Meeting ‘The Heat’: How to Stay Present with & Process Intense Emotions
As summer is winding down, those of us located in Colorado know Fall is not just around the corner. We know that our Colorado summers tend to linger and we actually find ourselves facing some of the hottest days of the year. Instead of throwing your head back and crying out in distaste for this lingering heat, what might it be like to learn to use the heat intentionally to help you transform?
That’s right, just like the flames of the fire temper metal allowing us to shape and transform it into useful items, emotional intensity can do the same thing for us on a personal and collective level. Even though emotional intensity (or “the heat” as we like to call it) is often misunderstood, feared, and avoided, it is exactly what opens the door to healing and transformation.
As holistic therapists, we’ve been witnessing an interesting trend for years and year: people are willing to push through physical pain—to run marathons, work 12-hour shifts, or go through surgery—yet when emotional pain rises, we often retreat. Why? Why is emotional “heat” so much harder to meet?
The short answer: We were never taught how.
The long answer is layered with nervous system and attachment science, childhood experiences and patterns within the family origin, patriarchal American culture, and unhealed pain and trauma. But don’t worry, we got you, we’ll unpack this together.
Why Emotional Pain Feels Harder Than Physical Pain
When emotional discomfort or pain arises, it activates the limbic system, a very old, primitive part of our brain. The limbic system is a group of brain structures responsible for three main functions: emotions, memory, and arousal. It also plays a role in motivation, behavior, and social processing. The limbic system acts as a bridge between the conscious, intellectual functions of the cerebral cortex and the unconscious, automatic functions of the brainstem and nervous system.
If your early emotional experiences were unnoticed, unsupported, and/or unsafe, emotional discomfort can feel like a direct threat to your survival. Which is why, when emotional “heat” arises, many of us have tendencies to avoid it using a variety of different strategies (doom scrolling, drugs & alcohol, binging Netflix, intellectualizing, eating, sex, work, suppression, avoidance/procrastination, keeping busy all the time, etc.)
Physical pain, on the other hand, is often more visible and accepted in our culture (for a variety of different reasons) so it gets noticed and addressed. A broken arm gets a cast. A headache gets Advil. But emotional pain? It’s murky. It lingers. It’s unacceptable within patriarchal culture. It brings up all the things—memories, meanings, unmet needs, and the questions: “Will the emotion take over?” which is essentially the aching wondering we all share, “Will I be okay?”
Attachment: Our Emotional Blueprint
From the very beginning, we’re wired for connection. As infant humans, we are born with…
An attachment system that’s wired and ready to go – our only focus when we are little is bonding with our caregivers
All the emotions, but none of skills or abilities needed to regulate and stay present with our emotions
Our caregivers are meant to be our first co-regulators, meaning they are supposed to be attuning to and meeting our needs, soothing our cries, providing a steady and sturdy presence, and modeling how to handle emotional storms. This is how we develop our own self-regulation skills.
Unfortunately many of us had caregivers who couldn’t do that. Not because they didn’t love us, but because they themselves were dysregulated and never learned how to really be with their emotions. When a caregiver has unresolved pain and trauma, or is chronically stressed, they generally exist in a state of dysregulation which causes them to be emotionally unavailable. When a primary attachment figure is emotionally unavailable, children have to find ways to maintain connection to their caregiver, for survival reasons, which typically looks like kids learning to suppress, disconnect from, and/or escalate their emotions.
Fast forward to present-day, we become adults who either shut down when emotions get big (a hypoaroused state in the nervous system)…or eventually blow up to finally be seen (a hyperaroused state in the nervous system).
Our Culture Teaches Us to Avoid Emotions
In American culture, emotions and emotional intelligence are often overlooked and dismissed as “soft”, whereas the “hard sciences” are funded and celebrated. Patriarchy and its right-hand man, capitalism, both play a role here. These systems thrive on productivity, independence, and control, not vulnerability, interdependence, or the acknowledgement and meeting of emotional needs. Since emotions don’t fit neatly into a 9-to-5 schedule, we get taught to suppress them, medicate them, or distract ourselves away from them until we burn out.
But, as holistic therapists, we are here to ask questions and speak truth. What about the human experience? Every single person on this planet (whether they admit it or not) has emotions. If emotions are biologically inherent and just so incredibly human, then why does our culture continue to treat them like a problem? What if, instead of continuing to use methods that wind up costing us in so many different ways, we commit to learning how to be with “the heat”?
If you’ve been wondering how to actually process your emotions and build your tolerance for facing challenges and intensity (aka the emotional “heat”), keep reading!
Your Nervous System Isn’t Failing—It’s Reacting & Protecting
To support you in learning how to stay present with your emotions so that they can fully process and move through, we encourage you to think of emotions as energy in motion aka e→motion. When we’ve grown up with little to no guidance on how to be with and regulate our emotions and emotional intensity starts to rise inside, our bodies instinctively shift into a stress response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop) because they are detecting a threat to our safety coming from within. This is biology, not weakness.
One of the best things you can do to help yourself in growing your tolerance for emotional intensity in order to fully process your emotions is learning your “go-to” stress responses as if you’re creating an internal map for yourself. Instead of judging yourself, you can learn to work with your nervous system. You can say, “Oh, I’m freezing right now. That means I need to re-establish safety and then take action” or “I’m in fight mode…where are my boundaries being pushed or crossed?”
