This is a picture of what your elephants (emotions!) might look like if they get bunched up like a bad traffic jam.
A lot of effort may need to go into sorting, identifying, labeling, and describing your elephants. It is quite possible that you neglect to do this because you do not believe in the existence of cartoon elephants. Or maybe you do not think your elephants are important, other people tell you your elephants are not important, other people blame you for the situation that you are in, or other people do not offer very much space to allow the assortment and organization of your true cartoons.
Here are some tips for sorting your elephant situations: Gently notice your elephants. Make space for their messiness, disorganization, or lack of words. Don’t get hung up on WHY you feel the way that you do. Often people feel if they can not explain what they feel, then the unexplained should not have the right to exist.
When you start to make space for experience, elephants will slowly start to sort themselves out. When people can’t really organize and articulate experience, it can result in incoherence. People need coherence to feel organized, communicate effectively, and exert influence.
If you have nothing more right now than a jumbled pile of elephants going on, make sure that you make some space to be curious, allow elephants to exist (cartoon elephants do, indeed, exist!), and give them a bit of breathing room. It is possible that this task is twice as hard when people around you are unable to do this with you. Remember to be patient with your elephants, because impatience can often result in a bigger jumble. And, if you’re not used to making space for your elephants, it may take a lot of practice.
Don’t give up!