Our emotions are important. They are all valid, and we have to take them seriously and listen to them. They are valid because they always reveal something about the inner or outer world: whether a current situation, a long-ago event that left its imprint, or something that might happen in the future.
It may be challenging – in the context of the complex emotional world – to distinguish where their roots lie. But again, all emotions are real, and therefore it is up to our often-laborious analysis to understand them. They always indicate a real issue, not least in an adult with unresolved childhood trauma. If emotions point to unprocessed trauma, they carry the same reality value as if a bear were hunting you. A bear hunting you would honestly be much simpler (unless he catches you), as you know exactly what the stressor is and what you should do. In deeply buried trauma, you can have emotions pointing to darkness and mist, and you may have no clue what they are showing you.
I must mention here that there are also endogenous psychiatric disorders, there are genetic predispositions, and just as each part of our body differs from that of the person next to us, so does the brain. There are people who suffer from strong emotions, and it may be that these emotions reflect only one issue – a neurological or an endogenous psychiatric disorder. Nevertheless, important to distinguish, to take it seriously, to undergo treatment.
I believe there is more to say about emotions tied to endogenous psychiatric disorders as well, but now it is too early for that. I would first like to focus on emotions that point to internal suffering, which can be uncovered, named, solved.
Therefore, I will not focus for now on emotions caused by primary neurological imbalance, and I will also not focus on emotions that are acute, like when someone startles you, as these are straightforward to recognize and resolve (you scream, slap, done). And sure, not all emotions are negative; nevertheless, positive emotions do not need to be solved. Let’s relish them without overcomplicating.
Sources of Emotions
So where do emotions come from. From my knowledge and experience, I would like to talk about three possible sources of emotions.
First, probably the most commonly known, is the mind. We feel happy about something, sad about something, fear something, or are excited about something. We can also have deep trauma of which we may be altogether unaware, but it is buried in the mind and manifests as an emotion of unknown origin.
Another, less widely recognized source, is the body itself. I do not mean the immediate stress reaction when we break our leg, though that is a valid example as well. I also do not mean endogenous psychiatric disorders. Rather, I mean the body that has been in chronic tension, stress, anxiety, with the stress reaction internalized so deeply that, even when the trauma is no longer present – having been uncovered, named, solved – the body keeps the score (that is also the title of a book I recommend). Tight, rigid muscles, fascial tension, irritated solar plexus, inflammation cycle – these can all be purely physical sources of emotional distress.
And finally – of great importance to observe and understand – is the spiritual source of emotions. That is how we can get closer to our conscience, intuition, or receive spiritual inspiration, guidance, peace.
Reality Check
Now let us gain a brief insight into emotional perception itself. I would like to dissolve the myth that emotions are merely something insubstantial. No. Emotions are very real. They have their brain centers, they have their neuronal pathways, they do have their somatic expressions. Much like when we raise our arm or have a high temperature, they cause biological changes in the body.
The link between the emotional and the physical is direct and observable. “Tension headache” is even a medical term, where headaches are directly caused by tight neck muscles pressing on the nerves that innervate the head. The persistent feeling of chest constriction, common in chronic anxiety, is the result of tightened chest muscles creating a physical barrier to deep breathing, causing a sense of breathlessness. And the mysterious solar plexus, knotted and tight during stress, is simply sympathetic overactivation in the dense network of nerves – in medicine called the celiac plexus. This leads to functional changes in the gut organs it innervates, causing muscle tension, spasms, reduced blood flow, and inflammation. The resulting discomfort, ranging from a diffuse pressure to a sharp pain, is a direct signal of these real-time changes. Those who have experienced strong feelings know that the emotions may constitute an almost tangible realm, albeit subjective.
As you see, the emotional plane of a human being is a complex and intricate system, tightly connected and intertwined with the body and the spirit, with its sources often difficult to untangle and its language hard to decode. I will be talking about emotions a lot throughout the book, since what was mainly leading me last year and what I was trying to understand were my emotions – as the complex psychiatric-syndrome language.
