yeah. And be curious about it. And also when you talked about anger to just, again, embrace a curiosity, but also see if you can probably, you know, journal it out, write a letter in an anger or probably just yell into a pillow or something. I think these are less harmful ways of taking out anger. And yeah, the also this part where you mentioned, you know, whenever we kind of find a very difficult to take a compliment to also see where it's pointing us to and to work on that, right? And to say that we need to give compassion. So these are the, these are the themes that have emerged for me in my conversation with you. Be curious. Correct me if I'm wrong. Be curious. Embrace what your feelings are telling you. Look for where your feelings are, whether it's where what your body is telling you, right? And to also see where exactly this, this feeling is stored in memory if I'm right about this. So basically, one thing more that I want to all like understand, yeah, primary adaptive, primary maladaptive or secondary emotion, which is like, is it coming from, is it something, something getting evoked or relieved, you know, activated when you are experienced, some memory is getting activated and being curious about that memory as well. Okay, no, not trying to understand why, no, because then your anxious mind will take you there. No, when you're feeling this is something automatically coming. For example, one way is writing about it. The other way is like, for example, if intimacy scares me, okay, I sit with my partner and experience and express my fear, okay, that I'm scared, that if I tell my need, it not be validated. I tell that I need more love. I need more understanding. It's not been validated. I can keep on thinking about and feeling it in my body. But then I tell this to my partner and be in that fear without fixing it first, but this is my fear. When your partner, instead of reacting in a form of invalidation, it's validated that it, oh, that that makes sense. I feel like you are so, it must be so lonely for you or anything or, you know, by action, just hugs you, you know, it's so scary to be there. That is your corrective emotional experience, that's going to change because I believe till now that I need to be away from my fear, gave me an action tendency that I need to be aware from intimidating, you know, relationships because I don't think so my level of intimacy someone can provide or can understand. So in order to protect myself, I am doing this. But what is happening is then I'm, this is what I learned through my experience, right? I need to be fearful. I need to be within myself. But when I had this experience with my partner for say, I'm really vulnerable. Okay, and it takes time. It takes time and doing it to your, according to your pace, you're, when you feel seen, your memory kind of re-consolidate, how you see intimacy. And from that time, it becomes easier to express that fear. That vulnerability is the most intimate thing in relationship. I, I thought that that person going to run away because that person will think that I'm a cripple, but instead he or she hugged me or something, that's my corrective emotional experience. Now I don't have to keep everything inside. Now I'm letting that fear or letting that validation guide me throughout my relationships as well. That's beautiful, Kanika. And I'm reminded of something that you said a little while ago, when you said glimmers, if you got to reach the glimmers, you got to move through some triggers. And we all know a lot about triggers, right? And that was that caught my attention. But what are glimmers? Are they useful when it comes to managing our emotions or just experiencing our emotions? Yeah. What happens is that in order to unreach to a person's vulnerability, we need to follow the person's pain, okay? So understanding their triggers and all that. In, in a very simple case, too much of importance, I mean, not important, a burden on the other person. Not really, because that's why I'm saying the balance of glimmers and triggers, right? Okay. When you follow the pain, okay, you will reach to a point where it's dissipate because it has been expressed, right? Now comes the glimmers which in easy language to understand the opposite of triggers. Like triggers are like stops you from something, right? It will change your direction. glimmers are which helps you bloom. Like it's sudden spark that and I think differentiating between that only we can focus on bad, on only we can focus on good, that's the problem. We can follow whenever, whatever comes and that helps in understanding and making an authentic awareness towards yourself. Not, oh, it is negative. Don't, don't do it. As a lot of people say is that, okay, after the grief, oh, you managed well, you started smiling again, you know, you saw I'm going inside the person and you're actually invalidating and actually encouraging that person to hide it in front of them. So you don't have to give opinion. You can just say what you would have felt or you could have just like, you know, how is it for you? Don't not assume, though, like, okay, you know, how I always say that when, when people saying the most difficult thing in their love, they're talking about their trauma, in therapy and there, there is a smirk on their face or a smile on their face. I was like saying such a