How to Face and Resolve Complicated Emotions
It’s said that you are not your emotions. Instead, you can only be limited by your ability to manage your emotions. The word emotion has been defined in hundreds of ways. We are all familiar with the word meaning strong feelings, expression of consciousness, or a psychological state. However, the word emotion dates back to the 16th century, derived from old French and Latin to mean to stir up, agitate, remove, or move out. Hence, emotions represent a form of movement.
Emotions are internal movements of energy likely to cause disruptions to the neutral physiological state of your body. Experts say that it’s only recently that the realm of emotions started being explored. The concept of emotional intelligence, which is your ability to understand and manage emotions and those of people around you, came into existence in 1990. With this in mind, let’s face and resolve complicated emotions.
Don’t Run Away
If you learn to listen to your emotions and not run away from them, perhaps you’ll understand what the feelings are telling you. Face your emotions with acceptance, learn from them, and don’t ignore them.
Pushing emotions away can only make things worse. By avoiding your feelings, you may end up with problems with memory, anxiety, aggression, or even depression. A study by the University of Texas affirms that you make your emotions stronger when you do not acknowledge them.
Emotions send you essential information. For instance, sadness can indicate that you lost something valuable to you. It’s also important to have the feeling of fear for survival. Fear can help you fight or flee whenever you face danger. Feelings of disgust can help you avoid contamination that could otherwise endanger you, while guilt can help you change your behavior.
Acknowledging your feelings and the bigger picture they show you can soften emotions and make it easy for you to manage them. It also directs you to the behaviors that can make you a better person. Therefore, don’t run from emotions. Rather face them with courage and become a better person.
Identify the Emotions
As discussed earlier, emotions send you crucial information. Identifying emotions can help you talk about your feelings clearly, resolve or avoid conflicts better, and move past the most stubborn feelings more easily.
Identifying emotions can also help you build better relationships. Suppose you can notice how you feel and successfully calm yourself down or adjust your behavior to accommodate your feelings. In that case, you will likely lead a better life, cultivate healthy relationships and manage setbacks.
It’s also important to note that feelings can be powerful and overwhelming regardless of age, so learning how to manage them empowers you with life skills and strategies to live a purposeful life.
Negative emotions lead to negative thoughts. You’ll have unhappy thoughts if you struggle to recognize when you feel unhappy. Therefore, controlling your thoughts and asking for help whenever the need arises is crucial.
Accept Your Emotions
Accepting your emotions is more about gaining control over them through strategies like mindfulness. Mindfulness helps you calm down and soothe yourself even in complicated emotional situations. The first step is to turn to your emotions with acceptance and identify and label each emotion while simultaneously empowering yourself to detach yourself from it. Most importantly, when you experience a particular feeling, please don’t deny it and accept that emotions are not permanent.
Talk About it
The most successful way of facing and resolving complicated emotions is by talking to someone about it. Talk about how you feel to a friend, family, or professional to help you easily accept and overcome difficult emotions.
Talking about your feelings can also validate that what you are going through is real and means something to you. You need to understand that when you find yourself upset about something, it only means that you care about it.
If you have been struggling with quitting drugs, talking to someone can help you reduce and eventually quit to improve your life in various ways. Start by admitting that you have a problem and that you want help. Friends and family can direct you to a reputable drug rehab center in Coral Springs, Florida, to get professional help.
How to Regain Your Inner Balance
Once you identify the type of emotion you are experiencing, whether grief, confusion, or loneliness, the next step should be to find out where you feel it in your body. Accepting emotions is another step to getting to know the root cause of your feelings.
Therefore, mindfulness practices like meditation are the best way to regain your inner balance. You can achieve calmness and relaxation through meditation while increasing energy through investigation and curiosity.
