Tapping into the lesser known emotions.

EFT Practitioner, April Dautlich, talks about a long term creative project she’s working on in order to gain a deeper understanding of emotions as a way to guide her children into a place of emotional intelligence.

My daughters and I have a long term creative project we’ve been working on. Well, it’s really my project that I’m crowbarring them into participating in. All in the name of fun and education, of course.

I am a total fan girl of the brilliant, incredible, amazing Brené Brown. Not only is she the queen of self deprecating awkwardness (which I adore), she’s also a gorgeous storyteller, two of my favourite things.

A couple of years ago I was listening to her audio workshop on Audible called Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice. In it, she talks about people’s ability to understand and describe their own emotions. Through her research, she found that most people can only identify three of their own emotions: happy, sad and pissed off. Just three! We’ve got a long way to go as a species, friends.

She goes on to share a list of 30 emotions that are important to recognise and understand. Later she expanded that list to 87 in her book Atlas of the Heart. Listening to this got me thinking about how I could help my girls really understand their own feelings. Because understanding is where healing starts, especially when it comes to the harder emotions. All emotions are welcome and okay. The tough ones are signals that something is off, that we’re out of alignment. Working through them instead of avoiding them helps bring us back to ourselves.

Naturally, I started thinking about how to explore this concept in a creative way, and of course I gravitated toward my favourite medium: photography.

As a family, we’ve been exploring the 30 core emotions and imagining how each might translate into a still image. It’s a work in progress and a work of love. While we were home this half term, I felt inspired to revisit the idea. Hazel and I started looking at the full list of 87 emotions and talking about what some of them meant. I even had to Google a few to explain them properly, and two were completely new to me. Which brings me to the point of this post.

I’m 46, and there are still emotions I’ve never heard of. And I’m someone who’s pretty in tune with myself and my own feelings. There’s always room for growth.

The words we came across that I didn’t know as ‘emotion’ words, were both German, so it wasn’t that big of a shock that they were unfamiliar, I suppose.

Freudenfreude means to delight in someone else’s joy.
And its opposite, Schadenfreude, means to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.

I absolutely LOVE the meaning of freudenfreude. This is what we need more than ever right now in the world, to find joy in the joy of others.

I invite you to notice where this comes naturally for you. Maybe in your children’s or partner’s successes, or in your friends’ wins. And where does it feel harder to extend joy to others? What might that tell you?

It’s just something to contemplate. The world needs as much love, joy and celebration of good things as we can muster. It might seem like a small act to tap into your freudenfreude, but I promise those positive vibrations are felt.

Be the ripple, people. Be the ripple.