Turning Physical Sensations Into Emotional Insight: Tips for Everyday Practice

We take an insightful look at emotional literacy—not just as a textbook concept, but as a lived, everyday experience grounded in our physical sensations.

Through real-life stories and honest conversations, we explore how emotions manifest in the body, why these physical cues matter, and how learning to recognize them can help us shift from simply reacting to thoughtfully responding.

Whether you’ve just started your journey with emotional intelligence or you’re looking for practical ways to build self-awareness, today’s discussion offers encouragement, relatable examples, and useful exercises to help you tune in to what your emotions are truly telling you.

We dig into the process of building emotional intelligence, break down the difference between reacting and responding, and remind ourselves that growth is a journey—one where self-compassion matters as much as self-awareness.

Resource Mentioned:

• Kairos Prison Ministry: A Christian prison ministry that involves organized talks and group sessions to help residents (prisoners) make better choices, referencing concepts similar to emotional intelligence. For more information, you can visit the official website: https://www.kairosprisonministry.org/

3 Key Takeaways:

• Physical Sensations Are Powerful Messengers: Emotions don’t just happen in your head. Paying attention to where you feel anger, relief, or jealousy in your body can amplify the message your emotions are trying to send you. This awareness is a learnable skill that gets easier and faster with practice.
• React vs. Respond: There’s always a split-second window between feeling an emotion and choosing your action. Practicing the pause, even for a few seconds, helps shift you from knee-jerk reactions to thoughtful responses that serve you (and your relationships) better.
• Self-Compassion on the Journey: Don’t judge yourself for where you are. Emotional literacy is just like building a house—it takes time, intention, and sometimes things look messy before they come together. Every step forward is progress worth celebrating.

Moments

00:00 Identifying Physical Signs of Frustration

04:00 The benefits of using new tech

06:32 Building habits takes time

11:09 Discovering a property tax lien

15:50 Body as an amplifier analogy

17:48 Recognizing emotional patterns

22:45 Managing internal narratives

24:41 Reflecting on past abandonment issues

27:31 Importance of catching issues early

In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life. For more information, contact Eric or Jeff at [email protected] or visit their website, Spirit of EQ.

You can follow The Spirit of EQ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Android, or on your favorite podcast player.

New episodes are available on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays every month!

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License code: PEYKDJHQNGSZXDUE

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Mentioned in this episode:

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So, Jeff, we're back again. We're still in the virtual mode.

And I've been thinking about

emotional literacy lately, and not in the

sort of strict definition that we typically use for it.

Hopefully I'll draw some connection, but I'm going to talk about

it through a lens of the physical

cues that we get when we feel an

emotion. Right.

Well, it's interesting when I think about emotional

literacy. I think it's, it's the idea of getting to know something,

right? And in this case, knowing an emotion. But I think it also,

it can be broader in the sense or, or widened to.

Okay, so when you feel frustrated,

when that emotion comes, let's just say it that way,

what's going on physically? Where do you feel it? What

is the sensation? Is it tension in the back of your neck?

Is it a sort of a sinking feeling in your

stomach? Are there butterflies? As we've heard many

times over. Over time. And

I know for me, early on I, I was probably in that

camp that says, what difference does it make what I'm. What I. What

it feels like? And as time has, has moved on and

wisdom has come, you start to understand that

there is something to that. Because

as we know, Jeff, right. Emotions are,

they're messengers. They're, they're, they're delivering data to

us, right? Yes. And,

and by the way, audience, today is not a sort

of Neuroscience 101 type.

This is lived experience. That's where I'm going with this.

Right. And for me, Jeff, I know that when

I feel that specific emotion

and I get the sensation physically, it's

a way in which my brain is

enhancing the message, making the message

clearer, and potentially

slowing me down, if I'm willing.

Right. And I think this is that

wonderful pole of difference between reacting and

responding. Right. When we think about reacting,

right, There is the event, there's a thought, the

emotion, and then immediately choice when we

think about responding. Same flow, but the last part,

there's a pause, there's a slowdown, and

then a choice. What happens in that

slowdown? What can be valuable or

beneficial is to be able to examine,

okay, what is going on inside of me.

