While most of the time we feel as if our emotions are under control, there are days where intense emotions can carry us away. Feeling anger, sorrow, fear, despair, and other negative intense emotions can overwhelm us and knock us down. They can cause us to stumble with our communication with ourselves and others. It can alter our inner dialogue causing us to berate and bring ourselves or others down. Learning how to handle your emotions and learning how to explore your emotions can be liberating. Today, I’m going to be exploring how to help with intense emotions, including what I do to help myself.
What are Intense Emotions?
We have so many thoughts, ideas, and feelings that come and go through the day with varying severity. While most days we may feel generally milder emotions, an event or thought can trigger a rather intense emotion. We may feel anger at a partner, anxiety over an upcoming event, or despair after a job loss. These intense emotions can often cloud how we perceive reality and can even stand in the way of communicating effectively.
It may feel like we have no control over these emotions and that alone can cause stress and affect our mental health. Intense emotions can hinder us in our tracks and can seem to make the whole world shift. No one likes dealing with negative intense emotions, but they happen. If we have the tools to handle our intense emotions, they may start to seem less intimidating and overwhelming.
Ways to Calm Intense Emotions
While no one likes to experience intense negative emotions, we all have, we all do, and we all will. Because of this, it would be useful to learn how to better handle these emotions so that we can de-stress and let the storm pass. Here are a few ways to help you handle intense emotions.
Emotions are Temporary
First, always remember that emotions are temporary. Sometimes we may experience a feeling for just a few minutes and sometimes a day or longer. Either way, feelings come and go. You may have heard the saying that thoughts and feelings are like clouds passing through the sky. If we can remember that each cloud and each feeling passes, we can decrease our stress significantly. Knowing thoughts and feelings are temporary gives me great comfort whenever I’m experiencing fear, anger, or hopelessness. I know that it’s just a storm that I need to wait out. It will be uncomfortable, but it’s only uncomfortable for a time and then it will pass.
Take a Second to Breathe and Assess
I’m extremely introspective person probably to a fault. I like to deconstruct every little thing and analyze every little thing. When I’m experiencing an intense negative emotion, I’ve found that taking a few breaths and assessing how I feel and why I feel that way helps. There are times when anger or fear will hit me and I’m not fully certain why. It helps for me to take a few moments to really think about why something made me angry or afraid. If I can determine the why and assess how I’m feeling, then I can better decide how I want to move forward with action.
A good example of this is when I get mad at a friend for something they did or said. I’ll recognize that I’m mad and will need to take a moment to myself to figure out why I’m upset. If I don’t allow myself this time then I find that I may lash out because I can’t be direct enough to explain my feelings. When I take that time for myself I can understand my emotions better and present them in a direct and calm fashion rather than an aggressive one.
Allow Yourself to Feel and Accept the Emotions
Now we’re getting into tougher territory. Something that we’re all probably guilty of is telling ourselves that we shouldn’t feel the way we feel. We shouldn’t be mad because it wasn’t that big of a deal or we shouldn’t be afraid because no one else is. We diminish and berate our emotions time and time again and it does not serve us in the slightest. Whether or not you think you should feel a certain way will not change how you feel. So when you recognize the emotion you’re feeling and accept that emotion, it’s easier to let it go. This may be very difficult because feeling intense fear, intense anger, intense despair is extremely uncomfortable. But, if we allow ourselves to feel it and accept it, it will pass all the sooner with less discomfort.
On a different note, I said before that feelings are like clouds in the sky passing by. However, we can choose to hold on to a feeling and not let it go. It’s important to recognize whether you’re allowing yourself to experience a feeling or whether you’re holding onto that feeling. Just like the clouds, each feeling you have naturally wants to pass by. At times I noticed I chose to hold onto my anger because I believed it was protecting me from getting hurt again. I can tell you that it wasn’t and that I did more harm by holding onto that anger than letting it go. There is a liberating feeling that comes from allowing yourself to feel an emotion without attachment to it. Not attaching yourself to an emotion is an important thing to remember. It wants to leave and it’s up to you to let it.
Be Aware of Your Inner Dialogue
We’re always talking to ourselves in our own heads whether we realize it or not and this is our inner dialogue. Our inner dialogue can greatly affect the way we feel so it’s a good thing to be aware of it. When it comes to intense feelings, our inner dialogues could be causing the feelings to be significantly more intense. For example, when you’re angry with someone, you may be compiling a list in your head of all the things that person did to wrong you or hurt you. This would only intensify the anger you feel toward that person rather than helping the issue.
To help calm down from anger at another person, it’s important to make sure that we’re sticking with the facts and that our inner dialogue is not fueling the fire. This can also work with other intense emotions. When we’re feeling sorrow, we may tell ourselves that we won’t feel anything but this sorrow, that we are alone, that we deserve this sorrow, etc. Without even being aware of it, our inner dialogue may make the intense emotions grow and linger. Once we are aware of our inner dialogue we can change it. If you notice yourself listing the shortcomings of someone you’re upset with or telling yourself that you’re a problem, you can take a breath and change your inner dialogue to something kinder, gentler, and more understanding. By changing what you say to yourself, you can often change the way you feel.
When in Doubt, Think Gratitude
If you’ve accepted your feelings and want to let them go, but feel them continuing to linger, then my secret weapon is gratitude. There are times when my anger or fear will linger like an unwelcome guest and I’ll feel trapped in it. The way I often free myself from this is by listing what I’m grateful for. If I’m angry at my friend, but I’m really wanting to let that anger go, I’ll list why I’m grateful that friend is in my life. As I continue the list I’ll feel my anger slowly detensify. Gratitude is an amazing tool that should not be underestimated.
Intense negative emotions are never fun, but we can learn about ourselves if we examine and experience them. By putting these practices into place, we can experience a more enhanced mental wellbeing. Next time you’re feeling angry, scared, or another negative emotion, remember some of the practices and see if they help!