It's a Wednesday evening, and I've just finished two hours on a call with a group of people I've known for years.
We meet every week. We talk about life, about what's going on for each of us, about whatever comes up. It's one of my favourite parts of the week, and I always come off the call feeling lighter, warmer, more alive.
And that's exactly where the trap is. Because the obvious conclusion is: this call makes me feel good. These people give me joy. When I'm with them, I'm happy.
It sounds true. It's the way almost everyone talks about their feelings. And it hides one of the most useful things you'll ever learn about yourself.
What are your emotions trying to tell you?
Your emotions are telling you about the thought you're in, and whether it's yours. They're a built-in guidance system, not something that happens to you from outside. A painful emotion is feedback that you're in thinking that doesn't fit who you really are. A light, warm emotion is feedback that you're closer to yourself. They're messengers, and they're always working.
Once you see emotions this way, you stop fighting them and start listening to them. That changes everything about how you move through a hard day.
Isn't it obvious that things make us feel the way we feel?
It seems obvious. Look more closely and it isn't.
If the weekly call itself gave me joy, everyone on it would feel the same joy every week. They don't. On some weeks, one person arrives heavy and leaves heavy, even though the call was exactly the same. If a particular person made me happy, they'd make everyone happy. They don't. If an event caused a feeling, the same event would cause the same feeling in everyone. It never does.
What's actually happening is that I'm feeling the meaning I give to the call, the people, the evening. The call is the occasion. The feeling is made inside me, by the meaning I give to what's happening. When my thinking is open and warm, I feel warm. The call is just a lovely place for that to happen.
This isn't about denying that things matter. Real events happen and real harm happens. It's about noticing where the feeling itself is made, because that's where you have far more say than you've been told.
You can test this on yourself. Think of an event that upset you badly a few years ago and barely touches you now. The event hasn't changed. It happened exactly as it did. What changed is what you make of it, and so the feeling changed too. The same principle is at work every day, in much smaller ways, whenever the same situation feels heavy on Monday and light on Friday.
If emotions come from inside, what are they for?
They're guidance.
Think of them as a kind of internal navigation system, quietly running all the time. When you're in thinking that's aligned with who you really are, it tells you with ease, energy, warmth, lightness. When you drift into thinking that isn't you, thinking that says you're worthless, alone, in danger when you're not, it tells you with a painful feeling. It's as if something inside is saying: ouch, stop thinking that way, it hurts.
That means the whole range of your emotions, including the difficult ones, is working for you. A painful emotion isn't evidence that something's wrong with you. It's evidence that the guidance system is doing its job.
The trouble begins when we mistake the signal for the problem. We try to get rid of the feeling, numb it, argue with it, avoid anything that might set it off. Meanwhile, the thinking that the feeling was pointing at goes untouched. Anxiety is one of the clearest examples: it's a precise signal about a future you're imagining, and most people spend years fighting the signal instead of noticing where their mind has gone.
Why do some emotions keep coming back no matter what?
Because some of the thinking they point to is very old, and carries a charge.
A lot of emotional feedback is simple and passes quickly. You notice you've been thinking something unkind about yourself, you let it go, the feeling eases. But some thoughts aren't fresh. They're conclusions you drew long ago, fused to a strong feeling at the time they formed. When something in the present touches them, the old feeling fires on its own, faster than you can choose a new thought.
That's why simply thinking happy thoughts doesn't work. Your job isn't to become relentlessly positive. Your job is to discover what's running your automatic thinking patterns underneath, and clear it, so the feedback you receive is about the present rather than the past. That's why understanding your past doesn't change you on its own: the old charge still has to be removed.
And where emotions are heavy, persistent or overwhelming, please don't do this alone. Keep working with a professional. Understanding emotions as signals is meant to sit alongside proper care, never to replace it.
How can I read what an emotion is telling me?
Here's a practice for the next time a strong emotion arrives. It takes about two minutes.
First, don't push the emotion away. Name it simply: this is frustration, or this is sadness, or this is fear. Notice where it is in your body.
Second, ask: what was I thinking just before this arrived? Look for the sentence underneath. Often it's quick to find. They don't respect me. I'll never get this right. Something bad is going to happen.
Third, ask: does this thought fit who I really am, or is it something I learned?
You don't need to fix anything. Just notice the chain: a thought, then a feeling, then a message. The feeling was telling you about the thought. And often, just seeing the thought clearly is enough for the feeling to soften, because the message has been received.
If the same thought and feeling keep coming back, write them down each time. Over a week or two, a pattern usually emerges: a handful of old conclusions setting off most of your difficult emotions. That list is valuable. It shows you exactly where the old charge sits, and where the real work is.
What happens when you start listening instead of fighting?
Your emotional life becomes less of a battle and more of a conversation.
People who learn to read their emotions this way don't stop feeling. They often feel more, because they're no longer afraid of it. But the feelings stop running them. They become information to listen to, rather than storms to survive. And as old charged patterns are cleared, the guidance becomes clearer and kinder, pointing them more and more reliably toward who they really are.
On our stories page, Marko Mladenovic wrote three years after working with me: "I am still in such a peaceful, blissful, joyful state." Still, three years on. That's what it can sound like when someone stops fighting their inner guidance and starts living from it.
If you'd like to begin from the one who's receiving all this guidance, I made a free masterclass called Who Am I? It takes you underneath the thinking and the feeling, to the awareness that's been listening the whole time.
Next time an emotion arrives, don't ask how to make it stop. Ask what it's trying to tell you.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.