Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Emotions as signals
Let what they say land in you before you answer. The word that catches somewhere in your own chest is usually the live one.
Cold. Empty. A nuisance. Take each one for a second rather than sailing past it to the reply. Then give back the one that carried the charge, and you will often find it is not the word they said most loudly. This is also the difference between reflecting that sounds mechanical and reflecting that makes someone's eyes fill, and there is no technique underneath it beyond actually being there.
Qur’an and Sunnah
their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God (Quran 39:23). Words are described there as landing in the body first, which is what you are making use of.
ٱللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحۡسَنَ ٱلۡحَدِيثِ كِتَٰبࣰ ا مُّتَشَٰبِهࣰ ا مَّثَانِيَ تَقۡشَعِرُّ مِنۡهُ جُلُودُ ٱلَّذِينَ يَخۡشَوۡنَ رَبَّهُمۡ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمۡ وَقُلُوبُهُمۡ إِلَىٰ ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُدَى ٱللَّهِ يَهۡدِي بِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُۚ وَمَن يُضۡلِلِ ٱللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُۥ مِنۡ هَادٍ
God has sent down the most beautiful of all teachings: a Scripture that is consistent and draws comparisons; that causes the skins of those in awe of their Lord to shiver. Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God: such is God’s guidance. He guides with it whoever He will; no one can guide those God leaves to stray
Qur’an 39:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a cross-cultural experiment, even in a group whose culture strongly emphasises attention to the body, how people judged their own heartbeat matched what their heart was actually doing only loosely. Attention to a bodily signal is not the same as accuracy about it. So treat what you feel in your chest as a pointer worth following up rather than a verdict on what the other person means.
Chentsova-Dutton YE, Dzokoto V. (2014). Listen to your heart: the cultural shaping of interoceptive awareness and accuracy.. Emotion (Washington, D.C.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Your own reaction to their words is the quickest guide to which word is carrying the weight.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Go back to the second before you reacted. Not the argument, not the history, just that one second and what crossed you in it.
Ask what the feeling is trying to do for you. Anger clears an obstacle, fear gets you out, sadness calls for comfort, shame hides you from being seen.
I am used to it is not the same as I feel nothing. It usually means a great deal of practice at feeling nothing, and that practice costs something.