You have probably heard someone say that they or you need to “process your emotions.” But has anyone ever actually explained to you what that means?

Most of the time, people interpret that phrase as: ignore it until you no longer feel it, talk about it until you are sick of it, cry it out, or break something in frustration. These might offer temporary relief, but none of them complete the emotional loop. They do not resolve the signal.

To process emotion, you must understand what it is.

Emotions are not random. They are indicators, like warning lights on the dashboard of a car. They do not tell you exactly what is wrong, but they signal that something needs attention. You must look under the hood of your life to determine the real cause. That takes introspection, honesty, and sometimes patience.

When you feel something, your body and mind are signaling that something in your life needs attention.

If the emotion is comfortable, it means something is working. It is a sign to continue or deepen what is good.

If the emotion is uncomfortable, it means something is wrong, or could go wrong. It is a prompt to investigate and respond.

Processing Emotions

Here is the process I recommend to examine your emotions and process them. Sometimes it takes a few cycles for this process to work. It might be uncomfortable, that is good. The place when the discomfort lies is the place where you will get the most value from this process.

1. Write It Down.

Use this structure: “I feel [emotion] about [situation / person / action / memory / possibility].”

Keep it simple at first.

You do not need to get it exactly right. Just write whatever comes to mind. The first thing that pops into your head is often the most honest. If, as you keep writing, you realize the feeling is different or more complex, do not erase the first sentence. Write the new one underneath it.

Often, both are important. One reveals the first layer. The next may uncover something deeper. You may need to explore both.

It is also normal to feel more than one emotion about the same thing. You can include multiple feelings in a single sentence if it remains clear. If it becomes too tangled, break them into separate sentences and process each one individually.

Sometimes you need more than a single sentence, you might have an entire story you need to express.

Write down the story in full, then break it up into parts (story beats). Within that story, multiple events may have occurred, each carrying different emotions. Different people may have been involved, and you may feel differently about each of them and their role in the events you are recalling.

It can also be useful to write the story on its own and return the next day to process the emotions separately.

2. Disambiguate the emotion.

Use a feelings wheel. Vague words like “angry” or “bad” are starting points, not conclusions.

Work your way outward on the wheel until the emotion is precise and true. As the emotion becomes more specific, it often begins to suggest a possible course of action. This is part of its function, guiding you not only toward understanding, but toward movement and resolution. Pay attention to what it is quietly urging you to do.

For example, you might start with a general feeling like angry. As you refine it, you realize you feel let down, which may further clarify into betrayed. Angry is a broad emotion. Betrayed is an emotion linked to a specific action, something was done that violated a trust.

Another path might begin with fearful, which disambiguates into anxious, and finally into overwhelmed. Anxious often has no clear source, it is a state. But overwhelmed often stimulates you to ask, “What is too much?”, and that moves you toward action.

Track the shift. As the emotion sharpens, its signal becomes more actionable.

3. Disambiguate the cause.

Ask: Is this really what I am reacting to? Is this the original source of the emotion, or is it a surface-level trigger for something deeper? Are you responding to this person or moment, or are you carrying in emotions from somewhere else? Trace the emotion to its root.

Sometimes emotions are transferred. You feel anger at your boyfriend, but the root is fear from your childhood about your parents marriage. Or you feel numb about your work, but the deeper truth is grief over lost potential.

Dig down to the real cause or causes. This may take time. It might unfold over multiple journaling sessions, conversations, or quiet reflection. That is normal. Stay with the question until the pattern becomes clear.

4. Look for the deeper language.

Most people speak in layers without realizing it.

When we express emotion, we often distort our experience, without meaning to. These distortions fall into common patterns:

Deletions – Leaving out key parts of the experience. (“I feel bad” leaves out what you feel bad about.)

Generalizations – Making the issue larger or more permanent than it is. (“No one ever listens to me.”)

Substitutions – Using vague or euphemistic terms to mask the real feeling. (“I’m just tired” when the truth is “I feel rejected.”)

Nominalizations – Turning dynamic, active processes into static things. (“There’s a problem in our relationship” instead of “I feel neglected because we stopped talking.”)

These distortions are not failures or malicious. They are protective habits. They keep us from naming the real experience to avoid pain. But they can also get in the way of processing the emotions.

To uncover the deeper language, you can gently reverse these distortions:

What have I left out?

What exactly do I mean by this word?

Who is involved?

What action was taken or not taken?

What does this situation represent to me?

As you answer, the language becomes more complete. The vague becomes specific. The abstract becomes concrete. You move from commentary to confession. From description to decision.

Surface language explains what happened. Deeper language reveals the truth.

