The Precious, Painful Gift of Edge Emotions

Recently some big dreams have come true for me and yet I've been feeling more anxious than ever. Is there something wrong or is this just 'growth pains' - to be welcomed, not avoided?

‘Edge emotion’ is a term coined by Finnish researcher Kaisu Malkki, describing feelings that are hard to experience - fear, anger, grief, anxiety, confusion, sadness, and overwhelm. They trigger our brain into fight or flight and make us believe something must be terribly wrong. And sometimes, indeed, things go wrong. But other times - more often than meets the eye - such feelings signal something else entirely. A significant clash occurs between your mind and psyche and a world that’s gotten too complex for your old way of being and seeing. And, in that meeting, some old scaffold in your mind starts to fall apart, making room for something new: a new perspective, a new lens, some new understanding of yourself, your relationships and your path in life.

When I was writing my dissertation, my little girl, who was 6 at the time, was practising piano and getting terribly frustrated with every mistake, to the point of tears and dramatically declaring she was going to quit this horrible thing forever. At that very moment, I was writing about how adults who bravely face their ‘edge emotions’ and see them not as signs of trouble, but as cues of inner growth, do, in fact, develop and mature way beyond those who hide from these painful feelings or try to get rid of them too quickly.

So it occurred to me to draw an analogy - between the joint pains my kid was experiencing at the time - which she knew, albeit unpleasant, were signs her body was growing fast - and the emotional pain she was going through. I explained that her frustration, impatience and anger were in fact ‘growth pains for the mind and heart’ - and, in allowing herself to feel those feelings and keep on practising her piano despite the discomfort, she was in fact helping her mind to grow.

That explanation didn’t take the frustration away, of course. But it did help her reframe her negative feelings and gave her a reason to not run away from them (I’ve since avoided the word ‘negative’ when it comes to feelings, as even the more painful ones have something useful for us). In the intervening years, the term ‘growth pains’ has become part of the jargon in our family and a way for us to stay awake to our hardest moments not as failure, but as stepping stones to new versions of ourselves. But all that is much easier to talk and write about than to experience in real life, as I have been lucky (sic!) to discover over the past couple of months.

During this time, we found our dream home - our last step to fully settling into our Australian life after more than five years since arriving to our adoptive country. We moved to a tiny, quiet village, some twenty minutes away from the town where we used to live and where my partner, who is a chef, is running a small restaurant. The only downside to the move was that we were no longer within walking or cycling distance to his venue and he needed to get a driver’s licence - something he had managed to avoid his whole adult life and something I’d been urging him to do for more than a decade.

In Australia, like in many countries around the world, learner drivers are required to be accompanied by an experienced driver at all times until they are ready to take their practical exam and drive independently. Being the sole other driver in our family, that was, of course, my task. And I never imagined it would prove one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life (no exaggeration!). It was more nerve-wracking than starting life over on another continent. More terrifying than presenting in front of hundreds of people. More stressful than being examined by an academic commission. More frightening than even the first few days of motherhood.

It may sound silly, but sitting as a passenger next to a beginner driver after over 20 years of being the sole driver threw me into one of the most crushing experiences of powerlessness and vulnerability I had ever felt. In no other context did I ever feel so out of control as I did sitting there, watching my partner make the mistakes all beginners make behind a wheel and constantly teetering on the edge of a panic attack - struggling to breathe, my heart beating out of my chest, my whole body trembling, not able to control my knee-jerk reactions or the incessant need to give him instructions - most of them unnecessary and often counterproductive (“take care, there’s a stoplight ahead!”).

I was completely taken by surprise by this tsunami of anxiety and dread in the face of an event I had anticipated with so much joy and awaited for such a long time. I love driving and never felt scared learning myself. My partner driving is a gift for our family - it adds flexibility to our days and will be a tremendous help to all of us navigating our busy hectic schedules as a family. I felt so excited for and proud of him for finally giving it a shot! I had every intention to support him, encourage him to get behind the wheel at every opportunity and to cheer him on as he grew in confidence. Instead, I was freaking out and became controlling - scaring him with my incessant warnings and seeing danger where there was none.

If there was anyone who might have had reason to be scared of this process, it was him. He was the one getting himself out of his comfort zone in middle age to learn a new skill, willing to make mistakes and correct them over and over, keen to practice as much as possible, embrace the status of beginner and all the challenges that come with that. And he was doing admirably! He was a careful, disciplined driver and he was progressing steadily. I felt so much respect for him and so much anger at myself for not being able to overcome this horrible fear that gripped me every time, as soon as I sat in the passenger seat. I also felt terrible guilt for not being able to snap out of it and for being a nuisance instead of a partner in his learning. I was worried because it seemed so unlike me to feel this level of intense, out-of-control fear. Up until this point, I would have said self-regulation was one of my top strenghts. Not anymore.

I tried to reason my way out of it - to no avail. I tried deep breaths, but my heart kept pounding just the same. I tried positive thinking, but only catastrophic thoughts came. I tried to ignore my fear, but it overwhelmed me, and my startle reflex got triggered at the most random times during our trips. I tried to stay quiet to avoid stressing my partner out, but I seemed unable to help myself. I had deep conversations with a trusted coach unpacking my fear. It helped, but the feeling was there still every time I got in the car.

Then, one day, we had a particularly rocky trip, when I panicked so much that my partner pulled the car over and asked me to drive, as my stress had become too much for him to bear. We both acknowledged I was effectively sabotaging his learning. It was then that I realised that I was in fact facing an ‘edge’ in my growth. This was not about driving. It was something deeper and my overwhleming fear was not an enemy. It was trying to show me something I had been missing. I realised I had been stubbornly avoiding to do the one thing that my own research had shown was THE THING to do, which was truly letting myself feel my emotions instead of trying to suppress them or calm myself by attempting (unsucessfully) to control the situation. The one thing to do was to look where it hurt and be curious about what I might find.

