We spend a lot of our time as human beings trying to escape or ignore or change these types of feelings. Why? Because they feel awful! No one likes feeling fear, or feeling stressed, overwhelmed, afraid, embarrassed, or depressed. The problem is that when we avoid negative emotions they stay around longer, get more intense and rarely address the takes up lots of brain space! There is a better way to handle difficult emotions.
Negative Emotions Are Essential
Our brains and bodies are programmed with these feelings to move us to action. If a truck is headed straight for us, we feel fear. And, our fear drives us to move out of the way. If we have too many things required of us, we feel overwhelm. This feeling drives us to eliminate the unessential.
However, in our modern world, it’s easy to feel that we SHOULD feel happy or peaceful all the time. We think if we feel something negative, we should fix it. We have so many easy options for escape!
Avoiding Negative Emotions
When our to-do list feels too long, we can turn on Netflix and get lost in a show instead. When dinner our is crazy, we eat a cookie on the counter to dull the overwhelm and get a hit of joy—even temporarily. After a difficult conversation that didn’t go well, we can drown our guilt and disappointment by pushing a few buttons on Amazon and a box shows up on our door with a new pair of shoes.
Everyone has different emotions they try to avoid, and there are myriad methods of avoiding them; eating, shopping, TV, staying busy, anger, withdrawing, sleeping, alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, working etc. When we avoid emotions, we never process them. They continue to cause us problems. And, the things we do to avoid negative emotions cause us trouble sometimes too.
The Problem with Avoiding Negative Emotions
There are 3 problems with trying to escape emotions:
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The things we do to escape difficult emotions sometimes have negative consequences.
Here is an example: There was a time in my life when I felt so overwhelmed and discouraged I listened to audiobooks all the time—especially at dinner time and crazy times in the car. It seemed like a benign enough escape. I knew it wasn’t ideal for my family but I wasn’t sure how else to deal with the chaos without becoming a person I didn’t like. I checked out. While it saved my kids a lot of yelling, my escape also robbed me of precious time and interactions with my kids.
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When we don’t deal with an emotion, it sticks around and continues to resurface
Emotions are simply chemicals in our body. Their job is to alert us of something important and move us to action if necessary. If they are not allowed to complete their job, they continue to resurface. Sometimes the emotion itself rises up again and again and other times it shows up in different ways.
It’s sort of like those windup music boxes where you turn the crank and the ballerina dances to music. If you keep the box open, eventually she will stop. But, if you shut the box, she stops. However, every time the box is opened she dances and the music plays. It may take many times of opening and closing to finish the cycle. That is how our emotions work too.
I had a baby just a few weeks after my mother passed away. I wanted to grieve my mother’s loss—she was a tremendous presence in my life. However, I was busy around the clock taking care of a newborn, an emotional toddler, and a needy pre-schooler. We were in the middle of an international move and I didn’t know how to grieve in the midst of the insanity! So I just closed the metaphorical music box (unconsciously of course) and kept trying to survive.Over the next few years however, when strong emotions surfaced, my grief was often right there. Our move to a foreign country was overwhelming and difficult and I found myself sobbing nightly. (I had moved to other countries before and been fine. But this time I was totally lost.) I thought it was the move itself—but looking back I see it was that grief resurfacing. My grief resurfaced again and again as difficult things emerged in my life. The ballerina had to play her part.
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It takes so much work to keep the negative emotions away we don’t have as much space in our minds for the things we really want to do!
Recently I was trying to concentrate on something and my daughter was whistling. It was really grating on me. I tried to ignore it, but the harder I tried to not be bothered by it, the more intense the irritation began to be. In fact, it was requiring so much effort to “ignore” it, I hardly had any brain space left for the work I was doing. This happens with emotions too—when we are angry at someone or irritated and we keep trying to push it down, it often consumes us even when we don’t realize it.
There is a better way to deal with emotions.