There is SO MUCH incredible and interesting information on feeling your feelings, embodiment and nervous system regulation which we don’t have space to go over here and now, but, if you’d like additional information and support on learning and regulating your nervous system, email us at info@bravecounseling.com or click the “contact” tab in the upper right hand corner of our website and submit a contact form. We will be in touch with you ASAP!
How to Stay Present in ‘The Heat’
Ok, ok so what do we *actually* mean when we say “regulating your nervous system” and “growing tolerance for emotional intensity”? We are talking about real practices you physically, psychologically and energetically do to help you stay present (aka grounded) when emotions get big. Here are some tools and practices to support you in “regulating your nervous system” aka your stress responses that are reacting to your emotions.
Orient to your environment. Look around and name 5 things you see. Remind your body or even say to yourself: I am safe right now.
Ground through the senses. Hold an ice cube, press your feet into the floor, or take a deep belly breath. Bring your attention right here, right now.
Name what’s happening. “I’m feeling shame.” “This is fear.” Naming the feeling activates your prefrontal cortex and reduces overwhelm.
Simply describe the sensations in your body. “I feel tension in my jaw.” “Oh wow, I feel heat in my face and a rush of energy into my chest.” Bringing your attention to, being present with, and connecting (even if it’s just a little bit for now) to your body allows energy (emotion) to continue moving until it processes.
Place a hand on your heart or cheek. This activates the vagus nerve and tells your system you’re not alone. Developmentally, or looking through the lens of attachment science, connection = safety.
Move. Shake, stretch, dance, or walk. Emotions are energy—they need motion to move through.
Why Some Parts of You Feel So Intense
If we look through the lenses of Internal Family Systems (IFS), inner child work, and emotional/social/psychological/spiritual development we understand that we’re made up of many parts – like the part of us that got ignored and overlooked growing up, or the parts of us that had to learn the protective strategies of avoidance or lashing out. Some parts of us go into protective roles and others get “exiled” carrying old wounds, deep grief, or unmet needs. These parts don’t go away. In fact, they often get louder over time. Intensity is their way of saying, “Please see me. I need things. Please help me. ”
You are not broken for feeling intensely. That intensity is a communication from a part of you that has unmet needs from the past and wants healing. That’s a good thing.
Learning about and getting to know the different parts of you is a powerful way to get practice being the presence of various emotions while using somatic and internal tools aka emotion regulation. If you’re curious to learn more about experiential, embodied therapeutic methods like inner child work, parts work (IFS), somatic psychotherapy email us at info@bravecounseling and we will set up a free call with you to chat!
Common Patterns That Interfere with Staying Present with Emotional Heat
Certain early life patterns turn up the volume on the emotional intensity we feel now present-day. These are a few examples of the experiences gone through in childhood as well as some protective patterns that had to be learned in order to make it through.
Suppression: You learned to hide feelings until they leak out elsewhere, explode, or implode.
Anxious attachment: You had to escalate your emotions to get connection or attention.
Avoidant attachment: You had to numb out instead of expressing what you felt because it wasn’t emotionally (or physically) safe to express.
Disorganized attachment: You experienced caregivers as a source of both comfort and fear, which created inner confusion about how to seek support and feel safe in relationships.
Caregiver neglect: Things had to get really bad emotionally and/or physically before an adult responded.
Lack of modeling: You simply didn’t see adults managing emotions well, so you never learned how.
Parentification: You had to become the emotional caretaker for a parent, which forced you to suppress your own needs and feelings to keep the peace or provide stability.
No or inconsistent validation: Your emotions were sometimes acknowledged, other times dismissed or mocked—leading to chronic self-doubt about what you’re feeling and whether it’s “too much.”
Chronic criticism or high expectations: You learned to self-monitor intensely, internalizing the belief that emotional expression was a weakness or failure.
Unspoken family rules: There was an unspoken code like “we don’t talk about feelings,” “don’t rock the boat,” or “stay strong,” which led to shame or guilt around emotional vulnerability.
Emotional enmeshment: A caregiver relied on you to meet their emotional needs, blurring the boundaries between their emotions and yours—making it hard to discern and stay grounded in your own emotional reality.
If any of these ring true, know this: you’re not alone. And your emotional responses make sense in the context of your lived experience. Learning about the parts of you that had to adopt certain patterns or ways of being in the world can be incredibly transformative, but to do this you’ll need to build skills that help you stay present as you meet the “heat”.
Transformation Requires Heat
Glass is shaped in fire. Metal is forged in flame.
You, too, are transformed by heat.
Emotional intensity—the heat—is not your enemy. It’s the gateway. The more you build space and tolerance internally for feeling discomfort, the more capacity you grow for joy, intimacy, consistency and peace.
But this doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a practice. A reparenting. A process of coming back into relationship with your body, your story, and your deepest self.
So, here we are at the end of summer, how will you meet the heat?
If you’d like some guidance and support in meeting your emotional “heat”, we got you. Just click on the contact tab in the upper right hand corner of our website and submit a contact form and we will reach out!