Sadness and Grief
First of all, it is important to distinguish sadness and grief from depression. Nineteen years ago, what I experienced as a profound, chronic, overwhelming sadness that paralyzed me to the point of being unable to leave my bed or perform basic self-care was, in fact, depression. While sadness and grief are emotions – healthy reactions to the current situation with their natural dynamics – depression is a chronic psychiatric disorder. As for why I consider reactive depression also very normal – I will explain that in the chapter on trauma and suffering. Here I will talk about sadness and grief.
So both sadness and grief are connected to loss of any kind – something inside us is gone, leaving an empty space we cannot imagine being filled, yet it deeply longs to be filled. They are valid emotions, a footprint left behind, and I would like to support you in cherishing that footprint. It is painful, but that is what stays and reminds us of what was lost. That is why I feel sorrow when I hear so-called support like – “Do not cry,” “Don’t be sad,” “Oh, stop it” – which buries us deeply.
When the tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, loud mourning was heard from every street, every house, leaving no sadness behind. In no time, they were able to begin rebuilding. When I was attending funerals in India, it felt like a cathartic movie scene – screaming, tearing clothes, pulling hair, falling on the grave. And only a few days later, you spoke to people wondering where grief had gone. Many indigenous tribes all around the world maintain traditions of collective mourning, where sadness stands in stark contrast to the Western “Do not cry.” I am beckoning you: please, cry, cry loudly, be sad, tear your clothes, scream. Just do not bury your sadness and grief; otherwise, they will settle in your chest, your heart, consuming you from the inside.
Fear and Stress
Much as sadness differs from depression, fear differs from anxiety. Now I will focus on fear. Fear is, I believe, biologically the most precious emotion. It has helped us survive for hundreds of thousands of years, scanning for danger and reacting with astonishing bodily adaptations in a split second. Suddenly, it enables us to run faster than we ever imagined or jump over a fence that we would never manage again (a true story of a friend who was chased by a dog). It is an evolutionary advantage that taught us to predict threats even when they do not exist, based solely on similarities to previous scenarios. Fear is our friend.
Well... is it really? In today’s Global North, fear often acts in a way comparable to chasing a spy with a tank, destroying everything around, just in case. Human circumstances have changed dramatically within a few short generations, and the fear reactions that carried us into the modern era have gradually lost their justification in most contemporary threats; yet, the bodily response remains. Fear of losing a job that persists for half a year will not help us at all. No faster heartbeat, no higher blood pressure, no redistribution of blood flow to the muscles – none of these will help us at all.
The very opposite is true. Long-lasting fear, or indeed any chronic stress, is slowly devastating to the body – the cardiovascular system, digestion, metabolism, immunity – with wide-ranging consequences on human health. I could hardly name a disease in which chronic stress is not at least a potential risk factor. Our brains do not care about happiness, peace, or even truth. They are designed to survive and will prioritize preventing any threat, though the toll on life quality is tremendous. They are, as ever, constantly scanning for acute danger and planning every possible scenario to overcome challenges. And we face a wide variety of challenges in the modern world. It is no longer fight or flight. It is: think, analyze, solve, recalibrate, think again – nonstop. And fear is like our shadow.
So, is fear our friend? Yes, definitely. Without fear, we would probably die young for banal reasons. And later, in complex situations, I believe it continues as our friend, showing us a mirror of our dependencies and our need for control. Which we truly never possess.
Here I need to mention how easily the modern world’s mind enters a vicious circle – stress is energetically demanding, and lack of energy creates all the more stress, which leads to a state of “tired but wired.” If stress is long-lasting, the body perceives the situation as life-threatening, and the biological fear of death can trigger an extreme sympathetic reaction – that is anxiety – hoping for a solution in a state of hypervigilance. If we do not pay attention, this can escalate into panic attacks.
On the other hand, if our energy levels are low, either primarily from fatigue or depleted by stress, the body no longer searches for a solution and shifts into an extreme parasympathetic reaction – called depression. The body enters deep hibernation, albeit with a terrible mental toll. Once energy is regained, yet the situation remains unresolved, the body flips back to anxiety. Therefore, we recognize anxio-depressive disorder, as both represent two extreme responses to the same unresolved stress.
