How to manage your emotions so they don't get in the way of living your dream life
Miscellaneous / / April 17, 2023
Avoiding and suppressing feelings is not an option. There are much better ways.
Sam Akbar, a clinical psychologist with over 10 years of experience, wrote the book Emotions: Understand, Accept, and Manage. Under the cover are collected exercises that will help you cope with painful experiences and improve your emotional state. With the permission of the MIF publishing house, we are publishing an excerpt from the third chapter about how to drive feelings into a cage is not the right strategy if you want to improve the quality of life.
Emotions are actually inflatable balls
Hear me out because it's very helpful way perception of emotions. Have you ever tried to push an inflatable ball under the water while having fun in the pool? You had to spend a lot of energy to keep him from resurfacing, didn't you? At this point, you were hardly doing anything else. What happened when you let him go? He jumped out of the water and hit you right in the face with triple the force. The people at the pool laughed heartily at you while you pretended that this was the effect you were counting on.
If you want to miss your whole life then do it
If you push away emotions that you do not like, then you: a) get them right in the face again, like a beach ball; b) miss everything else in your life, because you will spend all your energy on eliminating the sensation that you do not want to experience. This attempt to get rid of emotions is called experiential avoidance.
It is an unwillingness to stay in contact with an unpleasant inner experience, even if avoiding it causes even more suffering in the end.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the chronic pushing out of unwanted emotions underlies many unnecessary looks. suffering.
Yes, emotional avoidance strategies work well for the short term, so we continue to rely on them. But gradually they reduce the quality of life and deprive you of what you value.
No wonder we are doing this. Very few of us are familiar with the skills to effectively process emotions. I doubt very much that openness to emotions is taught in schools after a double math class on Mondays. It seems that you can either extinguish difficult emotions with pleasant impressions, or completely get rid of them.
Cage for yourself
Which of the following do you do to cage your feelings (to control, eliminate, avoid them, get rid of them)?
- Drink.
- You use drugs.
- eat.
- Have sex.
- Do physical exercises.
- Watch TV.
- Sit on the Internet.
- Criticize yourself.
- You blame others.
- Avoid closeness.
- Say positive affirmations.
This is not an exhaustive list - add your personal strategies to it coping with stress. Of course, there is nothing wrong with doing these things from time to time - and I will not tire of emphasizing this. I like to fill my mouth with chocolate chip cookies in front of the TV just like everyone else. But trouble comes when you perform these actions on autopilot, out of habit reacting to your emotions. You are abusing them. These methods work in the short term (which is why we keep coming back to them). But if you look closely at them, you'll see some not-so-pleasant long-term effects on physical and mental health. In addition, these coping strategies take you far away from everything that is truly important to you.
History of your emotions
It is useful to ask yourself what you have learned in life, especially in childhood, in terms of emotions. Think about the following questions:
- What emotions were forbidden?
- What emotions could be openly expressed?
- What did adults do or say when you were upset?
- What strategies did others use to process difficult emotions?
- Are you still using the same strategies you adopted years ago to deal with complex emotions?
There is no such thing as perfect "emotional" parenting, so please don't think that somewhere there are people who lead an ideal life and easily sail at full sail through emotional troubles. We all learn useful and useless skills. These questions are needed to understand the judgments you are holding and to find out if they still help you.
Ask yourself about this, but not about the other
The key question to ask yourself is: “What am I willing to experience in order to live the life I want?” instead, "What can I do to stop feeling this way?"
Neither you nor I have complete control over our emotions. Sometimes we can influence them or avoid them, but the only thing that is completely subject to our control is the actions at the moment the emotion occurs. Imagine that you have two dial indicators on your body. The first shows the level of emotional shock. The arrow on it fluctuates depending on what is happening in your life. you are not promoted at work, a child becomes very ill, a dog dies - the arrow will drop to 10 out of 10 on the shock scale.
If there are people and things in your life that are valuable to you, then there will be emotional upheavals in it.
Imagine that this indicator is attached to you exactly between the shoulder blades. You cannot reach it and change the position of the arrow, although in your attempts to do this you have already assumed every conceivable body position.
