“Emotions are not rational. But they are lawful.” - Douglas Tataryn, PhD

Emotions are feelings in our bodies. These feelings are like an alert signal sent from parts of our mind that think something important is happening in our environment. How do parts of our mind know what’s important and what’s not? These parts draw on past experience: emotional wounds, abuse, neglect, abandonment, lack of secure attachment, emotional repression, and so on. These parts examine the present environment looking to protect against things that hurt them in the past.

The way your boss or partner said that thing can bring up intense emotions because you have a part of your mind that saw what they said as threatening. Why? Because it fit a pattern that caused emotional pain in the past, likely in childhood.

Emotions are not rational because there’s no objective link between the thing that was said today and the emotional wound in childhood. But emotions are lawful because in your inner system, it makes perfect sense that the thing your partner said would feel threatening if it fits your own experienced pattern of emotional pain from your childhood.

That intense feeling wasn’t (outwardly) rational but it was (internally) lawful.

The laws of emotional physics follow this logic. From a rational, outsider perspective, they don’t make a lot of sense. Emotions shouldn’t work like this. But from the inside, they make perfect sense.

Law #1: An emotion does not come from the whole of you; it comes from an inner part that got triggered

Everyone has three main types of inner parts, and they all carry emotions:

1. Parts that have been emotionally wounded in the past (the younger the more powerful)
2. Protective parts that keep up appearances and repress the wounds
3. Avoider parts that distract and numb your attention from wounds

There is a fourth part that is not a part. This is your core True Self that gets covered up by the other parts throughout your life.

Law #2: Your body is the pathway to your emotions

Emotions are not primarily mental happenings; they’re embodied sensations. The only way to feel, process, and understand your emotions is to learn how to be fully present and comfortable in your body. When you learn how to slow down and be present in your body, your emotions will be waiting for you.

Law #3: If you repress one emotion, you end up repressing all emotions

All of your parts and all of your emotions are connected in a larger system. When you repress one part of this system, it represses the whole. Opening up to one emotion, opens you up to all emotions. For example, opening yourself to true love for another person necessarily opens you up to sadness, despair, and grief when they are gone. Repressing sadness, despair, and grief closes you off to true love.

Law #4: When you get emotionally triggered, it’s yours

Being triggered is a state of feeling intense, negative emotion. There’s almost always a clear outward cause: an unfair, neglectful interaction, a toddler meltdown, an insensitive demand, and so on. But if your reaction is emotionally intense, then that’s a sign that whatever happened in your outward environment is triggering deeper emotional wounds. Another person with different emotional wounds would’ve handled the same situation with greater ease. Your healing lies in turning toward your wounds rather than the outward source of the trigger.

Law #5: The parts you most dislike in yourself are the parts most in need of compassion and curiosity

We all have feelings, thoughts, and behaviors we don’t like. The most common reactions to these parts are control, repression, shame, and avoidance. While this might work on some parts for some amount of time, it ultimately creates more suffering because these parts are inextricably connected to us. Troublesome parts ultimately need to be healed and integrated into us, not pushed away. When we turn toward the parts in us we dislike the most, we’ll find that they hold the keys to our deepest, most authentic healing.

Law #6: What you do not allow yourself to feel, cannot be healed

We all need emotional healing because no one makes it out of childhood and adolescence without some emotional wounding. It would be nice if these wounds could be healed without us having to face the original confusion, fear, aloneness, and helplessness that caused the wound. But emotional physics doesn’t work like that. We can only heal what we’re willing to feel.*Yes!

Law #7: Every human has a core, essential self that is undamaged, whole, and full of all the qualities they need in their life

No law of emotional physics needs to be taken on faith. They’re all available to be experienced first-hand. But this one might need to at least be initially approached with faith if you’re a hardcore materialist or have religious beliefs that don’t align with this idea.

In any case, if you think, feel, and act as though this law were true, then you will eventually experience it as tangibly as any other embodied feeling. When you’re in touch with your core, essential self, you’ll feel an uncomplicated sense of compassion, curiosity, clarity, confidence, patience, playfulness, and so much more. It’s all there, right inside.

The core self is not like any other inner part. It can't be seen because it is the seer. It can't be observed because it is the observer. You notice it by its effects mentioned above: calmness, connection, compassion, and more.

Law #8: Your heart center is the portal to your core self

How do you access your core self? How do you know you’re connected to it? The easiest way is to feel into the part of your body that lights up when you say, “My heart is full,” or “My heart is broken.” That is your heart center, and the more it’s open and spacious, the more access you have to your core self.

Law #9: Nothing but your core self can truly heal your emotional pain

Emotional pain shows up in our lives as feelings of constriction, fear, inadequacy, avoidance, and numbness. We think that our partner, family, career, shiny new things, a vacation, and so on will solve our problems and ultimately heal us. But nothing and no one can ultimately heal us except for the love, compassion, and patience that’s already in abundance in our core self. A skilled therapist, coach, or guide can walk alongside you and facilitate you getting to know your core self.

Law #10: Deep, lasting emotional healing happens when all the parts of your mind learn to trust your core self

A skilled therapist, coach, or guide is a model of the compassion, love, and patience your core self would have toward your inner defensive and wounded parts. Over time, you'll begin to see that there’s a force within you that holds that same compassion, love, and patience. Your parts begin to relax and heal as they develop trust in your core self.

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If you want to learn more about the laws of emotional physics and how you can use them in your own emotional fitness journey, then join the Yes Coaching interest list. Yes Coaching is our therapist-designed, coach-guided program that supports parents step-by-step in mental and emotional self-discovery, deep inner work, and self-healing.

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