How to Process Uncomfortable Emotions According to Dr. Gabor Maté

Photo by Alex Alvarez/Unsplash.

Who isn’t a huge fan of Dr. Gabor Maté? If you’re unfamiliar with Hungarian-Canadian addiction and trauma expert, speaker, and author Gabor, well, prepare for his wisdom (and check out his books listed at the end of this article).

In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Dr. Gabor Maté instructed Tim to think about the last time he was upset. From their conversation, I modeled the steps so you can have that dialogue with yourself! I recommend writing your answers in a journal or in a note on one of your devices.

If you’re upset and want to find the origins of your feelings and process them, here’s how you can do it on your own:

1. What was the situation that made you upset? What specifically happened? Who was involved? Where did it happen?
2. What was your emotional reaction? Name all the specific emotions that came up for you in that moment.
3. Why did you have these emotions? Try to take each one. “I was sad because I thought we were on the same page,” etc, and go as far as you can with these. Maybe the emotions were provoked by multiple thoughts. Maybe: “I was sad because I realized I didn’t know this person as well as I thought. I was scared because their reaction felt unsafe. I was scared because in other times where people have responded…