Now imagine that the second indicator is attached to your forearm. This is an indicator of your will. The arrow on it shows how you are set to experience the emotion, whatever it may be. It is easy for you to reach it and play with the scale, you have complete control over this indicator. Now you have a choice. When an event occurs that inevitably causes unwanted emotions, you can either turn inside out, trying to reach the scale with an arrow between shoulder blades (even if you succeed, you still won’t be able to change your emotions for a long time), or twist openness to experiences to the maximum and accept your feelings.
What is not considered acceptance
Before you throw this book out the window, grumbling ominously that I urge you to feel miserable for the rest of your life, just listen to me.
Acceptance of emotions is not the need to endure and put up with emotions with clenched teeth. You do not need to kowtow to them, to put up with them, to endure them with difficulty, endure them, surrender to them, give up, give up, or suppress their. All of the above implies that you must somehow change your inner experience - and this has nothing to do with acceptance.
Acceptance of emotions speaks of the need to make space for everything that comes to you, even if you do not want it, do not like it, and do not approve of it.
Acceptance is the willingness to feel your emotions, it is openness, the ability to adapt, be interested and give place to any feelings.
But why would you do it? So that you can act in accordance with your values. Even if you are experiencing unpleasant emotions, you can still do what is important to you and not waste energy on the cage for emotions.
Here's what else can not be called acceptance: coming to terms with situations such as bullying, violence or injustice. Acceptance speaks of the free space for the emotions that these events cause, for the opportunity to change something. By swallowing your anger and fear, you put yourself in an even worse position. Walk around with a glued smile on your face and say right and left: “I’m doing great!” - it is very difficult when inside you are incredibly hurt. You put an end to all efforts of pain to tell you: "This situation is not suitable for you." It is worth making room for these emotions in order to try to do something with them and improve the life of yourself and others. What would happen if Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks or Emmeline Pankhurst never listened to their emotional pain?
Wise Mentors
Instead of treating emotions as annoying things to be controlled, it is better to perceive them as wise mentors who want to show you what is important to you until the very depths of the soul. There is wisdom in your painful experiences. They remind you of what matters to you. You wouldn't feel sad, angry, scared, or upset about an event that you don't care about.
Imagine that I am a skilled sorceress, the best in my house at Hogwarts, and can cast an amazing spell that relieves sadness, fear, anxiety, frustration, impatience, and any other feeling that you don't like (bite, Hermione Granger). But this charm has a side effect: in addition, you will not be able to feel joy, happiness, love, satisfaction, pleasure and all the other emotions that please you. What will you decide? Most people, when they hear my terms, say they don't want to cast this strange spell on themselves.
No one wants to live a life completely cleansed of feelings.
What we really need to know is how to manage our emotions so they don't get in the way of us living the life of our dreams. [..]
Watch
Emotions resonate in the body, and observing them is the first step. Let's quickly scan our body to find out where any sensations have arisen. This will take you about 2 minutes, but you can set aside more time for this exercise if you want. Our goal is not relaxation, but the exact definition of sensations in the body.
- Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths in and out.
- Notice which parts of your body are touching the chair, how your feet are touching the floor.
- Notice the sensations as you inhale and exhale.
- Watch how the air fills your body and chest, how the chest rises and falls with the breath.
- Now try to experience a feeling you would normally avoid, such as sadness, guilt, fear, or anxiety. If nothing comes to you, remember how you recently experienced an unwanted emotion. Try to make this memory vivid so that you feel the sensations of that time.
- Scan the body from top to bottom, starting at the head, moving down along the neck to the shoulders, chest, abdomen, arms and legs. Check what physical sensations you experience and what you want to get rid of urgently.
name
What exactly are you feeling? Say to yourself, "I'm watching feelings of anxiety/frustration/irritation" - or choose your option.
It seems easy, but in fact, we rarely pay attention to our sensations and give them names. Learning to label your emotions is a powerful experience, especially if you're not used to the practice yet.
Try to understand what physical sensations you experience with a certain emotion and how they differ from sensations with another experience. How do you feel sad? How is it different from boredom or annoyance? Start exploring the sensations that make you feel emotions.
Explore
Let's try a role-playing game, but not creepy or weird. Imagine you are a scientist who is researching sensations in the body (I like to imagine myself as a respectable lady of the Edwardian era in a big hat and with a net in her hands) and I have never encountered anything like this in my life. Ask yourself:
- In what part of the body do I experience this sensation?
- If I draw a contour around it, what shape will I get?
- What color is it?
- What texture does it have?
- Does he have a temperature? Is it hot or cold?
