A friend of mine recently got a life coach. I suppose there really is a coach for everything—you can get a sports coach, a speech coach, love coach, and if you really just need general help—a life coach. One of the exercises that the coach recommended for when you are facing an anxious situation—picture there is an elephant in the room and walk up to it—and be curious and engage with it. For example asking the question, what is the matter today? Why do you feel this way? What do you wish were different? This got me thinking, what if we used this exercise to embody all of my negative emotions. Oftentimes, my feelings of fear, anger, and anxiety are often nebulous and and/or hard to control. For example, I sometimes just feel anxious….over what I can’t even begin to tell you but I just do…maybe it runs in the family or maybe I just haven’t mastered the art of uncovering what’s really bothering me. Even when I do have a reason for a negative emotion, like when someone wrongs me, the anger can seemingly spiral out of control…I go to bed pissed off, I wake up in the middle of the night pissed off, and when I wake up in the morning—yes, you guessed it, still pissed off.  Therefore, I thought to myself, what if I gave these emotions an animal embodiment and then try to face off with it. Would that be helpful? And more importantly, can it help me get over it quicker? Well, I think it’s very worth a try….so I’d still like to invite you into this animal kingdom journey with me.

Raging bull. There is no better definition for rage than like a bull in Pamplona during the annual Running of the Bulls. I thought about a most recent incident where an argument with a family member left me very pissed off—as I could feel the heat rise in my body, I also tried to picture it as a bull—it  is running about my apartment with gusto and knocked over my flowers and shattered my tv—and heading towards my wine fridge (oh no, anything but that!). I pretended I had a bright red flag and decided to wave it down. Fortunately in this case, my imagination doesn’t allow the bull to run me over like it would in real life. I then began to just ask questions—why are you so mad? How is this making you feel? Is there a deeper issue? And guess what? Silence!—well this is awkward, I’m having a conversation with an imaginary bull and it isn’t even talking back to me. However, I persisted a few more times and a little bit at a time, I did begin to get some answers. Well, I found out that in this instance I was also partially mad at myself—for not being better able to control my emotions, for letting the person get to me, and for not believing in myself. I once heard the phrase that anger is hurt turned inside out—and when I asked the raging bull whether this could be the case, it seemed to confirm that. I guess I was also hurt by this person’s words too. Well, after sitting with the bull for a bit longer, I felt better and seemed to get a bit more clarity as well….don’t get me wrong, I’m still mad over it, but felt at least I moved in the right direction….so I’ll move on.

Sadness platypus. I tried to think of the last time I was truly sad—the first thing that came to mind was a the ending of a relationship a year ago….since it’s been a while, I wondered if I can still engage in the exercise. On the flip side though, I’m glad sufficient time has passed—reliving that when it’s still fresh probably would be too much to handle on a Sunday night. As I thought back to the initial days immediately following and the hours I spent on my couch either in tears or just simply too paralyzed/sad/tired/energy-sapped to move, I tried to replace all of that with a platypus in the corner of the room—it’s just there, mopey faced, not doing anything in particular, simply just there. In the days and weeks afterwards, I remembered all the random times where a wave of sadness would just wash over me—during an exercise in pilates class, while shopping for groceries at Trader Joes, or walking home from work—I pictured the sadness platypus following me around during those times, just to remind me that yes, the grief is still here and I can see it. Whether it’s because enough time has passed or just the silliness of my imaginary platypus, I do feel marginal better and I think had I done this a year ago, I for sure would have coped better—I’m sure it still would have sucked, just sucked less.

Anxious monkey. I thought about the upcoming work week, and a particularly a few tasks that I know will be stressful—and here we go—there’s the monkey, it’s so frantic and it’s just swinging back and forth aimlessly in front of me. Interestingly, after a conversation with the monkey, the work projects seemed less daunting than I thought. Why are you so frantic, I ask the monkey—well, because there’s all these tasks in that lie ahead—and you know that it’s going to give you heartburn. You have your manager depending on you and external parties eyeing your success, you better not screw it up. Then, as I thought about it some more, I realized there are only 2 key tasks that I need to accomplish and I’ll be set for the week. Well, I guess 2 seems manageable on second thought. Thinking even more, I realized that it’s also a long weekend coming up (Memorial Day , yippie). Wow, the monkey seemed to calm down a little on that thought. Well, what about the week after…and that’s when I quickly tried to stop the monkey. The funny thing is, it felt easier to stop a monkey from getting out of control than my mind, though I really just replaced my thoughts with the monkey and it should be the same right? Not sure, but seemed like a jedi mind trick…that worked well.

Picturing yourself in a zoo of emotions may sound silly—but I bet you’ve also said yourself at some point that you’re being “silly” for getting angry at some a small thing or getting anxious over nothing. What we feel may not always be rational but giving them a shape and definition can at least help deal with them better and if anything, when I picture a platypus (also please look up baby platypus images), I really just can’t be sad anymore, at least for that moment. And until we want to pay for a life coach, maybe this is the next best thing.