painful thing and there's a smile on your face. What is it? And a lot of time you'll not believe that people have said that to me, my clients have said, I'm scared that this pain gonna consume me and that's why this is smile and or a lot of time people said that this is this is the bravery, you know, this is I'm brave or I'm strong because I'm able to smile through. This smile is not authentic. It's it's restricting the expression of your pain unless it's been felt and it's evaporated through warmth presence. It'll not come as in a authentic way because I have seen smiles with tears and they are the most beautiful smiles because it is felt by every organ of your body and it's the most beautiful thing at least in my eyes. Now, I get it. I totally get it. I have long, I think utilize the same thing. I end up smiling when I'm relating something that's particularly painful to me, which I feel very uncomfortable expressing. Especially intense emotions. I agree for laws or something that you know, as you said earlier, when you're extremely vulnerable, smiling is my way out of it. Humour is my coping mechanisms, but it's interesting that you tell me a lot of other people are also like that that many people smile because yes, one, maybe that's their way of showing strength and two, because in my case, I simply did not know how how to express the right emotion. So I did not know how to express laws or sadness. Primarily, as you rightly said, because you were not, you were either not told to express it or because you were you were never given the freedom to express those emotions. Only the happy emotions were allowed. Yeah, that is what coherence is. Like I am feeling this inside. When you're telling me you're narrative, but your facial expression is not going with that. And the therapist need to ask it in a very curious and compassionate way, but what is this? What is the use of this smile here? Because when you are saying that my heart is sinking, and like, you know, I feel that it might be very difficult for you or every child should have felt that safety or something like, you know, and then you notice for the first time, oh, am I doing that? And that's where your curiosity comes because here the relational aspect also came when a therapist told you, you know, I notice it. You don't have to hide behind this smile. I can see behind this smile also. Like I'm asking you, is are you there? Is your pain there? And you telling for the first time, yeah, it exists. Oh, yeah, I'm scared that it's going to consume me, going to bring you closer to that awareness, you know. And that's where we started off this conversation as well. Yeah, if you're curious, you have more awareness as to the kind of emotions that you're going through. Tell me, Kanika, a lot of us blunt our emotions, right? We don't want to feel certain emotions, and we resort to all sorts of things. And if we're going through a very traumatic marriage, or if we're going through a very difficult situation at work, or if you're doing anything else at home, which is dragging you down or upsetting you, we tend to resort to what I would say, and numbing mechanisms, we don't want to feel that pain. What he was saying is like, feel that pain, you know, let whatever is implicit, become explicit. What about those of us who don't want to feel that pain, say, might not have some kind of substance to cope with that pain, who might probably numb their anxiety with say a drink or two, or maybe other coping mechanism that you can think. So the processing of trauma is very different from, like for example, if there is a traumatic experience that you're saying, that we are coming on a survival level. Fight, fight, freeze, or phone. I will, you know, every time I'm feeling invalidated, even if it's slightly resembles to the invalidation I have, or neglect that I have felt, I am going to react in a very disproportionate way, because this is the mechanism that I learned, have helped me save myself. Okay, flight, like for example, I don't, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in relationships, because relationships scares me, intimacy scares me. I don't want to be in these. Okay, freezing is what numbing is, right? Like I don't experience it, like suddenly cut off. Okay, and a lot of time people dissociate, like when they are not physically able to escape a situation, they mentally escape to our safer place. And a lot of time is very common, especially when trauma is there, that people, that the experience of trauma is so overwhelming that they need an escape and substance help in that case, because and generally when you actually hear them, they're like, oh, it's so painful that it makes sense when it is taken, but the substance, especially in a trauma brain, what it does is, is for a very short period, it just take away your disinhibitions. Okay, and actually let you momentarily, let you take a pass, but it comes in double force because you didn't see it. Okay, so when you're saying, I don't want to feel that pain, understand that that pain is scaring you and that's why you're coming to a survival response, but is it fair that any person, trauma history or no trauma history, experience life on a survival side? But I don't want to feel this, I don't want to feel this. It's not fair. Everyone of us deserve to transform from surviving to