You Keep Jumping to Solutions. That’s Why Nothing Changes (part 2)

Healthy emotional processing is more than just “feeling your feelings” - it’s a critical skill most of us were never taught. If you’ve ever rushed to fix a problem because that's what you thought you were supposed to do, or found yourself repeating the same emotional cycles, this episode will show you why.

I’m unpacking what happens when you skip  emotional reflection and go straight into problem-solving, how emotional repression shows up, and why it backfires over time. 

You’ll learn how to start recognizing your emotional responses more clearly and how to stop being ruled by them.

This conversation is especially for you if:

• You overthink but still feel stuck
• You avoid confrontation to keep the peace
• Your emotions often feel “too much” or out of control
• You want to feel more emotionally grounded and in control

Calm App Feelings Wheel

Atlas of Emotions

Transcript

You know when something bothers you and you go straight to figuring out what to do about it? Well, that might be a problem because you're skipping several steps in the emotional cycle, which is why you end up in the same place every time.
So today I’m laying out the complete process, start to finish, so you can finally start understanding why you react the way you do.

You're listening to This Is How You Think, the podcast that helps you remodel your mindset so you can have the life you deserve. I'm your host, Jule Kim. Let's dive in.

Back in Episode 6 I talked about why we avoid our feelings and how that avoidance keeps us stuck in relationships, in jobs, or other situations that we know aren't working. If you haven't listened to that one, you'll want to go listen to it because today's episode builds directly on it.
Now here's what I've observed in my clients and almost everyone I know. Most people have compartmentalized their feelings away from the rest of themselves - away from what they view as their rational self. But people don't work that way. We are all emotional creatures. And when you compartmentalize to that level, you start to fear that emotional state. You fear having emotions because you fear being out of control.
So when a problem hits, you're in a hurry to get to the solution - because sitting in the problem means sitting in the bad feelings that come with it. And sometimes that rush can be helpful. 
But most of the time, if the problem is significant at all, jumping straight to the solution ends up being a bandaid. It fixes the symptoms you're seeing outside of yourself in the moment, but it doesn't solve the deeper issues, and it doesn’t raise your emotional resilience. It's like taking antacids for heartburn instead of figuring out what's causing the heartburn.
This is why sitting with your feelings matters so much. When you sit with your feelings, you teach yourself that emotions are not to be feared, because emotions are a natural part of you.

Now here’s one of the metaphors I like to give my clients to really bring this home: Think of emotions like little messengers. These emotions are carrying a message and their job is to give you that message.

When the emotion first appears, they're knocking politely at your doorstep. But if you're somebody who compartmentalizes, you peer out the window and then close all the blinds. It’s like how some of us treat door-to-door salesmen, where you pretend like nobody's home.

But that messenger knows you're home.

So they come around and look through the windows. They come to the back door. Then they start leaning on the doorbell. They start pounding on the door.

And eventually, they start breaking the windows.

Because their job is to deliver a message to you. Your job is to receive that message, because it is a message from you to yourself. You can't receive that message if you're not opening the door to your feelings.

Let's look at a real example, and I’ll pick anger because it’s so widely misunderstood. The message that anger is trying to give you is that your boundary has been crossed - someone has done something that you are definitely not okay with. 

But a lot of my clients deny their anger because they think being angry is a bad thing. They outright even say they don't want to be angry, which is kind of missing the point. That's what emotional avoidance looks like. 

So they're not receiving the message that a boundary has been crossed and therefore they’re not addressing it, which means guess whaaaat?? This is going to happen again, and they’re going to get angrier because they didn’t address it.

I’ve experienced that lots of times in my life because I was conditioned to be the nice girl or the good girl, which caused some not so pretty explosions, and I don’t want that for you.

That’s why sitting with your feelings is step zero of this process. You have to sit with your feelings so you can receive your own message.

One of my clients recently asked me, "So what, am I just supposed to sit with my feelings for hours and hours?" 

And the answer to this is no. If you properly allow your emotions to come through you, they will typically pass in two to three minutes.

There are some exceptions, like grief, so this is where you can set a timer for five, ten, or fifteen minutes. You get to draw the line with yourself on how long you open the faucet for but then you manage that so you don't drown.

Once you come out of the sitting-with-your-feelings part, there's a process for what comes next. And here's the frame I want you to hold onto as we go through it: emotions are data. Your job is to receive that data accurately.

This brings us to my Emotional Audit Framework, which has four questions. You want to ask these questions whenever you’re feeling unsettled or having a tough time.
Question number 1, ask yourself, what am I feeling? You want to properly identify the name for what you are feeling. Is it anger? Is it resentment? Frustration? Sadness? Fear?
This step is extremely crucial, okay? If you don't have a strong emotional vocabulary, you're going to mislabel what you're feeling - and I'll explain in a second why that's a problem. There are two resources that I recommend you check out. The Feelings Wheel by Calm app will help you increase your emotional vocabulary. And The Atlas of Emotions website has the actual descriptions of these emotions, so you understand the distinctions between them. I'll put both links in the show notes.
Because I promise you, most of you are mislabeling your emotions. When you do that, you can inadvertently shift what you feel. So if what you’re feeling is frustration but you say that you’re angry, you can escalate the frustration into full-blown anger.

