Most people don’t like feeling negative emotions like shame, guilt, discouragement, and irritation. So to avoid these emotions we usually resist them or react to them. However, both of these methods only intensify the negative emotion and often create other negative results. The best way to get rid of a negative emotion is to process it—to experience it and then let it go.

The Benefit of Negative Emotions

It’s important to begin with the caveat that negative emotions, while uncomfortable, can be very important.  Getting rid of all negative emotions is certainly not a goal that would benefit any of us.  Feeling negative emotion is an important part of being human, and helps us appreciate positive emotion when we feel it.  Without negative emotion–positive emotion wouldn’t feel positive at all.  Negative emotion helps us feel the depth of our spirits and allows us to mourn the loss of things, to identify our own belief and value system, and to connect with others among other things.  However, if we don’t know what to do with emotions–how to feel them, they often get larger than necessary and wreak havoc in our lives.

Chinese Finger Trap

Our emotions work a lot like a Chinese finger trap that many of us played with as kids. The trap looks like a woven tube—when you place a finger in each side and try to pull them out, the trap tightens. The harder you pull, the tighter the trap gets. The only way to free yourself from the grip of a Chinese finger trap is to stop pulling and push towards the center. Only when you move your fingers towards the center can you gently slide them out again free yourself from the trap.

Reacting to Negative Emotion

Our most basic human response to feeling a negative emotion is to react to it. When someone criticizes us, we lash out. When we stub our toe, we kick the chair we stubbed it on. Kids do it too—they often react to negative emotion by crying or throwing a tantrum.

But as we evaluate our reaction to negative emotions, we learn that the outcome of our reaction is often more negative than the emotion itself. Why my daughter cries, she has to go to her room for a while to calm down. She has to be away from the family for a while, which is even more disappointing for her. When I kick the chair after stubbing my toe, I actually create more pain for myself. Reacting to a negative emotion makes the emotion bigger.

Repressing Negative Emotion

Over time, we recognize that reacting to our emotions can have negative consequences. So, in order to avoid the negative consequences of reacting, we instead learn to repress our emotions. We ignore them, or we try to cover them up with other emotions or actions. This might seem logical, but unfortunately it doesn’t work either.

First, when we don’t express our emotions, others can usually tell. We think we’re good at hiding how we feel, but others are astute judges of sincerity and suppressing our true emotions can cause distance in our relationships, which often means more negative emotion. When I’m bugged at my husband but I try to act like nothing is wrong, he always seems to know and it makes things worse.

Second, resisting emotion requires a lot of energy—it can be exhausting to constantly try to act contrary to how you feel. Most people’s willpower runs out and despite their best efforts they eventually explode, bringing more negative emotion.

I find this is true when I try to hide my frustration with my kids. When I ask them to do something and they don’t, I first try to calmly ask them to do it again. I’m good at staying calm the first few times, even though it’s exhausting to dance around my feelings of irritation and frustration. However, the feelings of frustration get more intense the longer I resist them. By the fourth or fifth time I tend to explode at the kids! Ironically, that was exactly what I wanted to avoid doing. Then I feel worse than I did before!

Processing Emotions

If reacting creates a negative result, and resisting causes the emotion to grow, how do we deal with emotions in a healthy way? We need to process them. Processing emotions isn’t something that most of us are taught how to do, and in our Western culture it is something that feels a bit foreign to us.

Processing means actually feeling the emotion. The beauty of this approach is that when we truly feel an emotion and process it, it goes away. True, it may resurface a few times, but each time it resurfaces it comes back with less potency and if we process it each time it arises eventually it stops resurfacing.

Crying is a perfect example of processing. Have you ever noticed how cathartic it is to cry? Afterwards, you often feel a lot better even though nothing has changed. This is because crying is a way of processing sadness.

How to Process an Emotion

Here are some simple steps for processing any emotion:

1. Name it
2. Notice exactly where you feel it and note what it feels like
3. Remind yourself that this is just a chemical in your body; the emotion itself can’t hurt you
4. Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of it. Allow it to stay as long as it needs
5. Repeat this process as often as the feeling resurfaces

Processing My Shame

Reacting

Recently, I was with a group of people and I used a word that was offensive to someone. My intention was definitely not to be hurtful. When I was called out on it, my first response was to be defensive. I explained all the reasons I’d used the word and why I didn’t think it was a problem. The problem was that my shame didn’t go away. It actually got bigger. And I complicated the situation by adding awkwardness with this person to the picture.

Repressing

When I realized my denials and explanations didn’t help anything, I told myself that I didn’t need to feel shame—that what I did was fine. It wasn’t a big deal. I rationalized that this person was out of place for calling me out on it. All these thoughts felt good for a moment, but eventually caused my irritation with this person to get bigger and caused me to withdraw from them socially. For a while I covered my shame in irritation with this person. However, the worst part was that my shame got bigger—now it was not only shame because of what I said, it was shame about all the thoughts I had about my friend.

Processing

When I had time to reflect on the situation, I realized this was a lot of drama—and all to avoid feeling some shame! I reminded myself that I knew how to process this. I admitted to myself that I was wrong. Immediately, I felt a new rush of shame.

I named it: “This is shame.”
I noticed how it felt in my body: “My cheeks are flushed. I feel my stomach tightening. It feels sort of heavy.”
I reminded myself: “This is just a chemical in my body. It can’t hurt me.”
I talked back to the shame: “Hi shame, I see you. Stay as long as you need.”

Frankly, it felt terrible. But in a few minutes, it went away. I felt fine. Then, when I next saw the friend who had called me out, I felt a new rush of shame. So I just processed it the same way. I felt yucky for a couple of minutes but then the emotion left. It resurfaced a few more times as I interacted with my friend. Each time, however, the emotion was less intense and stayed for less time. After about a day, the emotion was completely gone. And, best of all, I didn’t have negative feelings toward this person.

Embracing Negative Emotions Helps Eliminate Them

Processing feelings can be a powerful way to get rid of them. It seems ironic that inviting a feeling to stay would be able to help it leave, but that is exactly what happens. Just like the Chinese finger trap, the more we resist and pull away from our feelings the more our feelings trap us. To get rid of negative emotion, we must lean into the emotion, we must go towards it and embrace it. Only then do we become freed from the emotion’s tight grip.

Letting Go of Negative Emotion

What is a negative emotion you feel on a regular basis?

Next time you feel this emotion, notice if you react or resist it.  What is the result of handling your emotion this way? Try processing the emotion instead. What is the difference in your result?

1. Name it
2. Notice exactly where you feel it and note what it feels like
3. Remind yourself that this is just a chemical in your body, the emotion itself can’t hurt you
4. Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of it. Allow it to stay as long as it needs
5. Repeat this process as often as the feeling re-surfaces