Fatigue
Although fatigue is mainly a bodily phenomenon, it is so intertwined with emotions that understanding fatigue is indispensable for this chapter. For hundreds of thousands of years, the human body has been adapted for short bursts of stress followed by periods of recovery. But what does it mean, at the physiological level, to recover from stress? The body has two distinct neural systems – the sympathetic (“fight or flight or freeze”) and the parasympathetic (“rest and digest”). During stress, the muscles tense and receive increased blood flow, cardiac output rises, the mind becomes hypervigilant, digestion is suppressed, and overall energy consumption increases.
Let us pause here – what do we mean by energy? We are not talking about some mystical energy flowing through the body, but about biochemical molecules called ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which enable every process, conscious and subconscious. Without ATP we are dead. It must be produced, requiring time and resources (water, glucose, oxygen), and its storage is limited. Ultimately, we have a finite amount of energy for daily use.
Therefore, to regain energy – or to recover from stress – we need to eat and rest, allowing the body to produce enough ATP for further functioning. If, after stress, we do not switch to parasympathetic activation, the body will not respond well, stress will intensify, often accompanied by feelings such as anger, tension, or sadness, signaling exhaustion. Through fatigue, the body gravely signals that we have crossed the line of sustainability and must rest. Here we encounter the fatigue-stress loop again, except now fatigue comes first. Consequently, insufficient recovery not only depletes energy stores, but also intensifies stress responses, creating a feedback loop in which fatigue both signals and results from chronic stress.
From my own experience, whenever I reached a state of mind in which I finally gave my body permission to rest, ceasing its coping mechanisms, anxiety faded, revealing the profound exhaustion it had been masking and showing the close connection between anxiety and the manifestation of chronic nervous system depletion. Fatigue is not something to be taken lightly, as it is a strongly biological signal based on molecular depletion of ATP. When a car runs out of fuel, you cannot just ignore it and push further. There is simply no further.
This biological dynamic nicely reveals how deeply the physical state is intertwined with emotions, and how emotions loop back to the body. I have already mentioned that emotions have their own center – in medicine called the limbic system – which is tightly connected to and regulated by the prefrontal cortex. When fatigue, or energy depletion, compromises the prefrontal cortex, the limbic system becomes dysregulated and takes over – as an evolutionarily older system, more critical for survival – leading to heightened emotional reactivity. Therefore, understanding fatigue as overstepping the body’s physical tolerance and energetic limits becomes essential for regulating emotions.
Anger
Anger is probably one of the least understood emotions in the Western world. It is often demonized, though it has the same value and necessity to be lived and expressed as any other emotion. Anger is one of the defense mechanisms against fear. We fear something, we become angry.
Despite the mechanism being quite simple, sometimes it is not easy to decode what fear exactly underlies the anger, as it can arise in multiple layers: I am afraid to go to the shop – I am afraid I will have a panic attack – I am afraid I will not be able to handle it and need to lie down on the floor – I am afraid of what people will think – I am afraid of shame – I am afraid that I will be considered not good enough – I am afraid of becoming abandoned. That is why I became angry when I was pushed to go shopping. Exploring and understanding the underlying core fears masked by anger can provide a liberating tool for self-regulation.
Guilt
Guilt is one of the easier-to-understand emotions. I cannot stress enough the importance of listening to guilt without shame or self-blame, and following its lead. Whether it leads us to improve ourselves or to confront a lie we were holding against ourselves. In both cases, the way to resolve feelings of guilt is to listen to it.
After my last break-up, there was a night when I felt enormous guilt that I had been suppressing – as, paradoxically, I knew I was genuinely trying to be a good, loving partner. That night I spent writing a long apology letter, recalling more and more things I felt I should apologize for. The next morning, when I was reading the message, I was slowly deleting apologies I had never been accused of, or that I had been told the opposite of. In the end, a single valid apology remained. I felt a relief I would never have experienced had I not allowed my guilt to lead me – albeit through a seemingly lengthy detour and catharsis. For all that, this process was necessary for uncovering where my usual mindset was pushing me – the belief that it was my mistake and that I was simply not good enough for someone to love me.
