How to actively deal with difficult emotions

This pandemic is bringing up a lot of difficult emotions for people, and your initial reaction might be to push them away or put on a brave face. However, suppressing or denying your emotions only reduces their outward appearance, not your inner experience of them. Avoiding uncomfortable feelings, like sadness, grief, or anger, does not eliminate them. Instead, you expend a tremendous amount of energy bottling them up. By trying to feel in control of your difficult emotions, you often end up amplifying them and giving them control. Research has shown that this can have negative consequences on your physical and mental health as well as your general well-being (1). This is why it is incredibly important to acknowledge and actively deal with difficult emotions.

Now that you know ‘why’ it’s important, let’s focus on ‘how’ you can actively address your emotions.

1. Accept difficult emotions as a natural part of being human.

Firstly, note that I use ‘difficult emotions’ instead of ‘negative emotions’ since emotions are neutral and do not have a moral value attached to them. All emotions give you meaningful information about your core needs and goals. In the case of so-called ‘negative emotions’, they tend to signal that your needs or goals have been threatened and help prepare you for action. Also, just because you are experiencing difficult emotions, doesn’t mean that you are weak or failing at life. Sometimes the most meaningful experiences are emotionally uncomfortable. For example, growth and change can come from sadness or regret and anger can fuel fighting for something we believe in. I also personally believe that if we are happy all the time, we wouldn’t cherish or appreciate the high points in our lives as much.

2. Stop invalidating your emotions.

You’re feeling worried and this is making you highly sensitive? That’s okay. You’re frustrated and find yourself easily irritated? That’s also okay. What’s not okay is invalidating or judging your emotions by saying “I shouldn’t feel this way“, “I just need to get over it“, or “It’s not that bad“. When we validate our feelings we accept them without judgement or making ourselves feel even worse for having them. Self-validation can sound like “I’m feeling sad. I would rather not feel this and be happy, but I am going to sit with this sadness right now”. Emotional validation is also an important interpersonal skill because it can help someone feel heard and understood. In addition, it can support their emotional regulation and responses to stress (2).

3. Get curious!

Start giving your emotions some attention and become better acquainted with them. Next time you feel a strong emotion ask yourself:

• What happened to make you feel this way?

• What is your emotion(s) trying to tell you?

• Which judgments or beliefs (if any) do you have about this emotion(s)?

• How did you behave when you felt like this?

• How would you have liked to have behaved?

4. Emotion-focused coping.

Emotion-focused coping can be helpful when you need to regulate your feelings and emotional response instead of addressing the problem directly. This is particularly relevant when you are faced with a stressful situation that is outside your control (like in a pandemic and lockdown). Research has shown that emotional coping can protect against stress and promote general well-being (3).

Some helpful emotion-focused coping strategies include journaling, practising mindfulness, and talking about your feelings with others (either a loved one or a professional). Other coping strategies, like going for a walk or watching a movie, can temporarily distract you and help you tolerate the difficult emotions. They can also help you calm down before you do something that you might regret. However, you shouldn’t only rely on distraction to cope with your emotions as this can quickly turn into denial.

Lastly, your brain tends to focus on things that are consistent with how you feel and this then amplifies that feeling. So if you feel sad, you tend to focus on sad things, which just makes you sadder. This is why it can help to actively focus your attention on things that make you feel good.

The Takeaway

If you’re struggling with difficult emotions, understand that this is perfectly natural given the circumstances and that it is not you. How you feel is the result of months of stress, uncertainty, and worrying, and not being able to use your usual coping strategies. So don’t feel ashamed of your difficult emotions and try to repress them. Instead try to treat them as you would friend: kindly, non-judgmentally, and curiously. This then allows you to use your energy to cope with your emotions in a healthy way instead of spending it on suppressing or denying them.

I hope you found this blog post helpful (please share it if you did!) and in the next post in this mini-series, I’ll be exploring how you can learn to cope with uncertainty.

References

(1) Patel, J., & Patel, P. (2019). Consequences of repression of emotion: Physical health, mental health and general well being. International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, 1(3), 16. https://openaccesspub.org/ijpr/article/999

(2) Shenk, C. E., & Fruzzetti, A. E. (2011). The impact of validating and invalidating responses on emotional reactivity. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 30(2), 163-183. https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jscp.2011.30.2.163

(3) Juth, V., Dickerson, S. S., Zoccola, P. M., & Lam, S. (2015). Understanding the utility of emotional approach coping: Evidence from a laboratory stressor and daily life. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 28(1), 50-70. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4687455/