I took some time to explore the dilemma I was in (I have facilitated this process in one of our webinars, if you are keen to give it a try yourself). The easiest way to define a dilemma is that it feels like a tug-of-war between two competing needs/desires/values:

“On the one hand, I deeply want my partner to drive - for his and our benefit - and I wholeheartedly want to support him in his learning.”

“On the other hand, I don’t want to be in the car with him as he is learning, because I am terrified and every car ride feels like torture.”

Our ‘edge emotions’ usually emerge right at the crux of a dilemma. My desire to support him got me in the car every time. My fear of being a passenger next to him made our trips painful for us both and made us dread riding together. If there is no dilemma, there are likely no edge emotions.

I found it helpful to write the dilemma down and then, as in a meditation, close my eyes and allow myself to feel the feelings that came up. Even in the peace of my home, just tuning into this dilemma and the image of getting in the car was enough to kick-start the panic. I noticed my impulse to abandon the exercise right then and there. Thoughts came up about emails awaiting replies and a course I was working on needing attention. Anything to distract me from having to feel that feeling.

I forced myself to sit with the sensation and notice its shape, texture, and location in my body. This anxiety seemed to be centered around my heart, solar plexus and throat. Like a huge weight, a suffocating feeling. A sense of impending doom. I allowed myself to feel it fully and I was initially shocked by its intensity. But then, as I kept my attention on it, I noticed how the pain of it became a bit more bearable.

This is the point in the process where another powerful, contrasting emotion can come in: curiosity. I chose to be curious about this anxiety.

What did it want to teach me?

As soon as I asked that question in my mind, an image appeared. If you do this exercise around one of your own dilemmas, do allow yourself to notice what comes up when you are curious. If you are visual, likely images will come. For other people, words come or simply new sensations - the key here is to welcome whatever comes.

In my image a little girl, thin and dirty, sat in the corner of an empty room, knees to chest, trying to make herself small. I was shocked both by how clear this image was and by how terrified this little girl seemed to be. I noticed my immediate impulse to try to understand who she was and what this meant, but remembered that was not the point. The girl was my subconscious’ metaphor for the ‘edge emotion’ I wanted to explore and my job was to stay curious. I noticed this little girl was not keen to interact with me - she seemed so hurt and afraid. I imagined sitting down at a safe distance from her, and just talking calmly and gently, assuring her she was safe.

At that moment, as I was immersed in this visualisation, my dog came and sat at my feet. I noticed the sense of calm his soft fur brought me and took the syncrhonicity as an invitation to bring him into my image too. I invited the dog into that empty room in my mind, and in that moment something shifted. In my imagination, the dog sat at the girl’s feet and she finally seemed to relax, stroking his fur. She didn’t trust me, but she trusted him.

I allowed myself to sit in that image for a while longer, noticing at the same time the sensations in my body. The anxiety started fading. A sense of relief started emerging. The suffocating feeling of stuckness I had had for weeks started easing. I allowed myself to sit there a while longer and then to notice new thoughts emerging about my dilemma.

I reflected on my needs of control in life and my relationship with ‘power’ - which is one of the most fascinating lines of adult (vertical) development. I reflected on the idea of ‘surrender’ versus the need for ‘freedom’ and ‘agency’ and how this is such a growth edge for me - could I be strong, independent and surrender at the same time? I’ve accessed some new, broader perspectives on myself, my strenghts and my limitations - a surprising gift I received for my own maturity.

The insights from that simple exercise were many, powerful and, most importantly, they became an unlock, allowing me to resume my role of ‘learning driver partner’ with much less fear. Sometimes, to be able to change a behaviour in the outer world, you need to first shift a mindset and emotion in your inner world.

Afterwards, I have finally found myself able to breathe in the passenger seat. I’ve stopped nagging and started offering more useful suggestions when needed. I’ve stopped dreading our trips and have seen my partner grow in confidence and skill as he gets more comfortable behind the wheel. Of course I still love (and prefer) to drive myself, but I’m no longer the ‘passenger from hell’. I needed to lean into my ‘edge emotions’ with curiosity, to find and honour this little scared girl inside of me in order to become able to support my partner in his driving as my full mature adult self.

This process might seem almost therapeutic (and possibly was). Reading this, you may be sitting with many other questions - who is that girl? What hidden fear/trauma might have lurked in that corner of my unconscious mind? This is definitely the stuff of good therapy (which I think everybody should engage in periodically, as a measure of psychological hygiene), but this is not the purpose of this article.

The invitation here is to notice how events in your life - some as banal as accompanying someone to learn how to drive - might surprisingly be pushing you to the edges of your development. It’s an invitation to normalise the stressful and painful emotions you feel when you are deeply taken out of your comfort zone. It’s a reminder to stay kind to yourself and to not try to suppress or negate that which makes you uncomfortable, but instead lean into it, allowing yourself to feel it and bring a measure of curiosity into your body and mind. It’s also a reminder that we don’t absolutely have to understand rationally why we are feeling a certain way in order to grow from that feeling.

Below is my process of working with dilemmas and edge emotions. If you’re keen to get into more depth on this, you can watch this webinar or dive into our self-led, ICF-accredited program ‘Vertical Development Practices for Coaches and Leaders’.

Copyright Dr. Alis Anagnostakis

If you do try this process for working with one of your own dilemmas, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What is easiest/hardest? What are you learning about yourself? How can this help you see beyond the ‘either/or’ of a dilemma and tap into a broader understanding of what seems like a ‘no exit’ situation?

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