Want to better manage difficult emotions? Welcome them as helpful signals.
Image of a traffic signal showing a green walk sign. Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash
It’s human nature to avoid unpleasant stuff.
We will spit out something bitter, shield our ears from a loud noise, and look away from a bad accident. Emotions aren’t any different. While we welcome feelings like joy, happiness, and excitement, we usually will try to avoid, push away or get rid of feelings like fear, sadness, envy, and shame.
Unfortunately, trying to push away, avoid, or get rid of an emotion doesn’t usually work. Emotions that aren’t experienced usually linger or even get stronger. The avoidance strategies many of us use aren’t helpful either: we may try to numb ourselves from feeling with things like substances, food, or sex, usually at a cost to our health and well-being.
One of the most valuable tools for dealing with difficult emotions is to lean in and experience them. Learning to accept an internal experience like an emotion is an important skill and can be really helpful. Read more about how to do build some acceptance.
Emotions are signals
I want to offer another strategy for dealing with emotions: view them as helpful signals.
Emotions serve an evolutionary purpose and they are hardwired into our brains. If a dinosaur is chasing you, you will feel fear. This fear will prompt you to run away from the dinosaur. The fear response signals danger and helps you to take action. Emotional signals are strong for a reason: so that we can survive. In fact, emotions usually show up first in response to something happening in the world around you. Thoughts and other experiences typically come after.
Even if you aren’t being chased by a dinosaur, the emotions you feel often signal an underlying value, what matters to you. Consider an emotion like jealousy. While it is a painful experience, in reality it often points to an underlying desire for connection. A strong feeling of disappointment often points to some outcome that matters to you and that you had hoped for. Even these painful experiences can help us understand ourselves better and choose actions that are meaningful to us.
Cultivate some curiosity about emotions
If you consider an emotion as a helpful signal, then a useful approach is to cultivate some curiosity around the emotion you are experiencing. What is this emotion trying to signal about the situation? What is valuable about this emotion? What can I learn from it? How is it trying to help me?
Emotions are not bad or good. They are just experiences. Even emotions like shame, envy, and jealousy are signaling some action you could take or change you could make in your behavior, or a wish for something different in your life.
How emotions can signal you
Here are some examples of how emotions are signals. This is not everyone’s experience but consider these examples and how these emotions show up for you and what they might be signalling.
anger - you or someone you love is being attacked and might be harmed. Something is wrong and you need to make it right.
disgust - you are experiencing something that you find repulsive or that could be dangerous to you. Disgust is a signal that you want to avoid something - it’s not good for you.
envy - someone is experiencing or has something you want. It can often signal what you really value and hope for in your life.
fear - you are experiencing a threat to your health or well being. You need to take care of yourself.
happiness - you are receiving or experiencing something that you value.
sadness - you are experiencing some kind of loss. Sadness points to how meaningful someone or something was to you.
shame - you feel bad about yourself because you have wronged someone. Shame can prompt you to make amends.
Think about emotions you frequently feel. What might they be signaling for you?
How to use emotional signals
Once you start considering an emotion as a signal, what then? See if you can breath into the feeling and create some acceptance around it. Often, having an understanding of the emotion as a signal can help with this. You can cultivate a sense of curiosity and willingness and relate to emotions differently. You can have less struggle.
When you have a better understanding of what the emotion is trying to signal to you, try acknowledging the part of you that is feeling this way. This can be as simple as letting that part of you know that you hear what’s going on, or providing that part of you with some reassurance. This can provide some space to have the emotion and let it resolve.
It’s human nature to have emotions and to want to avoid them if they are unpleasant. Unfortunately, pushing feelings away or trying to numb them doesn’t usually work. Cultivating some willingness to have a feeling can help reduce the struggle you might have with difficult feelings. Seeing them as helpful signals can be a great place to start.