At Your Limit: How to Expand Your Emotional Bandwidth

It’s the start of September… Do you remember in May when I told you this summer was going to be a cauldron of transformation? 

How is the wave of change moving through your world? 

How are YOU doing? 

If it feels a little rough or you find yourself short with people or frustrated often, it’s a signal that you’re at the limit of your emotional bandwidth, as in your capacity to deal with and process the emotional content of your current life situation. In moments like this, you have two options: decrease your emotional load or increase your bandwidth capacity. To thrive in our current environment of intense change you really need to engage in both strategies. 

Decreasing your emotional load means it’s time to take a break, slow down and REST for real. Allow your nervous system to decompress and process the large volume of life, energy and emotion that you're experiencing on a daily basis. If you recently experienced a major life change or are still in the middle of a major life change — which currently applies to the vast majority of humans — then you probably need to take things more slowly and allow your system the time and rest it needs to process these life events. This is really just part of being a healthy, vibrant, present human, but it often gets overlooked in the business of day-to-day life.

Increasing your emotional bandwidth means actively engaging in practices that increase your capacity to process emotions, energy and life experiences. Usually this involves resolving emotional triggers, removing limiting belief structures and frameworks, and cultivating deep self acceptance so that you can expand your capacity to be present and experience all that life has to offer you without suppressing or controlling it. Without a doubt, breathwork is the most powerful tool I’ve found in increasing emotional bandwidth. 

I’ve seen my clients move through a vast array of changes this summer as life continues to unfold in quite dramatic ways. It’s been amazing to witness and support them as they learn to manage their emotional capacity both by decreasing their emotional load and increasing their emotional capacity.

It’s important to remember that we’re ALL going through change and transformation in different ways at different levels. Right now, I see that most people are at the limit of their emotional bandwidth and that they’re doing the best they can with an overwhelming, life-altering change. So if you don’t feel like people are operating at their best  — they aren’t doing their job, they’re doing their job poorly or they’re asking you to do their job for them — it’s  probably true. and they’re  probably beyond their emotional bandwidth. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing their best. We have all different capacities, different tool sets and different circumstances. We also all have the ability to take a moment, to slow down, and begin our work on decreasing our emotional loads and increasing our emotional bandwidths.

Take a deep breath.

There is time to breathe.

There is  space to process and decompress.

Seek it! 

Find it!

Take it!

Breathe and allow life to unfold in all its messiness.

You are going to be OKAY! And it’s highly likely that things will turn out better than you expected them to be.