What are your emotions
really trying to tell you?

We live in a culture that isn't always very comfortable with emotions — particularly the difficult ones. We're encouraged to stay positive, push through, not dwell. And so most of us develop a habit of either suppressing what we feel, or being so overwhelmed by it that we can't think clearly.

But there's another way of relating to emotions — one that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) describes beautifully. Rather than treating emotions as problems to be solved or feelings to be avoided, we can learn to see them as information. Messengers worth listening to.

Emotions have two particularly important functions that I find myself coming back to again and again in my work — the illumination function and the communication function. Understanding both can genuinely change your relationship with how you feel.

Emotions as illumination

The illumination function of emotions is exactly what it sounds like — emotions shed light. They illuminate something important that's happening for us, often before our thinking mind has caught up.

Think about anxiety. It's easy to experience anxiety as a problem — something uncomfortable and unwanted that you'd rather not feel. But anxiety is also information. It's telling you that something feels uncertain or threatening. It's drawing your attention to something that matters.

The same is true of anger. Anger can feel frightening or overwhelming — but underneath it there's almost always something important. A boundary that's been crossed. A need that hasn't been met. A value that's been violated. The anger isn't the problem — it's pointing toward something worth paying attention to.

In ACT, we talk about developing what's called psychological flexibility — the ability to notice your emotions with curiosity rather than immediately reacting to them or pushing them away. When we can pause and ask "what is this feeling telling me?" rather than "how do I get rid of this feeling?", something shifts.

This doesn't mean every emotion is giving you accurate information about the world — our feelings can be coloured by past experiences, unhelpful patterns of thinking, or simply tiredness and stress. But they're always giving you accurate information about your inner world. And that's worth paying attention to.

What different emotions might be illuminating

Here are some common emotions and what they might be drawing your attention to — not as definitive answers, but as a starting point for curiosity:

Emotions as communication

The second function of emotions is equally important — and often overlooked. Emotions are not just internal experiences. They are also a form of communication — to ourselves and to the people around us.

When we express an emotion — whether through words, tone of voice, facial expression or body language — we are communicating something to the people around us. We are signalling how we feel, what we need, and how we are experiencing the world in that moment. And those signals matter — both for our relationships and for our own wellbeing.

Many of us have learned — often from a young age — to suppress or hide our emotions. Perhaps expressing feelings wasn't safe. Perhaps we learned that certain emotions were unacceptable. Perhaps we simply never had good models for how to express what we feel in ways that connect rather than damage.

The communication function of emotions matters for two reasons. First, because suppressing emotions has a cost — research consistently shows that emotional suppression increases psychological distress over time. Second, because when emotions are communicated well, they strengthen connection. They allow others to respond to what we actually need, rather than what we appear to need.

This doesn't mean expressing every emotion the moment you feel it. There's wisdom in choosing when and how to share what you feel. But there's a difference between thoughtful expression and habitual suppression — and most of us could do with shifting a little further toward the former.

Learning to express emotions well

Expressing emotions well is a skill — and like all skills, it can be learned and practised. A few things that can help:

• Name the emotion specifically — "I feel anxious" is more useful than "I feel bad"
• Share what's underneath — "I felt hurt when that happened" rather than expressing hurt as anger
• Choose the right moment — not in the heat of strong emotion, but when you feel grounded enough to speak clearly
• Notice what you need — emotions often point toward a need, and naming that need alongside the feeling is powerful
• Allow others to respond — expressing an emotion is an invitation to connection, not a demand for a specific response

What this looks like in practice

In therapeutic coaching, one of the things I come back to again and again is helping people develop a different relationship with their emotions — one based on curiosity rather than avoidance or overwhelm.

Rather than asking "how do I stop feeling this way?", the question becomes "what is this feeling telling me?" And rather than "I shouldn't feel like this", the question becomes "what do I need right now?"

This shift — from fighting emotions to listening to them — doesn't make difficult feelings disappear. But it does make them feel less threatening. And it opens up a much richer source of information about who you are, what matters to you, and what you might need to move forward.

A final thought

Your emotions are not your enemy. They are not signs of weakness, or evidence that something is wrong with you. They are part of being a whole, feeling human being — and they carry information worth paying attention to.

The goal isn't to feel good all the time. It's to feel fully — with enough space and self-compassion to hear what your emotions are trying to tell you, and enough courage to communicate what you feel to the people who matter.

That, I think, is one of the most important things any of us can work on.