The Architecture of Emotional Delays

The Descriptive Pause Between Feeling and Reacting

Some people experience feelings at a later time, after the situation involving them has occurred. This lag between time and feeling isn’t necessarily a problem with that person; this is how that person’s mind functions. The person’s mind takes time to process the facts of a situation, then absorb them and understand what happened, then feel an emotion. In general, when processing a situation, the person’s brain will prioritize thinking or survival and keep the person’s emotions in a safer part of the brain, deal with the logic of the situation first. The emotions then return sometimes hours, sometimes days, after the experience and take their “proper place.” This period of delay may be confusing to other people who may expect an immediate reaction from a person experiencing such a delay; however, not everyone experiences emotions the same way. Each person’s “internal wiring,” past experiences and individual ways to protect themselves will determine how they are able to react to specific situations over time. Understanding this slower process and being aware of it helps make us more gentle with ourselves and helps us to reconsider why we may have reacted in an unexpected time frame.

Emotionally Safe Events

Many of our emotions do not show up during the actual event because during that time our body is still doing its job of keeping us alive and functioning. When an overwhelming situation occurs, the hints of survival are alluded to by the nervous system and it will be focused on surviving rather than on experiencing the moment itself. So it is not until after the event has passed and we have regained a sense of safety that we experience the flood of those same emotions. While it can be a bit confusing to think you are reacting to something from a long time ago, it is really your body saying, “at this moment, you are now safe enough to experience what you felt.” The time delay in the emotions may not always coincide with the actual event but they may occur in our quiet moments following the event (i.e. when we get home, lay down to rest, or finally take a breath without tension). The wave of emotions is not likely to be dramatic or slow but it occurs based on our body’s instinctual need to stay safe instead of being a “convenient” time frame. Knowing this permits us to honour and respect our emotional response even though they are imperfectly timed.

The Weight of Unnamed Emotions

Some emotions are not able to become active inside of us, because we lack the means through the use of language to identify them. They remain dormant as shapeless entities—unformed, indistinct, and difficult to understand—until some stimulus from outside of ourselves causes them to be awakened. As a result of this difficulty in identifying unnamed emotions, we tend to file these emotions away until that fateful moment when we have some form of understanding or clarity regarding an emotional response. For example, unnamed emotions often present themselves as (but are not limited to) tiredness, irritability, feelings of emptiness, or moments of unanticipated emotional weight that is not tied to external circumstances. Additionally, the fact that these emotions have been in limbo for so long will cause the emotion to feel more overwhelming and powerful at their time of emergence. However, we should note that the inability of our mind to identify emotions does not mean there is something wrong with our minds. In fact, the inability to identify an emotional response demonstrates how complex and dynamic our minds can be, and helps us to continue to learn more about the operation of our own minds. In many instances, simply naming an emotion, like sadness, fear, resentment, longing, and so forth, helps to clarify and define an experience that previously was dim, unclear, or more prominent than it would have otherwise seemed. If we can learn to accept what is vague, we are much better positioned to recognize what our feelings really are.

The Echo Effect – Past Pains bring about Future Feelings

A delayed response or feeling usually has to do with an event in the present, which has been triggered by some aspect of the past that brought back a painful memory. For example, we can have an emotional response to the same tone of voice we heard when someone disappointed us before, or we might get an emotional response to a familiar smell, which may remind us of a childhood event or parent. When our brains process these types of triggers, they combine what occurred in our past with what has currently occurred, so that we believe our current emotional response is being ‘delayed’ until now, or as if we are experiencing the wrong thing based on the reality around us today. This is because the emotional response is always within us; however, we haven’t had the right trigger to release it back to our conscious mind and be able to feel it. This does not mean that we are bound to repeat our past behaviours, but that the emotional experiences we have had in the past continue to affect us throughout our lives. Once we understand that an emotional response to a new event is an echo of a past emotional experience, then we can change how we view and process this emotional response. As a result, all of our past experiences may be viewed as opportunities for healing rather than negative emotional responses.

Conclusion

A delay in feeling emotions does not mean that a person is not connected or capable of feeling. It is simply a way of showing that an individual is on their own emotional rhythm. A person will feel something when their hearts are ready to feel, not when the situation calls for it. When a person is finally able to feel their feelings, they often get a great deal of clarity, healing and understanding that they would not have been able to get had they felt at the time needed. By accepting this timing rather than fighting against it, a person can begin to trust himself or herself a little more gently.