I’m going to do something quintessentially British and talk about the weather.

As I sit writing this, the sun is shining and it’s a stunning day. Our garden is in full bloom and our cottage has the kind of idyllic feel that you see in magazines of the quaint English countryside.

I even have the beginnings of a t-shirt tan after a bank holiday weekend spent mostly outside.  

But despite this mini oasis of nice weather, it’s been a hard winter (and spring). In fact, I’d say this has been the longest, coldest and wettest winter of my 15 years living in the UK.

Whenever people ask me why I live in the UK, when I could be enjoying the beautiful weather in Australia, I always talk about how much I like the seasons. That there are these obvious transitions that weren’t present when I grew up in Oz and I like it.

But this was the first year where I started to think that this was a lie and that I genuinely wanted to have less seasonality and more sunshine.

Braving The Elements

A couple of weeks ago the weather was very different to how it was feeling today. Checking my iPhone I was informed it was 6 degrees, but with the wind it had a “real feel” of 0 (for those in the US, that’s 42 degrees, with a real feel of 32 degrees).

There was sideways rain, blistering wind and it felt like the kind of day I associate with December, not April.  

I had to take Rox for a walk. She’s a fair weather dog and when I opened the door and presented her with the day, she headed back towards her bed. But despite her reluctance, she needed to go out, so I put on her lead and ushered her outside.

I also bundled Ramsay into his stroller; wearing multiple layers of clothes, gloves, blankets and the rain cover. Rox and I were going to experience everything nature had to throw at us, while Rams was experiencing it in a mobile corporate box.

Being Under Dressed

I was about 5 minutes into the walk when I noticed I hadn’t put on gloves. This isn’t uncommon, but on a day like this, it was a mistake. My hands were turning red with pain from the wet and wind.

And interestingly, the pain in my hands gave rise to an emotion. I started to feel angry.

This is something I’ve noticed before. Since moving to the country, Ali has had horses. In the wintertime, when the temperature drops, the water buckets or water troughs that the horses drink from become frozen over. A thick layer of ice forms on the top and the horses can’t drink from it. So each morning you have to break this ice so that the horses can get access to the water again.

Not wanting to get my glove damp with water, I always do this bare handed. And every time I plunge my hand into freezing cold water, I feel my body surge with a feeling of anger.

It rises up my spine, through my neck and shoulders with such intensity and ferocity, it’s like someone has turned on a switch.

So as I was walking along that country track on this day, pushing Ramsay in his stroller and trying to keep Rox from startling the newly born infant lambs that were sleeping in the field just next to us, this feeling of anger rose up.

Noticing how emotions arise

I started to pay attention to this because it was so interesting to me. When I left the house I was in a good mood. Moments earlier, even when walking in some horrible rain, I was also fine. But now I was consumed with rage.

We tend to think of emotions arising because of an event.

Someone says something hurtful; it leads to the emotion of sadness.

Your partner turns up with a bunch of flowers; following this is the emotion of joy.

But while there is often a trigger for an emotion arising, this emotion actually has a fairly short half-life. That is, unless we keep the emotion alive with our mental thoughts.

So if someone says something hurtful, sadness can arise. What tends to keep the sadness there for much longer is the constant chatter that follows.

You replay the event over and over in your mind.

You go over different scenarios, how you wished you’d responded.

You start to delve into the bigger meaning behind this event. “Is this what everyone else thinks about me?”

This one incident that possibly lasted minutes, is then ruminated on for hours (or days), perpetuating the emotions.

This is what I started to think about while I was out walking with my increasingly numb and painful hands. But what I decided was that there was no deeper meaning and story here. It was simply that the cold weather and its effect on my hands had created a feeling of anger. Nothing more.  

And as I continued to walk, I noticed the anger was subsiding. My hands were experiencing pain but the emotions that this originally triggered were dissipating.

All because I wasn’t throwing fuel on the fire by telling myself a story.

Observing Your Emotions

One of the big things I work on with clients is getting them to notice their feelings and emotions. Rather than being in it, can they instead start to notice them as if they were an observer.

For example, let’s imagine that someone has a meal and they start to feel some level of physical discomfort.

This could be because they are experiencing lots of pain, bloating and distention in their abdomen.

Or it could simply be a discomfort because they struggle with any level of fullness. After years of restricting, they’ve become accustomed to and enjoy a feeling of emptiness.  

So wherever they are on this spectrum, they have some feeling of physical discomfort.

Now arising from this physical sensation is an emotion. They may feel disgust, fear, anger, sadness, or a host of other emotions. It’s this physical sensation that creates a tripwire for the emotions to be released.

Why, why, why?

As humans, we are meaning-making machines. We are constantly trying to make sense of the world. So when these emotions come up, we ask ourselves “why?” And like any question you ask your brain, it will come up with some answer.

It is these answers that perpetuate this emotion hanging around. The thinking, ruminating and questioning, drastically extends the half-life of these feelings.  

But worse than this, the experience becomes interpreted that the thinking caused the emotions, when it was actually the physical sensation that kicked it off.

Why is this important?

If you believe that the physical sensation is triggering the emotional reaction, it’s easier to be an observer. You can see the emotion arise and notice this experience. You can separate the physical feeling and the emotional feeling and notice that the emotional feeling can disappear even if the physical discomfort sticks around for longer.

If you believe the thoughts are triggering the emotional reaction, then when the emotions arise, you go straight into your head.

What am I thinking? What’s triggering this?

This makes it much harder to be in observer mode because you are being analytical. And ironically, it’s this analysing that leads to the emotions continuing on longer and longer as you try and find the story for why this is happening

Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on your thoughts and your beliefs. Having these powerful ideas floating around in your conscious and subconscious is likely having an impact.

But the time for this kind of deep thinking is outside of these moments. Times when you can actually be logical and rational and aren’t hijacked by emotion.

When thinking is helpful

The one exception I would make here, when I think using your mental processes can be helpful, is with compassion and gratitude.

Simply sitting with emotions and being an observer is not easy. In some situations, it’s impossible.

Very often the natural reaction is to fight negative emotions with more negative emotions.

You feel uncomfortable because you’ve eaten “too much” food. So you chastise and lecture yourself.

This kind of behaviour is coming from a good place. The belief is that if you get upset with yourself then next time maybe you’ll do something different.

The problem is, it doesn’t work. It simply prolongs the suffering and ironically reinforces the behaviour, making it more likely to happen.

So my suggestion is to do the opposite. As counterintuitive as it may sound, these are the times when you should be using compassion and gratitude. Run through statements like:

“Right now I am at least grateful for…”

“Right now I am at least happy for…”

“Right now I can at least feel secure in knowing that…”

“Right now I am proud to at least…. “

Don’t just do this in your head; get out a pen and paper. Fill in the blanks and write down your answer.

Doing this takes you away from the emotional feelings of shame and guilt and toward more positive emotions. It also breaks the usual pattern of behaviour, building ongoing awareness and emotional strength.

Emotions don’t control our behaviour. Yes, they can impact how we think and feel, but we can also learn to notice them and observe them without having to follow their lead or prolong the time they stay with us.

This is by no means easy work and we won’t always get it right. But knowing that it is possible is at least the first step in beginning to make it a reality.  

Getting Help On Your Recovery Journey

I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.

I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

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