Dealing with emotions
Emotions come in all shapes and sizes
Emotions can be wonderful, like the joy of laughing with your best friend, or the relief of finishing a test you were nervous about. But difficult emotions can be hard to cope with. Sometimes our emotions feel totally out of control, and that can be a little scary. Em is here to help you understand emotions and find ways to help manage them.
Why do we have emotions?
Having emotions is a normal part of being human. Emotions help us to better understand ourselves, our situations, and the people around us.
Emotions are messengers. Emotions give us immediate info that something is happening and help us save time in figuring out what to do. For example, feeling nervous about a test helps us know to prepare by studying and getting a good night's sleep beforehand.
Emotions help us act. Strong emotions help us push through things that would otherwise stop us. Imagine you had an assignment that you really don’t want to do but worrying about not passing helps motivate you to do the task anyway.
Emotions help people know how to deal with us. Emotions communicate to others how to deal with us. When you look pissed off, people know to leave you alone, when you look upset people know to be supportive.
““I simply never dealt with my feelings from events large and small, and eventually they dealt with me. As unpleasant as it may sound, I needed to learn how to feel bad—but first I needed to understand why I felt bad so often. It’s a whole lot easier to deal with pain when it’s not the default feeling.””
Some ways to deal with difficult emotions
Having emotions is normal, but they can still be difficult sometimes. Everyone struggles with hard emotions, and there are lots of things you can try to help manage things when you are feeling overwhelmed by your emotions.
Remind yourself that it’s OK to feel how you’re feeling right now. We are allowed to feel whatever we need to feel. If we lose someone, it’s ok to hurt. If we hurt someone, it’s ok to feel regret. Sometimes, the appropriate thing to do is to just sit with how we feel and know that this will pass. It’s important not to dismiss these feelings.
Sometimes, you just got to ride the wave. Emotions are like waves – sometimes it’s all calm and good, sometimes it’s choppy and overwhelming. Know that emotions come and go and you can ride it out. Learn to float above it, let it wash over you, or ride it out. It’ll pass and you won’t feel this way forever.
Be mindful of unhelpful thoughts and how they make you feel. Thoughts contribute to how we feel and can change depending on how we feel. If we can be more aware of our unhelpful thoughts this can help us connect to how we are feeling and why. Unhelpful thoughts are thoughts that we know aren’t true or are making us feel worse. When you have these thoughts try to stop yourself and remember that they are just unhelpful thoughts.
Try doing the opposite. Emotions can lead us to act in ways which aren’t always good for us, like when we are sad, so we don’t want to see people, or when we are scared so we avoid doing something, or we are angry, and we lash out. Try doing the opposite instead: get active when you’re feeling sad, do something you’re afraid to do, or move away from the situation when you are angry. Doing this can help create disrupt how we were feeling and create distance from that unpleasant emotion.
Give yourself some love. Sometimes, what helps is taking good care of ourselves, like we would with a best friend who is going through a tough time. Give yourself a break, eat something good, touch base with someone you love, take a hot shower, do an easy exercise or watch a feel-good movie.
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