thriving. And yes, especially when it's trauma, trauma is one thing that makes you so lonely in the world. Because it's difficult to trust, right? Everyone who was trustworthy has broken my trust, so I can't experience this. At that time, it's very important to have an empathetic presence of a therapy. And in those cases, I will not say, figure it out on your own because it's already overwhelming that your immediate responses, either fight flight or freeze response. How can I ask you to stay because it is that dangerous? Okay, I'm, I get overwhelmed so much that I don't understand where my emotions begin or is at the middle or at the end. And at that time, I need other person to regulate with me because growing up, we don't learn to regulate emotions by reading about them. We learn to regulate emotions by the non-verbals, by the experiences we have with other humans that helps us understand how to regulate. And most of these people who come from trauma background don't have such experiences. Okay, so they didn't learn a developmentally appropriate skill which was how to regulate by their experiences with other. And that's make them fear from those emotions. I don't want to. I don't want because it will come in one way or the other either in the form of addiction or in the form of fearing emotion, in the form of lack of intimacy in the relationship, a lot of imposter syndrome. It can come in any way. It can come in a way of psychological disorders. It's simple. So the only ways to have a therapist who whom you allow according to your piece to follow through your pain and you say, "No, I can't go through a head today with that." And that therapist will respect that because they understand the intensity of pain felt by you. So that's what required at that time. So I think in a sense what you're saying is feel everything and allow the feelings to tell you what it's trying to tell you. Yeah, but the decision of feel everything depends on a lot that is it is it on a one to ten level? It's if it's on five right then you can manage it on your own. For example, you are not completely feeling safe but you are feeling challenged but not also overwhelmed. That is five. Ten is overwhelmed. Okay, five is somewhere between where you're at an optimal state where you can be curious about your emotions, you can navigate through them. But when it's more than that then you need to go to a therapist who feels like a fit and only because you deserve to find a fit in the world which doesn't make made you feel that you belong or you fit in. So that's at least you deserve. I think we do we all need to feel that sense of validation I guess a sense of feeling heard and he just navigate through the so very very sometimes obscure path of our emotions but as you have told me throughout the emotions are telling you their own story. Yeah, and we should listen to that. And Kanika before we wrap up, I want to ask you the last thing. Do there any practical things that I can do immediately going to therapy is one? I know. But let's just say that I do not have the means or the ability or the resources or whatever it is, it's stopping me from going to therapy. Is there anything that you can suggest small things that I can implement every day for better emotional expression and management? So and these are the emotions which are coming on one to ten. It comes on a moderate level of a rousal. That's what I'm talking about. Yes. Okay. So somewhere you are feeling challenged and doing this practice actually increases your bandwidth to tackle emotion. So start with something that is moderate. Okay, so for example, certain patterns that are happening repeatedly, certain negative patterns are ways of reactions that happening repeatedly. You noted that this is happening and if you are like, okay, maybe it's disproportionate to the experience. What you do is you become curious about it. And it's not in a way that, oh, you should not feel like this. No. Oh, why I'm feeling this? I need to fix it and that's why I need to. It's not the why that we are getting curious for. It's how, where, what is happening? That is the curious. Okay. And it is most easy to do it with others like loved ones, sit with them and tell them that I want to do this. I want to tell you something that I'm going through. Ask them that if they're ready, it's okay to ask them whenever they are ready and a lot of time, even feeling heard, help you feel validated and act as an adjunct for that curiosity. That, oh, it's not as scary that it was in my head. Sometimes you write about them. Okay. So you start writing, okay, this is happening right now. I feel this is disproportionate. Now you're like, what I really need or long for. Okay. In this emotion, what is that making me feel really, really connecting it? What I really need from this expression? Okay. And penning it down. So, and you understand that, oh, this is coming from this need or I'm driven to get this and that's why I'm experiencing that that's what is making me experience that. Understand how I'm I want to act. And in this process, instead of reacting, you respond because self awareness comes. This so my emotions are trying to guide me. When they are able to guide me, they will not come suddenly. Okay. They have a way of connecting me to my needs. And that's how penning it down. And when you're penning it