The Emotional Ladder
- Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation.
- Passion.
- Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness.
- Positive Expectation/Belief.
- Optimism.
- Hopefulness.
- Contentment.
- Boredom.
- Pessimism.
- Frustration/Irritation/Impatience.
- Overwhelment.
- Disappointment.
- Doubt.
- Worry.
- Blame.
- Discouragement.
- Anger.
- Revenge.
- Hatred/Rage.
- Jealousy.
- Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness.
- Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness
This list is called the emotional ladder. And if you want to feel differently than how you feel right now, you'll feel better if you can move to the emotion right above the one you're at on this list. Simple concept, but how do you change how you feel? How do you go from Jealousy, to Rage? Pessimism to Boredom? Dissapointment to overwhelm? I'm gonna find out, and write a post on each transition to refer to when I am grumpy AF with no clue how to feel remotely better!
Hang on - Fear to Unworthiness? That doesn't really sound better, Holly. Oh of course nobody sets out and aims to feel unworthy as a life goal! But when I've been depressed and feeling totally powerless, knowing that I'm actually heading in the right direction if I start feeling unworthy, helps me a heck of a lot. It feels like an achievement. A relief. And relief from how I'm feeling is exactly what I'm going for. It feels...better than it did before. DING DING DING DING! I have succeeded in feeling different that I did before. There is movement. I've just moved out of depression and fear for a moment, so maybe, it IS possible to feel better. There is HOPE and proof that it is possible to slip up a rung on the ladder. That it might not be a totally insurpassable mountain after all.
Now, if you're anything like me, a perfectionist with high expectations of self and penchant for achievement, you might see this emotional ladder as another way you are failing. This is exactly what I thouht to myself when I first saw the ladder. I felt overwhelmed and discouraged because I generally wasn't at a 4 or above on the list. I had immediately turned the ladder into a self judgment tool, and decided that I needed to be dissapointed if I wasn't in the top 4 spots of the list. That's 18/22 feelings I can reject myself for having. Wow. 80% of my emotions and feelings were now unnacceptable? I did the only sensible thing and rejected and ignored my discovery of the ladder, so I could avoid the feelings of shame (unworthiness) it brought up for me. I definitely did not feel good enough by this scale's seemingly inherant standards it had me rejecting myself.
But I have a different way to look at the ladder now, that I hope might help you. I've thrown away the idea that it's an end goal to strive for, a standard that I need to live up to and push myslf to reach for. That's too much pressure. Instead, I am thinking of it as a MAP. Just like a satnav tells you what turn to take next based on where you are, I'm thinking of the emotional ladder as a tool that tells you what emotion to aim for next, that would feel better than where you are now.
The equivalent of what I was doing before - looking at all the emotions I'd have to feel before I could can get to the top of the emotional ladder - is a satnav that reads out the instructions for the entire remainder
of the journey every single time you need to make a turn (ahhh!) .
Overwhelming never mind a depressing reminder of how much left there is to go of the ride! Receiving one direction at a time from the satnav when you need it, is just like only looking at which emotion sits above the one you're at now, when you want to feel better. One rung at a time is enough. Moving up one rung is enough. It's movement. It'll feel better than where you were, and that's the goal here. Feeling better.
Trying to jump 17 rungs on a ladder in one go is too much. That's why you can't just tell someone to "look on the bright side" (to feel optimism) when they feel depressed. It's too much to expect of them. I now understand that it's also why I sometimes (ok a lot of the time) roll my eyes and internally protest when someone tells me to write a gratitude journal, because that's just too big a jump from where I am.
So back to the how. Below is my guide to moving from one emotion to the next. It's very much a work in progress (I'll be linking each transition listed below to it's post as I complete them) so please do comment if you have any tricks I can add to each page!
Happy browsing and much love from Holly
- Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation.
- Passion.
- Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness.
- Positive Expectation/Belief.
- Optimism.
- Hopefulness.
- Contentment.
- Boredom.
- Pessimism.
- Frustration/Irritation/Impatience.
- Overwhelment.
- Disappointment.
- Doubt.
- Worry.
- Blame.
- Discouragement.
- Anger.
- Revenge.
- Hatred/Rage.
- Jealousy to Hatred/Rage.
- Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness to Jealousy
- Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness to Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness.