Situations, events, people and memories all evoke emotions for us. When we sit a job interview, we might feel anxious or excited. If we miss our bus we might feel annoyed or stressed. Fighting with our loved ones can lead to anger or hurt. We need to know how to manage our emotions so we can cope with the inevitable ups and downs of our lives!
But what if we struggle to manage our emotions? Perhaps we find the experience of our emotions too intense or overwhelming. We seem to feel ‘too much’ at once.
As a psychologist, I often counsel patients who are having trouble managing their emotions. They feel extreme emotional reactions, sometimes in response to major life events or struggles, other times in response to minor events or everyday issues. I can relate to ‘big feelings’ too. Sometimes, all it takes is an insensitive comment, a rude driver who cuts me off or a friend cancelling a catch-up last-minute for me to feel some strong emotions of hurt, anger or annoyance.
But for some of us, those emotions can begin to take over. They can cloud our judgement, making us act impulsively. Or they can hang around for days, putting a dark cloud over our lives. Emotions are important and necessary, but like everything in life, they are best experienced in moderation.
The practice of managing emotions is called emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is always happening, whether we are conscious or not, on a neural and physiological level. We can thank our biology for taking care of that! However, sometimes we need some intentional skills to improve our emotion regulation. Here are 3 amazing tips for improving your emotion regulation skills.
1. Acknowledge the Emotion and Come Back Into Your Body
Someone once told me that emotions are like crying children. They just want to be acknowledged, reassured, and then wrapped in a hug. If we ignore our emotions, they also tend to get louder, like infants having a full-blown meltdown! So the first step in learning how to manage emotions is simply to acknowledge them.
Often, when we are feeling things too much, there are cues in our body, such as tensions in our stomach, chest or head. In order to acknowledge your emotions, start by doing a body scan of where the tension is centred. Then place your hands onto that area, and take a few deep breaths into the tension, making space for it. Notice that your body is making room for it and is holding it. Whatever this feeling is, it’s not bigger than you! Then try to give the emotion a name. Simply by labelling it as ‘sadness,’ ‘anxiety,’ or ‘pain’ you begin to make sense of what it is that you are feeling. When you are labelling the emotion, try to do so in a non-judgemental and curious way, almost as if you are describing it like someone observing a piece of art or a scientist looking down a microscope.
An Example of How to Manage Emotions Through Acknowledgement
Recently a friend of mine shared some happy news with me, which was very exciting and wonderful. However, I noticed that while we were chatting, a feeling of tension was growing in my chest. When I was alone, I tuned into that uncomfortable feeling, making room for it. It felt quite strong, and I realised that I was holding back an urge to cry. After I had stayed with the uncomfortable feeling for a while I was able to label my emotions, and make sense of what was happening. I realised that while I was happy for my friend, the news had brought up some other emotions in me, like ‘shock,’ ‘confused’ and ‘hurt.’ After I had non-judgementally acknowledged these emotions, they felt heard and understood and gradually passed, allowing me to feel much calmer and more accepting.
2. Tap Into Your ‘Wise Mind’
When you are feeling strongly, the emotion centre of your brain, called the amygdala, is overactive. When your amygdala is in action, other parts of your brain, such as the frontal lobes, responsible for rational thinking, planning and reasoning, are temporarily shut off (read more of the science here). That’s why it can be difficult to stay clearheaded when we are in a very emotional headspace and sometimes make irrational decisions or say things that we regret later.
In order to keep your frontal lobes online, you need to resist the urge to act immediately on your emotions (read here). Simply by stopping, taking a few deep breaths and having a mental break, you are able to step out of your ‘emotional brain’ and stay engaged with your ‘rational brain.’ In psychology, ‘wise mind’ is the balance between the emotional and rational brains. ‘Wise mind’ is the observational part of the brain that is able to make thoughtful and considered decisions. Being in ‘wise mind’ is like stepping back from an emotional storm, looking at it from a safe distance, rather than being caught up in the middle of it! When you are acting from a place of ‘wise mind’ you are validating your feelings, but also making decisions based on your values. Wise mind connects to feelings without letting them consume us!
3. Distract Yourself
Often, when we are in wise mind, we realise that the best thing to do after acknowledging our strong emotions is in fact nothing. This allows us to have the space to diffuse those strong feelings, without them leading to unhelpful behaviours, like self-harm, starting an argument or quitting our job. But what do we do with those painful feelings while we are waiting for them to diffuse? One great technique is to use distraction. When we are feeling ‘too much,’ doing something to take our focus off ourselves is very effective, whether that be listening to music or a podcast, baking or cooking, doing a puzzle or watching a comedy show.
Distraction can help us by allowing different and lighter emotions to come through, or by allowing our overwhelming emotions to reduce to a more tolerable level. Of course, using distraction long-term isn’t effective, because it is avoiding our painful emotions, and thus not dealing with them. However, distraction in the short-term can be a great skill to help us better manage overwhelming emotions.
I know that when I’m feeling stressed, the best thing I can do is go for a run. I can release some of the tension by sweating it out, listening to some upbeat music and focusing on my surroundings. Having this reprieve from my feelings is really helpful, and when I tune into them later, they are often more manageable (learn more about distraction and mood boosters here).
Summing it Up
There is nothing wrong with feeling emotions deeply. In fact, the ability to feel things is inherently human, and allows us to connect empathically with others and better understand ourselves. However, when our emotions become ‘too much’ to manage, we can use some of these emotion regulation skills. By practicing emotion regulation we become calmer, make wiser decisions and alleviate the sense of being overwhelmed by our emotions. As someone who wears their heart on their sleeve, has strong emotions and is in the business of feelings, I hope that these skills can help you manage your emotions as they have helped me.