You know, what I feel the knot or I feel the

tension. And therefore. Okay,

now I want to make one thing very clear, Jeff, and then I want to

get your thoughts. Some out there might say

I don't always have enough time to examine.

Granted, I get it. There's some things that come at you quickly and

you're going to have to. It's going to move but what

I find interesting, Jeff, is that in the

beginning you feel like you need an hour to get this

all figured right or to get this all digested

and processed. But the better we get at this thing,

this learnable skill of emotional intelligence, you might

be amazed. Not you directly, Jeff, because I know you know this,

but you might be amazed at how fast you're able to process

that data. Right. Think of it as the, the, the,

the semiconductor chip. Right? Yes. You know, there's certain.

Right. I mean, and it really is. I think it's a great analogy because

when you think about it, I, I'm a big Apple fan, so I,

I use a MacBook Pro and I'm on the, I believe it's

the M4 chip. And obviously part

of Apple's marketing is, hey, this next generation is

going to be able to process at a speed like you wouldn't believe, and you're

going to have this and this and this. Well, I think that's what

happens here. As we continue to build the practice,

strengthen the practice all around the model,

we were able to process information much faster than maybe in

the beginning when we weren't so familiar.

But I'd love to get your thoughts on that. And then I'm going to kind

of do a little exercise with you. It's. Yeah,

we've talked about it before, but I've been involved in a prison ministry called

Kairos forever and ever and ever, which.

There's 10 talks that the, the team members give to the, the

residents, the prisoners. The very, and it's very organized. But

the very first talk is called Choices. And in that

talk, it's. This was done years and years ago

that they came up with this. They, they use those words exactly,

to react or respond when you're confronted

with something. And so I've seen that grow

in people, residents, prisoners that I've known

for several years, how they talk about.

The very first thing you taught us on this weekend was something I use

every day. Now, it's never brought up

as being called emotional intelligence, but it is. Yeah.

And I thought that's great. That is, that's very powerful.

So call it emotional intelligence. Call it intelligence.

Intelligence. Emotional. As long as you're doing it.

Yeah, as long as you're doing it right. And I,

I think that, you know,

it's, I, I would just say to our audience is that

don't allow yourself to like, critique

where you're at today. If this is new to you or if it's something

that you've just begun, because it could sound like, oh,

I'm deficient, because I always react, Jeff. Well,

you're probably reacting because that's how your brain is operated forever.

You're learning something new. You're. You're changing to a different

neural pathway. Right. And I just want to encourage folks,

if you just transfer yourself and compare

yourself, you probably are going to say, I'm deficient

and there's something wrong with me. Instead, I would recommend

that you go, well, building a practice

takes time. And I think, Jeff, we have

used this before on the show, is that if

somebody out there decides they're going to build a home,

the first thing that happens, right, or one of the first things that

happens, they're going to dig a hole. And I don't know if you've seen that.

It's just. It looks like a total mess.

Okay. But eventually it starts to form. Concrete

gets poured in the. In the hole, and then somebody comes with

the wood, and then you've got these. You know, I

forget. The frame starts to come to pass, and then there's

drywall. You don't build a house from whole.

And then the next day you have a house with rooms and carpeting.

Right. It doesn't work that way. So let's be

empathetic to ourselves that it's a journey to

building this practice and that faster

processing speed. So, Jeff, what I'd like to do is a

little exercise to kind of illustrate this, the physical sensation piece

and how it can come into play. Okay. What I'd like you to do,

and I'll play along with you. I'd like you to, for a moment, think

about maybe the last couple of days,

three emotions that you felt in the last few

days. And as I said, I'm going to give you just a little time to

think about it. I'm going to refresh myself on mine, and then

we'll come back together and I'll guide you in something.

Okay. I. I think I know what I want to say. Okay.

All right. So would you go ahead and name

the three for the audience? Do you know you. Do you

want the emotion or what caused the emotion? No, I just want

the emotion. Okay.