- Do I feel it closer to the surface or deep inside?
- Is it moving or sitting still?
Try to notice all the physical qualities of this sensation that you can feel.
Breathe
When you have observed all the qualities of this emotion, try to breathe through your sensations and make room for them. Imagine that you can expand around this feeling, make room for it. You don't have to do anything else, just try to sit with your feeling.
Be the sky
For this exercise, rely on your imagination as a true ally. Imagine that you are the sky, and the weather symbolizes your emotions. Sometimes the weather is wonderful, sometimes disgusting. It is constantly changing, and the sky always gives it room to turn around.
Just as the weather cannot harm the sky, no matter how badly it rages, so your emotions cannot harm you.
Are they uncomfortable? Yes. Are they unwanted? Yes. You didn't invite them? Yes. Can they do harm? No.
Be gentle
Starting to make space for emotions after you have spent your whole life trying to do the exact opposite is a big undertaking that makes a big impact. Be kind to yourself during this process. You will have unpleasant memories and thoughts - this is normal and expected. Try to understand what these painful experiences are telling you about what you hold dear. Imagine that you can be gentler with your emotions, guard them like a fragile butterfly or crying baby.
Feelings may change. Or not
[…] A nice side effect of accepting emotions is that the pain can go away on its own. While you certainly want it, don't expect it to happen every time, and don't make it your ultimate goal. Otherwise, you will again slide into a state of rejection of emotions. It's great if they change, but if they don't, that's fine too.
Try surfing
Sometimes emotions make us feel impatient to do something about them, and most often these actions are associated with a change in our experience or the situation in which we find ourselves. We give in to the urge to eat a whole bar chocolate, drink a third martini, yell at someone who pisses us off, or look at pictures on the Internet panda cubs (yes, I heard they do that too) instead of actually doing something for us meaningful. As a result of giving in to the impulse, the unwanted feeling goes away and we train ourselves to do the same in the future.
Of course, if none of these behaviors prevent you from living life in accordance with your values, continue to fill your mouth with chocolate, get drunk and look at the cubs. But I suspect that if you are overly carried away and follow every impulse, then something has gone wrong with you.
We give in to an impatient desire, because it seems to us that if it is not satisfied, then it, like a tsunami, will overwhelm us and we will not be able to cope with it.
Since we immediately jump into action to get rid of it, we will never know that no tsunami did not have. Waves of momentary needs rise and fall, break on the shore and go about their business.
An alternative strategy to resist and control sudden impulses is to learn to "surf" the waves of impatient desires. This term is wish surfing introduced in the 80s, two American psychologists who worked with addictions. They, like no one else, knew the truth about harmful cravings. Instead of resisting or fighting their impulses, they suggested learning to navigate them and observe their natural ebb and flow, as on a seashore. Sounds great, right?
To surf desires, you need to use the techniques that you read about above. Here's how it's done.
- Find the eager desire in your body. Where do you feel it? […]
- Give it a name. Say: “I feel a strong pull towards…”
- Now just breathe out the eager desire and let it be. Don't try to change it.
- Watch the waves of traction rise and fall. Desire may increase or decrease.
- Notice the space between the experience of strong pulling and the actions you take.
- Now you have a choice how to react.
Ask yourself what action you can take to align with your values.
Remember your reasons
By making room for unpleasant, difficult, and unwanted inner impressions, you try to live in harmony with your values. You don't open yourself up to emotions just for fun - there are other, more interesting activities for that. By accepting your emotions, you receive a great gift - understanding what really matters in your life. […]
Summing up
There is nothing wrong with experiencing what you experience. No emotion is forbidden, no matter what your mind says about it. If you learn to make room for all the emotions and sensations that life sends you, you can get rid of useless coping strategies and replace them with new behaviors. It will help you become the person you want to be and live the life you dream of. In addition, by making room for inner feelings, you will choose wisdom and knowledge for yourself. And with knowledge comes the power to transform.
The book "Emotions: understand, accept and manage" will be useful for those who are going through difficult times or just want to get stronger and gain support. Interesting techniques of acceptance and responsibility therapy will help you get rid of harmful attitudes and teach you how to handle your feelings carefully.
Buy a bookRead also😠
- Why it's okay to be sad over little things
- How to let go of accumulated anger and irritation
- Is it normal that a loved one infuriates you, and how to deal with it