TL;DR
Emotions are information
Sometimes information overwhelms us and we start to shut down
Learning to regulate your nervous system helps
A quick process: understand, meaning-make, integrate
Emotions Are Lots of Things
One of those things is information. Specifically, information from your body about what’s going on in and around you.
Something is fun: you feel playful and joyful
Something is overwhelming: you feel shut down and confused
Something is threatening: you feel fear and/or anger
The problem? Many of us never get an emotional education.
Few of us today are raised in a way that teaches us to understand, interpret, and translate our emotions to actions.
It’s not our fault. Or our caregivers.
You wouldn’t be mad at your parent for not knowing and teaching you advanced calculus ~ if not one taught them, how could they teach you?
The same is true for emotional skills!
But you can learn them now.
(For a deep dive on this topic go read this:)
Feelings Can Be Overwhelming
Think of a time you’ve learning something really complex and your brain kinda hurt.
Or you’ve been in a loud, bright, busy place and got overstimulated.
I remember in my 20s I got a concussion snowboarding. For about 3 months after that every time I took the subway I needed to put my head down somewhere and take a nap. (I had post-concussion syndrome)
Emotions are like that, too.
You can experience something so difficult, outside your norm, confusing, or overstimulating that it feels like you short-circuit.
In some ways you kinda do.
Your Nervous System (the regulation system for your whole kit & caboodle) is part of how you feel all your feelings. When we’re overwhelmed, overstimulated, or experiencing trauma the nervous system’s ability to regulate gets hijacked. Anxiety, panic, mood swings, and acting out can all follow.
If we keep on keepin’ on through all that we learn to dissociate - unplugging our experiences from the sensations and information our body is trying to give us.
Often times we learn to cope.
Then, we stay coping - and possibly layering more and more overwhelm.
Until that all starts to break down… our coping is no longer functional.
Maybe the stress affects our health.
Or our relationships.
Or our work.
So what do we do?
Learning to Regulate
Regulating your nervous system is a big key to coping with challenging emotions.
A quick list of things you might already know:
Meditation
Breathing techniques
Walking/ Running/ Other moderate intensity cardio
Tapping or tremoring
Massage and other compression like foam rolling or blankets
By learning to calm your nervous system you can get your mind back online. Some client’s I’ve worked with have thought this was enough to “get them through” and then were frustrated when they continued to struggle.
That’s understandable - they think “I’ve calmed down. Isn’t that it!?”
But there’s one more step in the game: learning from the emotion and integrating what you’ve learned.
Processing Strong Emotions
To be clear: this doesn’t only apply to challenging emotions.
Joy can be overwhelming.
Awe can feel like it’s crushing you.
Emotions are information, challenging and pleasant!
Step 1. Feel Your Feelings
Let yourself feel them. I promise you will not break.
They might be intense. Use regulation techniques to move through the intensity. This is where a therapist or safe person in your life can be invaluable.
Step 2. Understand your Emotions
Whatever it is you’re feeling, regulate your nervous system enough that you can decipher the information. Here are a few questions you might explore:
What are you feeling? Name the emotion.
Where do you feel it? How is your body communicating?
One practitioner I’ve worked with suggested interviewing your emotional intensity like you had a talk show - it helps to distance your “self” from your experience.
Journaling can be a useful tool while you explore this road. Again, a therapist or qualified coach can help facilitate this process.
Step 3. Make Some Meaning
Reality is subjective and your mind is making stuff up all day every day.
That’s okay. That’s how minds work.
It also means that sometimes minds will make up things that just aren’t helpful. You can revisit the meaning and learn to work with it. Which means it’s time to explore some new questions:
What does that/these emotions mean? What are they trying to tell you?
Have you felt them before? When? What did you think they meant then?
Is the meaning you’re giving them helpful to your true self? Are there other things this/these feelings could mean?
Step 4. Integrate
Wherever you land on what the emotions are and what they mean, you’ll be walking forward with a new understanding of yourself in the world.
How does this new understanding change your behavior? Your experience?
If the information and meaning-making are true, what’s different in your life?
Are there specific skills or new information you’ll want to seek out based on this new understanding?
What specific actions, habits, or behaviors change with this information?
(For more on integration go here.)
Here’s a quick, true story of my using this process for myself:
A few years ago I was in a car accident in the middle of the night. I was in the back of a cab and broke two of my teeth. The cabby dumped me in front of my apartment building, where I was living alone for the first time after recently getting divorced.
Alone. Hurt. Bloody and on the street at 2a. I get myself upstairs and dissociated. I’d grown up minimizing my own physical and emotional pain, believing I was being a “wuss” if I let myself be hurt.
The next day I was not okay. I was triggered by the injuries, partly because I’d nearly died in a car accident at age 18. All the old emotions were coming up. I spent about 4 hours that afternoon journaling and using the above process to understand what emotions I was feeling, to give myself permission to be hurt, to make intentional meaning that “I’m allowed” to both be hurt and ask for help.
The result was that now when I am injured I have more appropriate responses. I don’t hide my physical pain, I ask for help, and I seek treatment more readily. I rarely dissociate from pain anymore.
To be clear, I’ve had to repeat the above process many, many, many times to unravel everything in that brief synopsis.
It’s Okay to Need Help
If you’re experiencing a mental health challenge I encourage you to seek guidance and support. It might take a few reps to find the right therapist, but finding that person can be invaluable to healing.