Examples

Below are three examples. They will help you understand how this process works in real life.:

Surface: “I am annoyed with my child.” Deeper: “I feel helpless because I do not know how to lead them well.”

Surface: “I am anxious about money.” Deeper: “I fear I will fail to protect my family.”

Surface: “I am frustrated with my friend.” Deeper: “I feel unseen because I am always the one reaching out.”

Surface: “I am sad about my birthday.” Deeper: “I feel forgotten and unimportant to the people I love.”

Surface: “I am irritated with my team.” Deeper: “I feel unsupported and burdened with responsibility I cannot share.”

You will feel it click when the deeper statement is true.

5. Ask what would allow release.

The goal is not to suppress the emotion, but to complete it. Emotion is part of a larger cycle of orientation, like the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. If you skip the lesson an emotion carries, you cannot reorient. You get stuck reliving the same state again and again, trapped in a loop that never matures.

Emotion is not resolved until it teaches you something. Whether the insight is practical, moral, relational, or existential, it must be learned and integrated.

Ask yourself:

Do I need to take action?

Do I need reciprocity, truth, or justice?

Is there a lesson to learn, and once learned, let go?

Or is this something I must accept because no justice is coming?

When it involves others, ask yourself:

Is there someone I need to speak to about this?

Is there a conversation I have been avoiding?

Is there a truth I need to voice, even if it changes the relationship?

Sometimes the release of an emotion is not internal, but relational. Unspoken tension, unmet needs, or unresolved conflict often require external engagement to complete the emotional loop. If the feeling persists even after inner work, it may be signaling that a boundary, truth, or act of courage is still required, interpersonally.

Whatever the answer is, ask the right questions and do not be afraid of the answers you might find, even if it means some hard work is needed.

6. Respond, or release.

If there is action to take, take it. If there is nothing more to do, release the emotion with thanks. It has done its job. You heard the signal and learned from it.

Here are some examples of how this might look:

You realize you need to have a difficult conversation with a family member to reset expectations.

You decide to let go of a grudge because you understand the person cannot offer what you hoped for.

You take a walk and pray because the action required is spiritual, not interpersonal.

You restructure your schedule to eliminate the source of chronic overwhelm.

You journal a goodbye to someone you cannot confront directly, and in doing so, release the lingering attachment.

Each of these moves the emotion through its full arc, awareness, meaning, action, closure.

This process prevents emotion from becoming stagnation. It keeps you honest with yourself and clean with others. It allows your feelings to inform your life, but not rule it.

Examples

Below are three examples. They will help you understand this process.

1) Processing the Emotion of Resentment

Sofia sat alone on a Sunday evening, frustrated after yet another chaotic weekend with her extended family. She felt a heavy pressure in her chest, resentment, she thought, but vague and formless. So she opened her journal and wrote:

“I feel resentful about how my family always expects me to host and organize everything.”

That was her starting point.

She pulled up the feelings wheel and scanned for more precision. Resentful was too broad. As she reflected, she noticed layers:

She felt exhausted, physically and emotionally.

She felt unappreciated, which sharpened into used.

And under that, invisible.

She wrote it again: “I feel invisible and used by my family because they rely on me but never ask if I want to.”

She paused. That felt more honest.

Then she asked: Is that really what I am reacting to?

At first, she thought yes. But as she sat with it, another memory surfaced, her mother always told her, “Do not make a fuss, just make it nice.” She realized her current frustration was fused with a lifetime of emotional suppression. This weekend was the trigger, but not the root.

She disambiguated further.

She looked at the language. “Always expect” was a generalization. Was that true? No. Her sister had once offered to host, but Sofia said no out of habit. So part of this was her own pattern, not just theirs.

She rephrased: “I feel invisible because I never say no, and they take that silence as willingness.”

That clicked. It felt like truth, the whole.

So she moved to the next step: What would allow me to release this?

The answer came quickly. She needed to speak up. Not in anger, but in calmness and with clarity. She needed to ask for a break from hosting and to say why. She needed to tell the truth, not just to them, but to herself.

She wrote a short message that evening and sent it to the family group chat. It was simple: “I need to take a break from hosting for a while. I realized I have been saying yes when I needed to say no. I hope you understand.”

Then she closed the journal. The weight was gone.

She had observed, oriented, decided, and acted.

She completed the loop.

2) Processing Emotion as a Couple

Ella and Marc had been tense all week. On Friday night, they sat down on the couch together, both a little worn out but wanting to reconnect. Ella broke the silence.

“I’ve been feeling distant from you, and also irritable. I do not even know why.”

