Metabolizing your feelings into a single unit of concrete utility

What do we do with all our thoughts and feelings? Where do they go?

One option is to say out loud every impulse that floats into our minds, making them other people’s problem.

Another method is denial, where we suppress our emotions and opinions, hoping they don’t find a different exit on their own.

We can also numb out our thoughts and feelings with any number of delicious addictions.

And don’t forget the strategy of simply ignoring them completely, starving them of oxygen till they die.

Or what about this? We ruminate over the weight of life’s inevitable problems until it spirals into a stress related illness.

The problem with these strategies is, they mostly offer short term benefit. We can do them and get by for a while, but it’s only a matter of time before our dysregulation comes back to bite us in the ass.

My recommendation to people is, instead of venting, denying, numbing, ignoring, or ruminating, we try a different approach.

Metabolizing.

I love this word. From a biological perspective, to metabolize something is when you change food into an energy form that can be used by your body. Metabolism is a chemical reaction that helps us sustain life.

Now, I won’t go into the details about the digestive system braking down proteins into amino acids and all of that sciency stuff. Because what matters is the metaphor. Metabolism is a frame for thinking about emotional and intellectual processing. It’s an adaptive response. Much like how the body metabolizes food to extract nutrients and energy, effectively processing our thoughts and feelings extracts useful insights and growth from experiences.

I have personally been doing this exercise daily for many years now, and I find that it’s rooted in both empathy and practicality, making it a powerful tool for dealing with challenging interpersonal dynamics.

Remember, metabolizing is converting what your mind ingests into energy and building blocks for growth. It’s a wonderful exercise for people with a lot of thoughts and feelings, who are wondering where the hell those things are supposed to go.

How often do you ruminate over the weight of life’s inevitable problems until it spirals into a stress related illness?