Shame
I will talk a lot about shame later in the book, as shame – unlike guilt – is very often (if not mostly) an unrecognized, pervasive, malignant emotion that paralyzes, isolates, and separates. Shame often lurks behind many mental disorders, accompanied by guilt potent enough to keep doors locked from the inside. It often takes enormous internal strength to break that door, as the guilt behind it is usually in sharp conflict with a person’s moral values or self-concept.
Emptiness
Emptiness is a sense of pointlessness and a lack of will to act – often a hallmark of depression, though it may also arise from objective failure, burnout, or fatigue. Emptiness easily fuels anxiety because we have an innate obligation to “do something,” and when we genuinely lack the feeling to do anything, this easily creates either “no-productivity anxiety” or tension, or a sense of useless-productivity burnout or depression. From my experience, in cases of emptiness, the best approach is to remain present with the void and wait for inspiration to emerge. However, it is far from that straightforward. It demands a lot of prior processing, and we will also discuss this extensively in various chapters.
Abandonment
Abandonment is such a profound, primary, core emotion – or rather, a state of being – that I have decided to dedicate an entire chapter to it. Just a few days ago, I had a long talk with a close friend about abandonment as the root behind each and every mental, emotional, and spiritual issue. Abandonment is something that cannot be fed. It is an unconditional, sorrowful, suffocating feeling of being not merely alone, but abandoned. The insurmountable difference is that, in abandonment, a person recognizes the potential for connection, yet even should someone be close, they prefer not to be interested in seeing us; and should they happen to see us, they will turn their head away.
This overwhelming sense of being left by others leads to the perception that life holds no value unless someone’s dedication to seeing us is unmistakably recognized. Such a state is undeniably demanding, as even subconsciously the need to be seen is persistent and insatiable, often placing a boundless burden on everyone in our orbit, since the ordinary closeness of friends rarely suffices to create the illusion of filling this void. The feeling of abandonment is very difficult to resolve, and we will explore it extensively.
If abandonment reminds you of a totalitarian regime, you have got the point.
Listening to Emotions
There are many more emotions, but these are the ones I will be mentioning the most. For positive emotions – in terms of their sensation, not their value – we should simply enjoy them.
From there, I would like to mention that it is good to keep all emotions in the frame of being there for us, rather than refusing “negative” ones and accepting “positive” ones, with the expectation that life should be full of the positive ones. In India, they told me once: “You people in Europe are very funny. You not only have a problem; you have a problem with having a problem. In India, we expect that life should be fifty-fifty. Fifty percent good days and fifty percent bad days. And so, if we have bad days, it is all right, because we know good days will come. And if we have good days, we stay calm, as we know that bad days will come.”
The main message from this chapter is that emotions are best not controlled, but listened to. They exist because they are our biological, evolutionary advantage. Otherwise, we would simply not have them. As the landscape for their existence is rapidly changing, it is all the more important to be sensitive and to observe them, and to vigorously try to understand them. Emotions are ours – a generous gift through which our mind and spirit can speak. If we treat them with the respect they deserve, even anxiety becomes present for a beneficial purpose. It would be great if we could stay with our emotions and humbly ask them what they want from us – with genuine interest, as we would ask a respected intrinsic part of the self, which we know is there for us.
Whether we accept our emotions or reject them, it changes nothing about the fact that they remain solely ours. From this slightly smoothed perspective, the relevant question unveils itself as: “What can I do for myself?” That is what emotions are leading us to. How should we care for ourselves in the best possible way?
Were we more insightful and had enough space, we could surrender to them with the primary goal of just listening. I believe that this approach is a liberating shift away from exhausting and doomed-to-lose battles against our emotions, and fosters an understanding of emotions as a necessary part of protective and healing processes in our lives.
