'You're not your emotions': Safe2Feel conference teaches emotional intelligence

Kristi Holt stopped in the middle of the Safe2Feel conference at Utah Valley University in Orem on Saturday to ask audience member Claire Pesci, 17, how she was feeling.

"Overwhelmed," Claire said. The audience had just spent hours learning about navigating emotions and getting in touch with their own feelings.

Holt guided Claire through a breathing exercise and putting her hand over her heart to help her feel her way through the emotion until she felt OK again.

Claire and her mom, Jennifer Pesci, of Draper, came to the conference to learn emotional tools. Claire said she was hoping to find ways to "reframe thinking and deal with being a teenager."

"She'll get into spiraling. I do it sometimes, too," Pesci said. "But she'll start worrying about somebody she cares about and end up spiraling like the worst has happened."

Pesci said she not only learned tools to help Claire at the conference but also came to recognize circular thinking patterns in herself. And Claire said she learned how to recognize and shift to authentic emotions that will move her toward more productive actions.

"It was overwhelming because I had to reflect on myself," Claire said. "I realized how much I've been doing that holds me back."

This was the second-ever Safe2Feel conference, an interactive workshop hosted by two Utah companies, The MECA Project and Counterfeit Emotions, with the intention of teaching emotional intelligence skills to Utahns.

'Emotions are not who you are'

The MECA Project's mission is to provide emotional health tools for teens and young adults. Holt, co-founder, led the group in a discussion about recognizing, managing and expressing emotions healthily.

"Emotions are not who you are — emotions are meant to enhance your human experience," Holt said. "They're what separates you from being a robot."

Audience members discussed the importance of feeling an emotion in order to move through it, without suppressing or avoiding it. They also talked about the importance of validating one's emotions instead of shaming themselves for feeling that way, and seeing emotions as messengers that lead to growth and personal understanding.

"When we become more aware of how we're feeling, we become more aware of what we're thinking and how it drives everything we feel and do," Holt said.

'Every single emotion you experience is a gift'

Curtis Morley is the founder of Counterfeit Emotions, a company offering a series of online classes where people can learn to differentiate between "authentic" and "counterfeit" emotional pairings, including guilt versus shame, pain versus misery, love versus lust and power versus control.

Morley gave conference attendees a crash course in his mission, explaining how counterfeit emotions and authentic emotions are closely connected experiences, but the former is cyclical and motivated by fear and control, while the latter drives action and is motivated by love and surrender.

"Every single emotion you experience is a gift," Morley said. He explained that healthy emotions like pain and guilt can drive action and change.

"Pain is meant to hurt, and it's safe to feel that hurt," he said. "That trigger is giving us a gift of growth, a gift of healing and sometimes of warning."

He said guilt connects people by moving them closer to each other to apologize, while shame separates people.

"Guilt is beautiful. Shame, on the other hand, is damaging," Morley said. "Guilt hurts — Shame traps us in that hurt."

Attendee Paul Hatch helps youth sports teams in Utah County learn positive psychology to help them perform better. He said he left the conference with empowering messages not only for young athletes but also for himself.

"You're in control, and you're not your emotions, and understanding what our emotions are and what they mean can be really empowering," Hatch said.

Both Morley and Holt invited participants to practice getting to know their emotions, be present with them and let them go.

"We're giving you permission to feel," Morley said. "Feel all of it."

The next Safe2Feel conference will be held Jan. 20 at UVU.