Marc nodded. “I’ve felt tension too. Like you’re disappointed in me, but I do not know what I did.”

They decided to walk through the emotion process together.

Ella started with: “I feel irritated and sad about how little time we’ve spent together this week.”

Marc followed with: “I feel confused and kind of anxious. I thought I was giving you space, but now I wonder if that made it worse.”

They pulled up the feelings wheel on Ella’s phone. Irritated became neglected. Sad became disconnected. For Marc, anxious disambiguated into insecure, and that clarified into unwanted.

Ella paused. “Okay. I think what’s really going on is I feel disconnected because I’m scared you are pulling away, and I do not want to seem needy, so I get short with you.”

Marc’s voice softened. “That makes sense. I think I feel unwanted because when you get short with me, I pull back to give you room, but that makes me feel shut out.”

They sat in that awareness for a moment. It clicked for both of them.

Then they asked: What would let this go? What would help us reorient?

For Ella: “I need to say what I need instead of hoping you guess. I want more shared time, even 30 minutes where we’re just present with each other.”

For Marc: “I need to stop interpreting your moods as rejection. And ask instead of assuming.”

They decided to turn off their phones and spend the evening cooking together, with music and no distractions. It was not a dramatic fix, but it was deliberate, honest, and connected.

That night, they slept touching for the first time all week.

They had observed, oriented, decided, and acted, together.

The emotion was completed. The bond was restored.

3) Processing Work-Related Irritation and Disconnection

Jon sat in his car outside the office on a Thursday evening, gripping the steering wheel harder than he meant to. He had not had a particularly bad day, but everything felt off. He was irritated, drained, and deeply unsatisfied.

So he took out his notebook and wrote: “I feel angry about work.”

It was vague, but honest. Then he paused and looked at the sentence. He wrote a second one underneath: “I feel disconnected and tense when I think about going in tomorrow.”

He pulled up the feelings wheel on his phone.

Angry narrowed into irritable, which broke into resentful. Disconnected branched into bored, and then purposeless.

He felt that last one like a punch in the chest.

Then he asked: What exactly am I reacting to? Is it the tasks? The people? The money?

So he started listing what might be bothering him:

His boss micro-manages him

His colleagues are disengaged

The work feels beneath his potential

The pay is fine, but it feels like a trade of soul for salary

He feels like he is playing a role, not building something real

That clicked. He wrote: “I feel purposeless because I am trading my energy for outcomes I do not care about.”

Then came the real question: What would allow me to release this?

He knew he was not ready to quit tomorrow. But he needed to stop lying to himself about being “fine.” So he wrote an action plan:

Start researching other roles and fields aligned with his values.

Begin saving more aggressively to widen his exit options.

Be honest with his wife about how he is feeling.

Reclaim one creative project that reminds him what he does care about.

That weekend, he bought a new sketchpad and spent three hours drawing, something he had not done in six months.

The job was still there on Monday. But he was different.

He had observed, oriented, decided, and begun to act.

The emotion had done its job. The man had moved forward.

Conclusion

Processing your emotions is not a luxury or a weakness. It is a skill. And a core part of becoming mature, stable, and developing emotional competence. When you learn how to work with your feelings instead of avoiding or dramatizing them, you gain access to a source of guidance that is both biological and moral.

Every time you complete the emotional loop, you become less reactive and more sovereign. You become someone who learns from their instincts instead of being ruled by them.

If you find yourself stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to apply this process in your real life, I can help. Sometimes it takes another mind and set of eyes to help you untangle what is happening inside.

Reach out. I will guide you through it.

Glossary

Disambiguate – To make something less vague and more specific. In this context, it means clarifying exactly what you are feeling or responding to.

Feelings wheel – A visual tool that helps you identify and refine emotional vocabulary, moving from broad emotions to more specific ones.

Deletions – A linguistic distortion where key parts of experience are left out of a sentence (e.g., “I feel bad” without saying about what).

Generalizations – Broad statements that imply permanence or universality (e.g., “I always fail” or “Nobody cares”).

Substitutions – Using a different word or phrase to mask or soften the true emotional content (e.g., “tired” instead of “lonely”).

Nominalizations – Turning a verb or action into a static noun, which hides the active process (e.g., “There is tension in the relationship” instead of “We stopped listening to each other”).

Surface language – The first level of expression, often vague, automatic, or socially filtered.

Deeper language – The more precise and honest expression of what is truly felt or meant.

OODA loop – A cycle of decision-making used in strategy and personal development: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Completing the loop leads to clarity and action.

Emotional loop – The full process of identifying, understanding, learning from, and releasing an emotion.