Life is full of emotional challenges, like the pressure to succeed, fear of missing out, and desire for good relationships. Society hasn’t taught us to work through emotions, instead cultural norms to use alcohol, shop, numb out on screens, and many other tactics to avoid emotions are a widely adopted pattern. Mountains of emotions, just like snow, cannot indefinitely grow taller without tumbling down. Are you heaping resentments, excuses or regrets that have the potential to bury you before you address them? Honor your emotions by recognizing and experiencing them. Dealing with the difficult and messy emotions avoids building an avalanche of anxiety and depression.
Understand that emotions are not under our conscious control. We can’t stop our emotions from being triggered, however, developing skills to tune into the body to recognize and separate out each emotion, name them, and tend to them one at a time plays an important role to feeling better mentally and physically.
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It's ok to feel: |
Resist avoiding or numbing behaviors like: |
Release the emotion by: |
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Sadness |
Compulsive shopping |
Mourning the loss |
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Anger |
Staying busy |
Calming down |
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Humiliation |
Drinking alcohol |
Practicing self-compassion |
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Resentment |
Mindlessly scrolling social media |
Forgiving |
People tend to avoid painful or conflicting emotions, because that’s what we’ve been taught to do. Instead recognize that the suffering you are trying to dodge, may be the very thing needed to avoid the intensity and destruction that can be triggered by suppressing emotions.
"We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions." Brene Brown