This is why it's really important that you correctly identify what you are feeling.

Okay, let’s move on to question 2: why am I feeling this way? Something happened, and now you’re reacting. How come? What are you telling yourself about this? 

Now, question 2 is very closely tied to question 3, which is, what was the exact moment that triggered this?

What I have seen with almost every single person I've worked with is that they can very quickly answer "why am I feeling this way" - and it's usually some kind of narrative you’re telling yourself, like “that person was a jerk,” or “I deserved that promotion more than her.”

But people are very often unable to pinpoint the exact moment that triggered their reaction, because they're not used to observing their own thoughts and feelings. If this is you, it’s like trying to paint when you’re color blind. You can see the shapes of what you’re putting on the canvas, but the colors are off.
The good news is you can learn to see those colors, which is why you want to answer these 3 questions: What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? What was the exact moment that triggered my reaction?
These questions are not something for you to just zoom through. Take your time, especially if you haven't done this before.
For a lot of us - especially if you come from a suppressed emotional background like I did, as most Asians do - you might not even be able to answer these questions right away. And that's okay. This is a skill you build just like anything else.
When I was younger, I'd have a reaction to something but I couldn't name what I was feeling. I didn't have the vocabulary or the understanding. Here's an example.
I used to have this friend who had a habit of taking my ideas and presenting them like they were hers. I definitely didn't like that, but when I told her that wasn't cool, she said that I should feel flattered. That didn't sit right with me. I felt uneasy, but I couldn't put my finger on what I was feeling or why.
Today I know that I felt angry, confused, dismissed, and betrayed, because she gaslit me. But back then it literally took me over 2 weeks to process and articulate that. This is extremely common, and I see this all the time in my clients because they struggle when I give them these same questions in our sessions. So if this feels hard or like you’re pulling teeth, it’s pretty normal.
Ok, question 2—why did I feel all of those things? Because I thought she had done something WRONG but wasn’t taking responsibility for that. And in my world, that’s not how a real friend behaves. 
Question 3: What was the exact moment that triggered these feelings? This one is a little more complicated because the situation unfolded over a period of time. When I first saw her borrow my phrases and ideas a couple of times, I felt uncertain because I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t want to believe my friend was doing that. I felt uncomfortable too, because that didn’t feel right. 
But then someone reached out to tell me privately that they’d seen her doing this, which meant it was more widespread than I’d realized. THAT’S when my anger kicked in. When I talked to her and she responded like she’d done nothing wrong and said I should feel flattered, I felt confused and dismissed. Several weeks later, betrayal arrived when I understood the gaslighting. 
It took me weeks to see the main pieces and over a year to see the full range of what I felt and why. If I’d had that emotional awareness back then, I would have made different choices about the friendship, and I wouldn’t have spent so much time in emotional turmoil. I don’t want you to do the same thing, so I’m giving you the tools I didn’t have.
Which brings us to the fourth and final question: what do I want to do about this?

You get to choose what feels right for who you are and stays true to the person you want to be and your values.
This is why it's so important that you work through these 4 questions, so you can understand yourself in the moment and choose how to respond intentionally, instead of going off half-cocked.
Now, notice that I laid out this process in a specific order. Remember how I mentioned earlier that most people go straight to solution mode? People like to go straight to "what do I want to do about this" and they skip over what they feel. And then every time something similar happens again, they react the same way. Or they keep ignoring it, and one day it completely boils over.
That’s the messengers outside your door - you know, your emotions. That’s when they start breaking down your door, or coming through the windows to get your attention. Because you refuse to receive the message.
If you constantly feel chaotic, this is probably why. If you always feel so triggered by everyone and everything, and all you want is to feel more grounded and at peace, you might want to start answering these 4 questions.
In Episode 6 I brought up the visual of baking a cake. When people jump straight to "what do I do about this," without taking the time to assess what they’re feeling and why, that’s like pulling your cake out of the oven before it’s done baking. You don’t let it cool down…you start decorating.

And if you like watching baking shows like I do, I’m currently obsessed with Nailed It and Is it Cake - you've seen what happens when you pull the cake out of the oven too quick and start decorating. It’s still raw inside, and your icing or buttercream just melt.

So moral of the story is let the cake bake all the way through. Let it cool down. Then you start frosting it. It takes as long as it takes.

If you have any questions, send me a text - the link is in the show notes. Let me know what you think, or what topics you want me to cover next.

Thank you so much for listening, and remember, I believe in you. See you next time.