The neuroscience of noticing our feelings: How awareness changes biology

Awareness changes biology. 

What we can name, we can begin to transform..*

When we help ourselves or other people make sense of what they’re feeling, we’re already doing something deeply neurologically significant.

Whether it happens in...

• sessions, workshops, leadership rooms,
• conversations with a partner, moments with your children,
• or simply in the quiet practice of understanding yourself...

the act of naming emotion changes something in the nervous system.

Research on affect labeling shows that when we put feelings into words, activity in the brain’s emotional threat systems begins to settle

We don’t have to fix the feeling first.

Naming it already changes something.

Most of us learned to sort emotions into two categories: good or bad.

But the nervous system responds differently when we get more specific.

There’s a difference between:

“I feel bad.”
and

“I feel disappointed… and also a little relieved.”

That precision matters.

Researchers studying emotional granularity have found that people who can identify emotions more specifically tend to regulate more effectively and recover from stress with less wear on the body.

When we help ourselves or someone else find the right word for what they’re experiencing, we’re doing more than clarifying language.

We’re helping the human nervous system* make better sense of the signal.

And that changes:

• how we respond to ourselves,
• what support we seek, and
• what regulation abilities becomes possible.

*it is a special human abilty to do this 🙂

A Monday reflection as we enter this week:

At the end of one day, pause and revisit a moment that felt difficult.

• Instead of labeling it simply as “bad,” or unpleasant, see if you can name two or three more emotions underneath it.
• Was it frustration? Disappointment? Feeling unseen? Overextended?

Notice what happens as you experiment with an exploration of words to name it ...

Even if you still feel like you can't quite pinpoint, just the exercise of attempting it helps us expand the circuitry we have available to make sense of ourselves.

That subtle noticing-and-attempting-name is part of the work.

Awareness (literally) changes our biology.**

**there can be a dark side to awareness, which I'll be covering in an upcoming article

Wishing you a sense of clarity and compassion for the infinite spectrum of human feelings...

Stefanie

If you'd like to explore the neuroscience behind this more deeply, Module 5 of Teach the Nervous System walks through affect labeling and emotion differentiation.

Module 2 also offers a multidimensional nervous system map to help expand emotional vocabulary and awareness.

People are using this course to copy down phrasing and explanations they can use for their clients in sessions, content they are creating and to deepen their own self-understanding of their reactions and feelings.

$44. 9 bite-size modules. Scientific authority you can use immediately.

Grab it here → Teach the Nervous System