Every day we experience a myriad of emotions. Our emotional day can be steady or fluctuate between moods, depending upon many internal and external variables. These variables may include the amount we slept, hunger level, stress at home or work, as well as many others. There are times we become stuck emotionally and are unable to break out of an unhealthy cycle. If we are in a “bad” mood or negative frame of mind, we tend to focus our attention inward. It is important to differentiate a bad mood from depression. Depression has clearly defined clinical symptoms that are at least two weeks in duration, while bad moods are short-term.
When we find ourselves in an intense negative emotional state or negative mood, our thinking becomes primed toward that specific emotion. Research has shown us that humans have a negativity bias around emotions; we tend to pay more attention to difficult emotions and give more weight to these emotions than our more pleasant feelings. For many of us, we deem the difficult emotions as “negative” and therefore often try to escape them through distraction or avoidance. However, when we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, we are more resilient and have better outcomes. Leading psychologist on emotional agility, Susan David, refers to this permission to feel as, “creating a relationship with our emotions”.
Being able to ride the wave of our emotions is a skill that can be learned. Below are some tips to help us learn to skillfully build a relationship with your emotions.
Pause We are often more reactive than proactive when it comes to our emotions; something happens, and we respond instinctually instead of understanding why we are reacting this way. When we mindfully create space between an antecedent and a response, we can pause and give ourselves time to check in internally before triggering an automatic response and ask ourselves “what am I feeling?”
Body Scan After the pause, a quick body scan can offer clues as to what you are feeling. Quickly scan the body from head to toe and take note of any sensations. Is our heart racing, are we holding tension in our shoulders, are our hands clenched? Investigate where the emotion may be sitting in your body and what that feels like. When our heart races, we may be feeling uneasy, anxious or worried. If our hands are clenched it may indicate we are feeling upset, angry, or furious. There is no need to change the sensations, just noticing without judgement is helpful. This can help label your emotions and make it easier in the future to recognize a feeling.
Label Labeling our emotions has been proven to reduce the intensity of the emotion. Having a nuanced emotional vocabulary can be helpful to discern exactly what we are feeling. For example, we may think we are angry but what we are really feeling is judged or misunderstood which makes us feel frustrated. It can be helpful to use a feeling wheel to find the gradation of the feeling.
Accept and Validate Once labeled, observing emotions in a mindful, nonjudgmental manner can lead to acceptance. At this step, validation is important. When we validate our own feelings, we are giving ourselves permission to feel without judgement. One way to validate our feeling is by saying to ourselves “I am feeling sad today. I am going to allow myself some time to sit with this emotion” or “I am feeling angry because I don’t feel valued”. There are times we don’t “want” to feel an emotion and try to talk ourselves out of this feeling, but by accepting and validating how we feel, we are better able to process the information surrounding the emotion.
Distress Tolerance Learning to sit with our uncomfortable emotions, sensations, and experiences can be difficult. Once we have completed the above steps, we are ready to be with our emotions without trying to change them or avoid them. An important question to ask ourselves during this step is “what is the function of the emotion? What is the emotion trying to tell me about what is important to me?”. This curiosity allows us to question our needs; for example, if we are feeling sad, is this a time when we could use support from others? If we notice we are anxious, we can ask ourselves if we are feeling threatened in any real way or perceived way.
The above skills teach us to skillfully ride the waves of our emotions. Below are skills to help us not be overtaken by these emotions.
Write it down Journaling about our feelings allows us to express our emotions in a safe way, releasing the emotion from body and mind to paper and/or screen. This release can help minimize brooding, allow greater acceptance of the emotion, aid in emotional regulation and gain new perspectives around the function of the emotion.
What’s the story We all have “stories” in our head around an event, a feeling, or a thought. Often, we accept these stories as absolute truth when in fact our inner dialogue has monumental influence. When we ask the following question of our stories, “Is this 100% true?” the answer is often “no”. Practicing cognitive reappraisal or changing the meaning of the emotional event can allow us to gain new perspectives on an emotional situation. For example, we can challenge the shame that follows an insult by saying to ourselves, “there may be some truth to the insult, but that is not the totality of who I am”. With reappraisal we are not giving an disproportionate weight to the emotion or situation.
Self-soothe Learning how to self-soothe is a tool that can ease the effects of difficult emotions. The key is to find the self-soothing techniques that work for you. Some examples of self-soothing techniques are deep breathing, self-compassion, self-care habits such as a warm bath, massage, exercise, creating art, listening to music.
Support We don’t have to manage our moods in isolation. Seeking support can be a meaningful tool in managing our difficult emotions. The support can be anything from venting and seeking validation from a friend to utilizing therapeutic services. Getting the support we need is paramount to our wellbeing.
We all have a rich emotional life. When we choose to have a relationship with our emotions that consists of nonjudgmental curiosity in which we can label and validate our emotions, we are better equipped to ride an emotional storm that may come our way.
