7 Questions to Help Clarify Your Emotions

Lotus in the sky

Josh Bartok/used with permission

Emotions are natural, human, useful responses that provide us with rapid information about a situation and that can help us communicate with others.

At the same time, emotional responses can be intense and overwhelming and may interfere with our ability to live according to our values. Here I’ll explore some ways to discern when our emotions are telling us something important versus when they may be disruptive or misleading.

This discernment can help us to choose values-based actions when we are having an emotional response. (An earlier post explored ways of responding effectively to intense emotions.)

Clear vs. Muddy Emotions

A clear emotion is a direct response to a situation (immediate, anticipated, or chronic) and provides information that is likely to be a useful guide for action. Clear emotions rise and fall, and their intensity matches the context that triggers them.

Muddy emotions are more intense and long-lasting, less closely tied to a given context, and don’t generally provide useful information about action. Distinguishing clear and muddy emotions can help us to discern how we want to act in response to our emotions. And recognizing the muddiness of emotions can help us to clarify them over time.

If someone we care about is going away, we may feel a clear emotion of sadness. Recognizing that emotion, and sharing it with the person, may lead to a deeper connection or a decision to do something meaningful together before they leave or after they return.

However, if we aren’t comfortable with sadness or we haven’t slept well, for instance, we may experience muddy reactions like irritability or frustration to this person going away. If we allow those emotions to dictate what we share or how we act, we may create distance, which could deepen our sadness.

How Emotions Become Muddy

One way our emotions can become muddy is by reacting at the moment to something that happened in the past. A coworker may say something that reminds us of a recent argument with a friend, or a community member may do something that a caregiver used to do and that we still feel hurt about.

Worry is another thing that can muddy emotions. If we are worrying that our child could get hurt, we might feel anxiety when they explore anything new. If we follow this emotion and act on it, we may restrict our child’s growth and also create tension with them.

In addition, often our emotions feel like they define us. We might think that we are “an anxious person” or “emotional.” This way of relating to our emotions intensifies them and makes it harder to experience the way that emotions rise and fall, or to recognize that we may feel multiple emotions at the same time (e.g., pride and fear, frustration and love).

Practicing Discernment

When an emotion arises, the first step in discernment is to simply notice our emotional responses arising. When we are first practicing this skill, we might choose to take time to write down or mentally note what emotions we are feeling. Then we can consider some of the following questions, which can help us to distinguish between clear and muddy emotions

1. Are any of the emotions a direct response to the current situation, matching its intensity and providing a clear message? If so, then it is likely that the emotions are clear and we should consider how we want to respond to the message they are sending.
2. Are any of the emotions linked to or resonant with experiences of the past? Past hurts can stay with us, and we can also relive them through rumination or rehearsal. If our current response is tied to the past, we may not want to follow any action tendencies in the present and instead consider how we can heal from the past and differentiate our current context from the past one.
3. Are any of the emotions linked to something you are worrying could happen in the future? If so, we can recognize that our emotions are tied to our worries and instead choose values-based actions in the present. (These questions can help us discern whether our worries provide information.)
4. Do you criticize or judge yourself for having the feelings? We get a lot of messages about emotions being a sign of weakness or that some emotions are better than others. When we judge our emotional responses or think we are “bad” because we have certain reactions, this can intensify our reactions and make them more diffuse and muddy. This can make it harder to discern what information our emotions may (or may not) be communicating. (Practicing self-compassion and acknowledging the humanness of all emotions can help to counter this.)
5. Do you feel entangled in or somehow defined by any of the feelings? Mindful awareness can help us to see, as Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says, that we are the entirety of the sky and everything that arises (like emotions) is just the weather.
6. Are you trying not to feel any of the emotions or trying to push them away? Messages that emotions are bad or weak, as well as the discomfort that comes with many emotions, naturally lead us to try to avoid or push away difficult emotions. However, such efforts are ultimately unsuccessful and can lead our emotions to be more diffuse, sticky, and muddy. Allowing emotions to be as they are and having compassion for ourselves can help us to clarify the emotions and reduce their muddiness.
7. Have you been taking care of yourself? Poor sleep, under- or over-eating, and lack of exercise can all lead to more intense or sticky emotional responses than when we are more regulated in our lives. Relatedly, emotions and thoughts that arise in the middle of the night are often more intense and muddy than those that occur during the day—when we are well-rested. In addition to prioritizing our own health and well-being, we can also notice when we haven’t been able to sleep or eat well and recognize that emotions that occur during these times are more likely to be muddy and not provide useful information. For me, when I feel something strongly and I know I haven’t slept well, I try to practice waiting a day or two, getting better sleep, and then seeing whether the emotional response continues before I follow any impulses connected to the emotions.

When you notice your emotional responses, try out these questions and observe whether they help you to take more effective actions in response to your emotions.

This post is adapted from the author's book, Worry Less, Live More.

(with thanks to Josh Bartok for editing help)