Anger. Okay.

Joy, slash relief. And then anger again.

Okay. Okay. So anger showed up twice, and

then joy relief somewhere in the middle. Okay, great.

So the first time that you felt the anger,

do you remember what the physical sensations were like for you?

For me, that this is relatively easy. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but

I'm a feeling from my gut person, and that's also where

stress comes. So when I get angry, the first thing is that

tightens, that gets uncomfortable,

and from there it just kind of radiates out. It's.

There's. That. That's the biggest thing for

me is I feel that. That right

there that, you know, there's something going on.

Okay, so you. Would you say that typically

whenever you're angry, that's where it. Where. That's what it

manifests. That's. That's one of the very first

signs. Okay. All right, so how

about for the joy relief? What were. What were the physical

there? Well,

because the joint relief were related directly to the first anger.

Okay. In this project, I felt

my stomach go, okay,

all right, So I release, if you will. Yeah. The release of

that and

just lightness, you know. Okay, this is

great. This. This problem that was actually a pretty big

problem. Not. Not life threatening or anything, but a big

roadblock in something that Michelle and I wanted to do.

It's gone. It's so, you know,

I don't know if yay is an emotion, but whatever that.

Okay. All right, so what I want to take you through then

is first for our

audience, if you feel comfortable, and if not, we'll pause

this and we'll pivot. But I think you're going to feel

comfortable in whatever way you can do it. In honoring anybody else,

can you tell us about the situation that was

around those emotions? Okay.

Michelle and I are. We want to. We wanted

to do a home equity loan because we have got to replace

the deck and there's some other stuff we want to do around. So

process was just sailing along. And then we get a

call from the person and they go, you have a

tax lien on your property?

I go, no, we don't, because, you know, we've

always kept that up. And. And then. So it showed up

in the. Would that be the underwriters or whoever that person

is in that process? It showed up on their report.

So it's on their report, but nobody could find

it in real life. Phantom.

Yes. But that phantom was going to stop us from

doing what we wanted to do. And it

was frustrating because I spent I don't know how

many hours between digging through on the Internet

calling such joy to call the state

government and the Franklin County. And it

was just. It was very frustrating and I was getting pretty

angry. Okay, all right. It was unhealthy.

All right, so you got that. And then I

think you said the joy and relief connected to the same situation.

Yeah, we get a. We get A call from our person and they go,

we found what's going on? That tax lien is for

somebody that has a name, almost like your wife.

Sorry. Yeah. How. Okay, fine.

Wow. Never. I didn't ask questions.

I just said thank you. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And. And I love this because, you know,

you're talking about real life stuff. I mean, I'm sure there's probably

somebody out there in the audience that has gone through a process of closing a

loan or, you know, getting a line of credit or whatever, and there's been

some, you know, way out of whack situation.

One of the lines is just a little bit wrong, and

it stalls the whole thing. Interesting.

We've all been in those situations. Right. And I. I think

what I. I'd like to do, if you feel comfortable, Jeff,

and you may not have done this before, and I'm. Full

transparency. I've kind of just been starting my

intentional journey about paying attention to these physical cues.

So do you find in that

process? Right. And I know in a previous

episode, maybe it's the one just before this one is released, we

talked about the KCG process and all

of that. Have you examined

the connection with how you're feeling physically with the emotion?

Does it help amplify the message? Does it or what.

What does it do for you? For me,

it's. It's very important that I do that because as I

mentioned before, I deal with

panic attacks, a panic disorder, and part of my process

every day is I do, I guess, a body inventory.

So I. Yeah, I'm really aware for myself

of these feelings that show up. So that's. That's

great. And this might be a question

that you're going to say, Eric, you already know what I was going to answer,

but I'm going to ask you anyway. Do you think this. Do you think that

body inventory could be effective for people who. Even people

that don't have a panic attack? Yeah,

I do it daily because it's an ongoing thing. But

I think if we talked about this too, in the other episode, this

doesn't have to be something that takes hours to do.