Allow Your Emotion
Most people think that if they allow their emotion they will end up doing something they don’t want to do—like yell at their kids, or eat too many cookies, or sleep until 10 in the morning. However, allowing a feeling is different than acting on it. Allowing a feeling just means that we feel it, we notice it, we don’t avoid it. It doesn’t mean we act on it. In fact, allowing an emotion actually allows the emotion to dissipate, so we are less likely to re-act to it.
Emotions are just chemicals in our body. When we feel them, they are simply moving around inside of us. The emotion itself won’t hurt us. This is a powerful piece of knowledge. When you know that you can handle any emotion, you stop feeling afraid of certain emotions and you don’t have to spend as much time avoiding negative emotions.
Our bodies need food to survive. When we eat food, the body metabolizes it–breaks it down, absorbs it and sends it out to the body for fuel. Similarly, emotions are essential to our survival. They provide the necessary impetus to eat, live, reproduce, find purpose and even get out of bed in the morning. When our body encounters an emotion, it’s crucial to metabolize it just as it would food. It’s important for the emotion to be allowed to run it’s course, be identified and serve as fuel for the appropriate action.
How to Metabolize an Emotion
Become an observer of yourself. When you notice yourself feeling a negative emotion like fear, stress, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, shame etc. don’t shove it down or numb it away by distracting yourself. Instead, close your eyes and “watch” the emotion in your body for a minute.
It seems like just when I start to chat with another adult one of my girls decides they need something. They are often pulling on my arm or nagging, “mom, mom, mom, mom….can we go?”. My two-year old often just lays down and howls. Even after I’ve let them know we will be leaving in 5 min. they continue to pester me. I often feel irritated! Here’s how I process this emotion.
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Name the emotion
I say to myself “This is irritation.”
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Describe what it feels like.
Imagine that you were going to describe to someone what it feels like to feel a particular emotion. You’d describe where you felt it in the body, what the sensation was like, what color it was, if it was hot or cold etc.I say, “I’m feeling really irritated right now. I feel tension in my eyebrows, my lower jaw feels tingly, and my lungs feel a little short of air. To me irritation is a warm emotion—I picture it as orange goop sort of slowly building up in my lungs.
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Allow it to hang out.
Remember it is just a chemical in your body, it can’t hurt you! Many people worry that if you allow emotion to hang out, it will cause you to act on it. Don’t act on it (acting is an escape too.) Just feel it.
I say to myself. “This is fine. This is just irritation. I can just be a person who is irritated. I’m going to calmly continue my conversation, and it’s okay if my kids fall apart for a few minutes. I don’t have to get angry at them. Each time I just observe my irritation and don’t act on it, it becomes less intense.”
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Continue to allow it until it dissipates
Of course my brain wants to sell me all sorts of ideas. “My kids are so disrespectful.” “They know better.” “Uh, this always happens.” The more these ideas creep in, the more irritated I feel. I just try to go back to noticing the emotion. At first it seems to become the most important thing in that moment! I can hardly think of anything else. However, the more I allow it (and refuse to act on the emotion) it gets less and less intense. It slowly starts to go away. Soon I’ve forgotten all about it.
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Allow the emotion each time it re-surfaces.
And it will! But each time it comes back, it will be less and less intense.
By this time, I’m likely walking to the car since I had told my kids it would only be five minutes. However once everyone is back in the car, my brain loves to remind me of the irritating moment we just had. When the thoughts start again, the emotion starts again. Back to step 1. But each time I allow the feeling until it dissipates.
Our emotions are just chemicals in our body. They won’t hurt us and there’s nothing to fear. If we try to ignore them or escape them we end up with a lot more trouble than the original emotion created in the first place. Simply acknowledging and being willing to feel the emotion, allows it to pass. What would your life be like if you weren’t afraid of feeling any emotion?
How do you handle negative emotion in your life?
What negative feelings do you fear most?
What do you do to avoid them?
Next time you notice a negative emotion try these steps:
1. Name the emotion
2. Describe it
3. Allow it to hang out
4. Continue till it dissipates
5. Allow the emotion to hang out each time it re-surfaces