Healthy ways of dealing with emotions

[Wizomania]

Partly prompted by a thread I saw on here a couple of days ago, asking about therapy to learn to regulate emotions, I thought I'd ask about this. I'm never really sure what it means to regulate emotions.

As a child I was always very tearful, and in some ways I was still like that well into adulthood. I was very depressed as a young adult, and had a few years of therapy. If I recall correctly, my therapist did a lot of work on encouraging me to express my emotions.

The therapy helped a lot, but I was still quite depressed. I had a few quite traumatic things in my early 30s, including a significant bereavement, and I went back on antidepressants for quite a while.

I think I have learned really that when I heard that I should express my emotions, I interpreted that as almost wallow in it. Which I think led to me feeling worse, or at least not feeling better. So for example I'd feel sad, but I thought it was unhealthy to do anything to help me to not feel sad any more. As if that was the same as just ignoring the emotion in the first place.

So has anyone got any tips on how to find the right balance. How do you know when you've felt the relevant emotion enough and it's ok to try to find ways to feel better?

Maybe back to therapy and maintain it

I set a time. 10 minutes, 20, 30 and then distract myself.

The answer to your question is multi faceted

i would point you towards the decider skills workbook -

Really good resource for understanding and understanding and managing emotions

Thank you all. I have thought about going back to therapy but affording it isn't the easiest.

Allowing a set amount of time could work. Thought I've heard that about setting aside time to worry but I can never make myself stop worry I not about things.

That sounds interesting @Bumdrops There's a workbook on the Calm website (that meditation app) about emotions. It might be similar. I've often thought I'd like to print it off and work through it but it's well over 100 pages! And I can't go through it properly online.

I had therapy that helped me with exactly this thing as advice would always be to “sit with your feelings”, “process your emotions”, etc and I had no idea what this meant in a very practical sense.

My therapist helped me to reconnect with feeling emotions in my body - what was I feeling physically in my body as certain things happened or came up?

Then describing those physical feelings and the thoughts and emotions I was feeling/thinking in a fair amount of detail - so not just “I’m feeling sad” but more like:

I can feel a slight sinking feeling in my stomach and just above my stomach it feels ‘empty’ like there’s a hole there that should be filled but isn’t - like a piece is missing.

I feel like I have a bit of a lump in my throat and like I want to say something but I’m scared of crying so am holding everything in.

I’m feeling sad - I’m aware that X has made me feel Y, and I also feel slightly B and C.

I keep thinking that if only I hadn’t done A, then B and C wouldn’t have happened. That makes me feel D.

The idea was to simply be curious about the physical feelings, emotions and thoughts. So not trying to resolve them, push them down or judge them - just being curious about what’s going on and saying it out loud (I now write it down instead as I do it alone).

Then reminding yourself that you are not these random thoughts, feelings and emotions. You (as a creature) are separate to them and can still choose to go about your day irrespective of them existing. They’re no more ‘real’ or ‘true’ than the random thoughts you have about anything else.

@wheresmymojo this is really helpful - thank you. It reminds me a meme or something I've seen on sm a few times. The jist of it was that a teacher said, "think of your emotions as pebbles in the stream and yourself as the stream." I never really understood it but I think it sort of makes sense with what you are saying.

I guess I've been identifying really strongly with some emotions as if they are me. I do remember a while back I had a realisation that I was fed up of picking 'yoga for depression' or 'yoga for low self esteem' and still feeling rubbish afterwards. I decided to do a normal 20 minute yoga practice despite the fact that I felt rubbish. And the feeling did pass.

The decider skills is what the therapists / mental health nurses use to teach emotion regulation !
u should be able to pick up the workbook cheap from amazon ??

@Bumdrops thank you. I've found it on amazon. I'm on hols at the moment so don't want to order just yet, but I think I will once I get home.

Is it just me that wonders if other have to think about this so much? So, did my parents not teach me these skills, but other people's did? Or is there some other thing going on?

emotion regulation is an essential life skill, but being coached in this is really hit and miss, some families are more able to address this than others, some schools better etc etc
some people feel emotions more strongly, more overwhelming and need more support to learn these skills
emotion regulation difficulties can be a factor in alcohol / substance misuse / impulsive / risky behaviour / eating disorders, social / interpersonal problems etc
what I mean is emotion regulation difficulty is very common and cause big problems ! Ans many will have problems with it, but somehow get by - it really varies

@Bumdrops yes, I think I am probably a bit more sensitive than a lot of people. Plus my parents are not that switched on emotionally, so wouldn't have been able to teach me the skills.

I have the Decider skills workbook. It seems like a lot of the stuff in it is quite familiar. But not all. And going through it systematically seems like it might be helpful. Thank you 😊

I don't know whether this is any recognised technique, or just something I have worked out in my life journey (which has included anti-depressants and taking therapies). I call it sitting with the feeling. It's not thinking about the feeling and getting into a wallowing downwards spiral. It's recognising that you have an emotional response, listening to your body and identifying where that feeling sits. Then just allowing it to be there. You have the right to feel the way you feel. You do not have to do anything about that feeling. After all, if you felt contentment, would you say you had to change that? It just is.

We all feel so many different emotions across a day or a week and don't do anything about the feeling at any particular moment.

It may not lift your mood, but it validates your sense of self. Were you taught that you mustn't be sad, or made to feel wrong for being angry? It can be a very deep-seated lesson. A toxic lesson that does not help you. Sometimes all that is necessary is just recognising, acknowledging and accepting your feelings. You have the right to them.

Sitting with the feeling is not a cure-all, but I felt it helped. I still use it when I feel overwhelmed.

@Dilbertian yes, I think this is the crux of it. I don't remember if I was discouraged from being sad at all, though as an adult I've observed that on the occasions I've got upset my mum has got into a panic about how to fix it. So I suspect that was similar when I was growing up. I also remember being told that I got annoyed too easily as a child. Just criticised for expressing the annoyance, without any constructive support.