Learning how to navigate your emotions can be incredibly challenging – even daunting, especially if you are accustomed to ignoring or hiding your feelings instead of tackling them head-on.
If you’re ready to begin successfully navigating your emotions like a pro, follow these ten steps.
1. Acknowledge What You Are Feeling
Recognize and accept your emotions without any judgment.
Try looking at your emotions from a bystander’s perspective, simply noting them for what they are.
It's important to understand that all emotions are valid and part of the human experience, even the ones that are difficult or challenging.
2. Give Specific Labels to Your Emotions
Emotions can be difficult to disentangle. Take time to pinpoint exactly what you are feeling.
Use specific words to describe your emotions, such as “anxious” or “frustrated.”
Giving your emotions specific labels makes it easier to understand them.
3. Understand the Triggers and Root Causes of Your Emotions
A big part of working through challenging emotions is understanding exactly what caused them.
Reflect on what triggered your specific emotions. Determine whether it was an external event, a thought, a memory, or a physical sensation.
Knowing your unique triggers can make working through an emotion much easier.
4. Accept Your Emotions for What They Are
Embrace your emotions rather than trying to hide or ignore them.
While it may seem easier to suppress emotions, it is a weak short-term method for dealing with them, as it typically backfires and makes big emotions feel worse.
Early acceptance of your emotions helps you process emotions in a healthier way.
5. Use Appropriate Ways to Express Your Emotions
Emotions need to be expressed to be fully felt and processed. Find healthy ways to express your various emotions.
This might involve talking through your feelings with a friend, journaling about how you’re feeling, engaging in creative activities to express your feelings, or getting some physical exercise.
6. Try Being More Mindful
Engage in basic mindfulness practices to stay present with your emotions in real-time.
This helps you observe your current feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them.
It can be easy to feel overly anxious or stressed when dealing with big emotions, but taking a mindful moment to ponder them can quell some of that anxious energy by keeping you anchored in the present.
7. Practice Your Emotional Regulation Skills
Learn simple techniques you can use to manage your intense emotions.
Strategies include deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and cognitive reframing.
Learning how to use and implement these regulation strategies as needed becomes easier the more you practice.
8. Spend Some Time in Self-Reflection
Regularly reflect on your emotional experiences and responses.
Reflection is an excellent way to think back on your experiences and determine if you need to make any improvements to the way you work through big emotions.
Remember, it’s OK to make changes as needed. A strategy that used to work for you may need to be reconsidered later on, and that’s normal.
9. Seek Some Support – Professional or Otherwise
Don’t hesitate to seek support from friends, family, or a mental health professional if you are struggling to work through challenging emotions.
Talking about your emotions can provide new insights and relief.
While hiding or ignoring emotions may seem less “embarrassing,” talking about what you’re feeling with others is a great way to see your emotions from an outsider’s perspective.
10. Engage in Some Restorative and Relaxing Self-Care Time
Prioritize self-care activities that promote your emotional well-being.
This might include getting plenty of sleep, taking breaks when you need them, unplugging from social media and technology, and spending time doing activities you enjoy.
