Coping with emotions can be easier!

Coping with emotions is a struggle for many people, whether just in particular situations or throughout their lives. Some people are simply more emotional than others, and many people feel like their emotions get out of control when they're coping with stress. Intense, overwhelming mood swings are called emotional dysregulation, which can be particularly hard to deal with.

There are lots of things you can do to learn how to handle your emotions more effectively, however the most important are to be aware and honest about your emotions and to practice coping skills.

What is it that you're feeling?

Often, people who have trouble coping with emotions have trouble labeling and understanding emotions as well. They simply react (often in a panic) to try and not feel so bad. But negative emotions don't just happen to you for no reason. They're signals that something is wrong.

Learn to be aware of specific emotions – how does anger feel to you? Sadness? Frustration? What do particular emotions do to your self talk? You'll probably find that you tend to say similar things to yourself whenever you're feeling a particular emotion, which can help you identify just what it is that you're feeling so that you can respond appropriately. But most importantly, whenever you can, just try to pay attention to your emotions when you first start feeling them without immediately trying to do something about them. This will take away a lot of the panic and stress and help you to make conscious decisions about emotions rather than just reacting.

Photo credit TheeErin

Why are you having trouble coping with emotions?

This is really important to consider. Many people just want their emotions to go away and leave them alone, but even if you manage to shut your feelings down you will not be able to keep it up forever. Understanding emotions and knowing the reasons why you're having trouble coping with emotions can help when you're trying to think of ways to deal.

• Do you worry that you can't handle the pain? Emotions can be very painful, and distracting yourself for a time can be helpful. When you continually run from your emotions though, you are only making it worse for yourself. Often when you let yourself experience an emotion for a while, after the first couple seconds it's nowhere near as bad as you feared. Facing your emotions will give them much less power over you
• Do you just not know where to start or are you too completely overwhelmed to think straight, much less think of coping mechanisms? Take a break! You don't have to react perfectly, constructively, or even appropriately immediately and all the time. The key is to acknowledge that you are taking a break and make sure people (including yourself) don't bully you into doing something when you're overwhelmed. Do something very engaging that won't allow you to dwell on your problems – reading a novel you love, doing a sport or physical activity that requires concentration, or playing a video game are some suggestions, but anything that won't make you more negatively emotional and requires all your attention will do. Once you've been out of your head for a bit, you'll feel less overwhelmed and everything will seem more manageable
• Do you worry about losing control or losing face? The trick is to find a good balance between expressing your emotions too much and not expressing emotions enough. Try and practice this with emotions that are not as hard for you to deal with and use this practice to discover ways of getting emotions out constructively (or at least not destructively) that work for you
• Do you think you should feel badly? This is pretty common in people who really care about others and about being a good person – they think they have to worry about the whole world. But caring doesn't help when it only hurts you, and you're no good to anyone if you're a mess yourself. Give yourself permission to let other people be responsible for their own emotions, and to take responsible for your own emotional health
• Do you think you deserve to feel badly? This is an insidious reason for many people, that they might not want to admit to even to themselves. Some people have so much shame and pain and anger left over from their past that they can't see any other way to live, and other people keep themselves in a negative spiral out of guilt. These issues have to be faced before coping with emotions will get any easier. The first step is to monitor your self talk and figure out what exactly you're saying to yourself, when you're saying it, and then work on changing your negative and exaggerated beliefs. Cognitive behavioral therapy can also be very helpful

Make a decision about what to do about the emotion

If you don't conciously decide how to respond to a negative emotion, you're basically deciding to let the emotion control you. You'll probably react by coping with emotions in whichever way you usually do automatically – whether that's shutting down and hiding your feelings, running around trying to keep yourself distracted, falling into depression and lethargy, worrying endlessly, procrastinating on everything, etc, etc.

Sometimes this will happen anyways despite your good intentions, since we're all only human. But every time you consciously decide to handle your emotions in a healthy and constructive way, you're making a difference. Small steps count! You're building a habit that will make it easier for you next time you're struggling to cope with emotions, and you're proving to yourself that you can indeed handle emotions. It can be hard to change how you deal with emotions, but it does get easier the more you practice and while you won't see major changes right away, the small changes make it worthwhile.

Return from Coping with Emotions to Towards Emotional Health Home