You Can Better Manage Your Emotions Even As an Adult
When my son was a toddler, I spent most of the day helping him deal with his strong emotions. He resented having to wear trousers every single day ; his tears from having to go to bed at a reasonable time; his complete dismay at not being able to eat ice cream at every meal. While this all seems like an overreaction to adults, we’re not really all that different — we too struggle with our anger over a shitty situation at work, our grief over a tough breakup, or our fears about an uncertain future.
However, as adults, we tend to do things that little ones don’t—we try to suppress them. But this can backfire in the form of repetitive thoughts, your own emotional outbursts, or sleepless nights. Our emotions may not make sense to us, they may seem illogical or mature, and we may not want to experience the pain and discomfort associated with them, but they are real and need to be dealt with.
“If we struggle with our emotions, that’s how [we] get stuck,” said Alex Wills, psychiatrist and author of Fucking Really: Fix Yourself with 5 Steps of Radical Emotional Acceptance . “It’s because [we’re] giving up a part of ourselves.”
Instead of ignoring our bad emotions, Wills recommends accepting them so that we can find ways to learn from them. “If we can take every emotion as purposeful and good in some way, especially painful and unpleasant, they are actually trying to help us,” Wills said. “Every painful emotion has a downside”, which is often associated with desire.
Painful emotions that come after a breakup, for example, are often associated with desire for things like intimacy, trust, connection, and companionship. In Wills’ experience, “the level of intensity is proportional to the level of desire we have for the satisfaction of our needs.”
Emotional acceptance comes in five stages
As Wills often advises his patients, there are five steps to dealing with strong emotions. The first step is to lower your emotional shield, or as he puts it, “lower your damn shield.” Instead of saying “I don’t care” when something upsetting happens, he suggests simply admitting that you care.
Letting go of the “fucking shield” also has to do with identifying your avoidance strategies—joking, for example, are your ways of avoiding deeper, more painful emotions. The next time something upsetting happens, he suggests taking a few minutes to observe the full spectrum of your emotional response. If your first instinct is to make a joke and then move on when you’re actually shocked by what happened, then humor is your distraction strategy.
Once you have a better understanding of when you are deviating rather than confronting your deeper and more painful emotions, the second step is to start naming those emotions. Although it sounds simple, as Wills writes in his book , “When we experience an emotion that we consider negative, we tend to tend to fast-forward it.”
Instead, he recommends slowing down and exploring emotions, no matter how trivial or illogical they may seem, as they provide insight into what you really care about. It could be something as minor as being annoyed that your favorite ice cream flavor has been discontinued, or something as serious as the fear of abandonment that builds up whenever you fight with your partner. but all these emotions are a window into your hopes and fears. .
Once you’ve named those emotions, it’s time for the third step: listening to them. Your favorite flavor of ice cream can evoke happy childhood memories of an easier and more innocent time in your life. Whatever the emotions, they provide valuable information about what you really care about. Rather than glossing over emotions or trying to let them through, Wills recommends taking the time to listen to what they’re trying to say.
The fourth stage is acting upon this emotional knowledge; it could mean taking steps to end or repair a broken relationship, make the decision to spend more time with your family, or find time to pursue a long-forgotten dream. “You use all of your emotional intelligence with all of your emotional data to better justify your decisions,” Wills said. Once you have listened to your emotions, you can return to your intellectual, logical side, using their combination to make the best decision.
Finally, the fifth step is to thank the emotions. Our emotions may be uncomfortable, they may seem illogical, but they are a window into our desires, and if we are willing to listen, they can help us make better decisions for our own lives.