down, when I'm writing about this experience, is there anything that automatically lights up in my memory? Okay. That I felt this, it's connected. Write that down too. And then notice what happens as you put words to it. And then as you experience not thinking about it, as you experience it, it presently you're writing about it, linking it to the needs. If something memory light up, you write it about it, all of this going to be a validating thing for you. Okay. And at that time that emotion activates and help you change your view about a particular incident, you will see a particular shift because in all this situation, there was awareness, validation, curiosity, you understanding your needs and actually acknowledging them in whole situation of that. And that's what help you expressing better because your emotion is not wrong. How you're expressing can be proportionate or disproportionate and that can only come when you dare to see them, that they exist. Lovely. So yeah, would you just describe and note it down. So first, note down your emotion, be curious about it, note in a very questioning way in terms of, oh my god, why is this happening to me? Why me again? More in terms of a gentle curiosity. How was this feeling showing up in my body? And then seeking validation or trying to express that in a safe space with loved ones? Well, of course, as you also said, writing it, understanding, linking also the way in which your thoughts and your feelings and emotions are all coming together when you write it and acknowledge it. So these are beautiful steps to take. And for me, I think the most important thing that has come through for me, Kenika, is to not react but to respond. And I think we do that when we have a lot of awareness as to how and why we are feeling what we are feeling and then to just gently acknowledge that emotion. Because, you know, reaction comes when there is a survival. And that's also not wrong. Your body needs to know that there is no need of reaction because no perpetrator is coming behind you to end your world. And for that, we need to see where we are emotionally right now in this moment and see the safety around us as well. So a lot of this comes from actually just being very gentle. That's the feeling I get. It's gentle with your emotions and you want to fight this back all the time, right? That thing that you also said, it just plays a hand on your chest, it just hold your hand. I think that's also very powerful. When you just hold a hand wherever you feel almost hurt or most angry, it sounds funny but I have personally tried this and I feel so calm. Obviously, if you are asking someone, you have spent your whole life for someone to be compassionate. And the first time, you actually in that emotion and you touch that emotion with compassion with your hand, you're like, it's almost like, oh my god, it is such a simple thing. So many times, my clients are like, but I could have done that before. They're like, oh, okay, and a lot of time when they have touched it, there is deal following, following that, right? That, oh, I never knew that my anger can deserve compassion too. Not in a way that I am hurting someone and that's what. But I was hurting myself inside and I could provide it. Was I allowed to? The more and more are range of expression in Bruce. We don't stuck in one particular way of reaction. That's the basic idea is the more and more you express and understand. It gives a very authentic understanding about yourself. People are like, oh, I have changed. No, you're transformed. Maybe from a caterpillar to the butterfly, but that's because you allowed yourself the time in cocoon. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing this canica and I have really enjoyed my time in the therapy room as we call this podcast and I have taken away a lot of things as well. So this has been so insightful and something that I want to start practicing right from today, you know, to just help me understand and work with my emotions better. I had fun too and I felt this conversation to be very compassionate, to be honest, like I could personally feel very authentic while I was expressing and listening to you, it felt home in some ways. It definitely did. I think that's the reason why I also shared so much about myself as well because I instinctively was trying to relate to a lot of situations in my life as well where I felt my emotions ran away from me. So that inside you gave right to the very beginning that your emotions are telling you a story and that it's nice to just quietly sit and listen to the story. I never had that before. So thank you so much for spending this time with me canica and I hope that we shall have another follow-up episode at some point of time soon. Definitely. But meanwhile thank you so much and thank you for being this wonderful therapist that you are. Thank you for being a wonderful host that you are. Thank you canica bye bye. Bye. That was fantastic, wasn't it? This episode was made possible because of a collaboration with DocMeter. If you love a therapy room, do write into us a podcast at www.mancerities.com and yes please do like, share or repeal this podcast. It really helps. As always I send you love and light. May our minds be safe, space and until the next episode, be well. Take care of yourself. I shall catch you next time. Bye bye.