Right. If you're, you know, if you're confronted with something in this

case making you angry, take a minute, a

few seconds, and just kind of go head to toe

and just, what am I feeling? And that. That'll tell you,

you have to know yourself to be able to do this. But that'll tell you,

I have something I need to pay attention to, this emotion that I'm

feeling. Like we talked before, it's giving me information, and that information

is coming across. In this case, my

body's reacting to it. So. Well, in some cases,

I think, Jeff, the body operates like an

amplifier, you know,

exactly. It. It pushes out the sound so that

you can't miss what's being

communicated. Obviously, in the case, if you're a guitar player and

you're playing the chord, the object is, is for

that chord to be heard by an audience. Right? And in this

case, we're the audience. And you. You

said something there, and I'm going to come back to it

about the idea, about paying attention. But I

promised you I would play the game with you, not just

for you. So my emotion

that I kind of even leaned into even

yet today was. Was jealousy,

okay? And what I felt with jealousy was

a mixture of tension in

my core, so maybe that stomach area, and then

I also feel it, tension in the back of my neck,

okay. And. And it has a blended flow to it.

And. And the flow is. Initially there's this,

you know, how a dog, when it gets aggressive, how the hair will kind of

stand up. Right. I felt that.

That. That was. That was kind of that sensation because I'm.

I'm feeling there's a threat, right? And

then I moved into. It was a

guilty kind of mode because

I really had no reason to feel jealous. It was

rooted around a story I had begun to tell myself in

my head that I made up. Right?

And then I'm kind of navigating.

Okay. And, Jeff, I can't tell you how

important this idea of the

awareness, the recognizing a pattern. Right.

Has helped me, and it does here in this situation,

because once again, those

emotions are trying to communicate something to me.

That physical is that amplifier to make sure that

all that's possible, that I'm not going to ignore it. Right?

Because The Eric of 20 years ago

would have just rushed right by it, like, put it in the

cabinet, put it underneath the door, put it in the trash can,

Just keep moving. Because I wouldn't want to face it. I. I'd be

like, you know, quasi, I don't want to feel that.

And I would have also probably have fed the

story later on in the day, right?

So you take another cue, somebody says something, somebody

does something, and then you're like, ah,

okay, I remember that story a lot. My brain is going to bring

it back, because, hey, my brain remembers that's a threat.

So, boom, the story is replayed in my head,

right? So fortunately, we're not

talking back 20 years ago. We're Talking about today.

And today, what I was able to do was to move much faster

past it. Right. I listened to the message,

I felt the physical. And then I. I

did my analysis or my audit of. Okay, is this

true? Is this really true? No, that was just.

That was the beginnings of a story. Time to move on here.

And Jeff, for our audience, I. I really

hope that they will grasp this episode

toward taking captive

these processes so that they can

be healthier and they're not carrying so much of this weight

with them. On and on and on. You know,

one of the things that. Something you said and that made me think of

this. These things are going to happen. Your

reactions are going to happen. That's perfectly normal. That's expected.

You're human, but it's what you do. Like we

talked about earlier, are you

responding and that the response is.

Part of the response is recognizing what's happening, what's going on. And

it's perfectly normal to. To have this. To. To be

jealous or to be angry. I mean. Yeah.

Yeah. And notice. And. And I. I'd say as well, for

everyone out there. I. I didn't say that.

Man, I felt so bad for feeling jealous. Right.

No, I. I don't feel bad about feeling jealous. Okay. I had

nothing to feel bad about because that jealous

was communicating something to me. It was. It was. It

was something that needed my attention,

and that's where I'm going to kind of come full circle back. You mentioned about

paying attention. How valuable.

How important is it for us to be paying attention, Jeff, to what's going

on inside of us like this? And I'm not saying that

to say people should see it just like we do or, you know,

whatever. I'm just saying what's the value in paying attention in your

mind if you're not paying attention,

you don't know what. Okay, this is going to sound cliche again, but

you don't. You're not. If you're not paying attention, you don't know where you're

at. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm not

paying attention, I don't know

where this is going to go. If I don't know where I'm starting from. You

know, it kind of reminds me of the situation. I know I've

done it. Maybe you have, too, where you're on a freeway

and you miss your exit and it was because you

were lost in thought or you were distracted by,

you know, something. Mostly thought. But, you know, the

pain, not paying attention can get you into trouble.

