How to deal with your emotions (written by Ashleigh Marsh)
Emotions are a fundamental part of life, shaping our thoughts and providing guidance for action. However, sometimes we may feel like our emotions are overwhelming and difficult to manage. At school we learn how to do algebra and write essays, but many of us aren’t taught how to deal with our emotions.
The film, Inside Out 2, released earlier this year, demonstrates the impact of anxiety taking over. It demonstrates how anxiety, an important emotion which protects us from threat, can become less helpful when we anticipate threats that aren’t real or when we overestimate the likelihood of the threat.
This guide will provide tips to help you understand and navigate your emotions.
Understanding emotions
It’s important to first understand what emotions are. Emotions are complex subjective reactions to stimuli, involving physiological and behavioural responses. Emotions may be triggered by external events - you may feel angry if someone cuts in front of you in a line, or by internal thoughts, such as a memory. Emotional triggers vary from person to person.
The Functions of Emotions
While our emotions evolved to help our ancestors to deal with real-world threats in the stone age, unfortunately, our brains haven’t changed much since then. Yet there’s more challenges fitting our emotions into the modern world.
Emotions serve several critical functions:
Guiding behaviour: Emotions motivate us to act, helping us to avoid harm and approach things essential for survival, like food.
Survival: emotions, such as fear, trigger the body’s fight or flight response, preparing us to either fight the threat, flee, freeze or fawn.
Emotions are linked to memory and learning: Strong emotional experiences are remembered more vividly than neutral ones. Our emotions can help us learn from our experiences. The emotion processing centre of the brain, the amygdala, helps the hippocampus store memories more effectively.
The Six Primary Emotions:
Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions in the 1970’s that he proposed are experienced universally by humans:
Happiness: Linked to reward and reinforcement. The function is to motivate us to do things that are good for us and help our survival as a species like reproduction.
Sadness: Linked to a loss or disappointment. The function is to signal for help such as being comforted or to take time for ourselves to recover from loss.
Anger: Linked to injustice and threat. The function is to allow us to fight or defend ourselves when we are attacked therefore, essential for survival.
Fear: A reaction to threat, danger, and uncertainty. The function is to avoid or reduce harm, essential for survival.
Surprise: A reaction to an unexpected event. The function is to focus our attention so we can determine if we are in danger.
Disgust: A response towards something offensive or unclean. The function is to get away from something that’s contaminating, toxic, or offensive, or to remove things from our environment that are potentially dangerous.
Strategies for managing emotions:
Many difficulties with emotions come from us trying to suppress or ignore our emotions. We can’t get rid of our emotions, they protect us. However, emotions can become problematic when they last for too long, and they interfere with our ability to manage our lives.
Emotion regulation skills can help you improve your mental health significantly. To do this, it’s important to identify, understand, and use appropriate strategies.
Label the emotion: Simply labelling your emotion can reduce its intensity. Try to be as specific as possible “I feel sad and angry because my partner left me”.
Accept the emotion: Try to say to yourself that it’s okay to feel the whole spectrum of emotions, including the negative ones. Judging your emotions can lead to further negative emotions.
Self-awareness: Pay attention to your internal state by noticing physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings. You can keep a journal to track these patterns.
Understand your triggers: Ask yourself what is causing the emotion, what happened before you started feeling this way, was it an event or a memory triggering this emotion?
Challenge your thinking:
Ask yourself what thinking traps are you falling into?
Are these thoughts based on fact or assumption?
Are there alternative more balanced ways to view the situation?
Focus on what’s in your control and how you want to react: You may need to clearly define the problem triggering the emotions and brainstorm all the potential solutions to the problem, consider different approaches and choose the solution that is most appropriate.
Develop healthy coping strategies:
Physical activity: engaging in regular exercise reduces stress and can increase your mood.
Social support: having people you can go to for emotional support can help provide perspective and feel connected.
Relaxation and mindfulness: being mindful helps us stay in the present and engage with the current moment. Relaxation practices can help you deal with physical symptoms of negative emotions.
Setting boundaries: if certain situations or people trigger negative emotions, you may need to set boundaries of spending less time with individuals, saying no to additional responsibility, and creating time for selfcare.
Conclusion
Emotions are essential in our daily lives and practicing these strategies means that you can become better at regulating them. By understanding and acknowledging your emotions, challenging negative thoughts, and developing healthy coping strategies, you will be able to navigate your emotions more effectively. Remember, it’s a journey and it’s okay if you need to seek professional help along the way, it’s a sign of strength, not of weakness.