In the end, emotions cannot be cheated or manipulated, for they will pursue their goal regardless. They retain latent mechanisms for exerting leverage when our conscious attention is preoccupied. What remains is the question of how much we need to suffer to take them seriously and finally recognize them as our loyal companions.
Emotional Transition
As I mastered ignoring even the most acute emotions, they were effectively narrowing and escalating into relentless screaming until last year – when my extremely dysregulated system decided on a total shutdown. After the primary collapse, when I could barely catch a glimpse of what was happening, essentially one overwhelming emotion stayed – paralyzing anxiety.
For months it usurped my entire emotional world, until a slow transition toward a state of rather nervous energy and heightened vigilance, where anxiety mixed with tension. Not long after, this state of constant hypervigilance eased, and the emotional energy previously locked in fear could slightly shift into grief. At first glance, this might not seem like something to be happy about, but here we need to return to the basic understanding of emotions.
Grief, compared to anxiety, is a luxurious emotion. There is no space for grief in survival mode – during anxiety. Thus, the shift to grief paradoxically indicates that hyperarousal diminished sufficiently for the body and mind to finally feel safe enough to acknowledge the pain that was too threatening to feel before. It is an enormous shift. Though it does not really feel like something to be celebrated, from a psychiatric point of view, it is a significant step forward. This phase of nervousness-and-sadness integration was marked by noticeably less paralyzing anxiety.
Months later came another unchaining of the emotional landscape. A few heavy, dominant emotions allowed – albeit seemingly at random – the appearance of other emotions, one of which was extreme excitement. To be precise, it was something like a mix of excitement, happiness, peace, and pain. I guess my body was trying to figure out how a positive emotion should actually look. It was quite endearing to observe. Especially when any slightest discomfort – like changing position or any mildly demanding brain work – made my emotions, in a matter of seconds, jump back to anxiety and then, just as easily, after another few seconds, to nervousness, searching for what would fit the current situation best. This emerging emotional diversity signaled that the nervous system and the emotional field were further decompressing and learning how to function properly after years of constraint.
Curiously, happiness was, apparently, initially registered by my body as merely another activation – and because my system interpreted any activation as danger, happiness felt like a threat. Hence, moments of happiness manifested as discomforting, emotionally painful excitation accompanied by a high pulse. In neurology, you would call it interoceptive misattribution – as the sympathetic nervous system is a shared channel for both fear and excitement, trauma can lead to a chronic mislabeling of internal energy. The system becomes hypervigilant due to its excitement, and because it does not have a clue how to hold that energy, happiness creates an immediate need to calm down from the sheer intensity. In my case, it was probably also interconnected with so-called positive affect intolerance, which can arise from a history where positive arousal and relief were unsafe.
Another significant marker of transformation, which had been slowly emerging since the beginning of my isolation, was moving from a state of needing constant distraction to the unimaginable ability to experience solitary mental silence without tension or restlessness. The capacity to be quiet with oneself signals a deep emotional shift and the establishment of a new internal foundation of calm.
Lately, there has been the occasional emergence of spontaneous laughter – in properly funny situations – signaling that the nervous system is moving beyond mere survival into a state where absurdity is met with joy rather than judgment.
At the end of this chapter, I need to emphasize that for this – still far from finished – transition, I needed one full year in isolation, most of the time spent alone with myself, in silence, contemplation, meditation, prayer, or simple breathing techniques, with full attention to myself, my thoughts, and my emotions. It required patience, with no possibility of speeding up this process, due to significant energetic expenditure, which caused freezing whenever I lacked sufficient rest and sleep. The goal, in this phase, is not even so much about pushing toward stability as primarily ensuring the capacity for containment between emotional waves and shifts, with sufficient energy. The brain (and body) works not only during active self-care, but, as this shift is essentially restructuring the whole internal world, it works overtime to process and integrate new insights and approaches, leading to deep exhaustion. It is essential to be patient with ourselves, not pushing our limits, giving ourselves as much time and space as is needed, since the pace of emotional healing is difficult to control.