Yeah. And so you can. Okay. There's two response or

two ways to react. There's a way to react and a way to respond.

Unfortunately, some people react with there's my exit.

Zoom across all the lanes and try to make it. Yes,

that's a reaction. Okay, we don't want that.

Okay. The response is I miss my exit. I'll

just go up to the next one, do a ue and come back.

So real world example. Yeah.

And, and in my case, right. With

jealousy, the reaction.

If I were to have reacted, I probably would

have accused and I probably would have

sort of cross examined and lectured

because again, I, I, this episode

is not about stories. I know we, I did one solo not

too long ago, Jeff, about storytelling and the stories we

tell ourselves. I think that is one of the

key strategies is really,

you know, you talked about doing the body inventory, doing

story inventory, checking those stories.

Have you allowed a story to take up residence in your head where it

just, your brain calls it up at every point?

Are you able to, to hold it, hold it at bay

or have it, hold it accountable? Which part of you is

writing that story? Yeah, yeah,

exactly. My, Is it my reactive self or my responsive

self? Well, and here's the other thing. Is the

story valid? Is it still, is it still

relevant? I mean, you know, Jeff, it's kind of a

connector. I've made it no secret in our episodes. You

know, I've had issues, Fear of abandonment.

Well, jealousy and abandonment are

not too far from each other. They may even, I almost

would say they might live next door to one another. Right. Because,

you know, so, so let's

say the abandonment thing. Is your story coming from

30 years ago when it actually happened, or is it

coming from today where you're thinking about the 30 year

old story? Well, and Jeff, great,

great observation because if

thankfully my, my health has

improved at such a level that

when this happened with the jealousy, I,

I, I wasn't entertaining a story of abandonment

for something that happened 30 years ago.

And I, and I'm grateful for that. But I think it's

also, it can be as

straightforward and it can be hard because especially if it's related to

trauma or some other type of an event that has really

hurt. Is, okay, it happened 30

years ago, but does it still have relevancy

in my today? And for me that would be a case of,

okay, when was the last time you were abandoned, Eric?

And what is it in your life right now that gives

you a great deal of assurance that it's

imminently pop, Imminently possible now? Right.

And that's not to say, Jeff, that I think

there is a way to prevent

abandonment that is part of the human condition. I was not

the first. I certainly know there are other people that have

experienced it in one form or another, and it might happen to

me again. But those

are typically events. They're

not ongoing conditions and ongoing

replicated, you know what I'm saying? I mean, it's not like

every day there's a. A huge

chance of being abandoned, you know, but if

you're not careful, if your brain senses

that there's a threat, it probably will pull

that story back out and try to get it going,

because it sees that as another way to protect.

So as we close out, we started by

talking about emotional literacy. And I think

this kind of wraps in that world, right, that if we

can get more and more knowledgeable about what the

emotion is, what it means, what it's typically trying to

communicate, and quite frankly, what are the physical

sensations that come with it, I think it allow. It

aligns us in such a way that we're going to be better able

to handle those situations in relationships

especially. Right. And to not.

I mean, it's almost like a way of cutting off

a really, really big problem early on. Because

like in most situations, right, if, if you've

got a leak, if you get it early,

you. You kind of position yourself to where you're not going to have one day,

hey, look, my basement is flooded, right?

And I think about you and, and, and from the motorhead

perspective, right, there's something you heard, right? Right.

You're. You're on the bike, you heard it, but then you said, ah,

that's probably nothing. And then you continue say, ah, it's probably nothing.

And then boom, you've got something much bigger on your

hands. So anyway,

any final thoughts on what we talked about today? No,

I just appreciate all the listeners taking time to listen

to us. Yeah, it's awesome. And in that spirit,

we look forward to the next time that we're together. Everyone take care.