Help yourself: 7 ways to quickly cope with emotions

Help yourself: 7 ways to quickly cope with emotions

4. Art therapy and creativity. Creativity has enormous therapeutic potential. That’s why specialists often use sand, mosaics, paints, and pastels in their work.

Carl Jung also paid great attention to drawing mandalas, around which over time a separate branch of psychotherapy was formed. The new method “Neurographics” is also gaining popularity. Clinical psychologist and neurography instructor Olga Kudryavtseva says that you can work with any condition by spilling it onto paper and then rounding off the sharp corners, thus creating a new drawing of emotion.

“This process involves visual imagery and fine motor skills. This kind of work helps activate new neural connections in the brain,” explains Olga.

5. State “here and now”. When you can’t cope with your emotions, you need to return to the “here and now” state. Psychoanalyst Julia Heydebrecht says that for this you need to focus on your feelings at the moment: hear the sounds around you, see everything that is happening around you - see every detail, concentrate on colors, see objects in the distance.

“Listen to the sensations in your body, ask yourself questions: what do I feel with my hands, feet, cheek? What does it feel like? And while the brain is distracted, emotions are released,” the psychologist assures.

6. Breathing practices. Concentrating on breathing also helps to return to the “here and now” state and calm down. Eastern spiritual teachings pay special attention to this issue: specialists in wushu, qigong, yoga and others will teach you how to breathe correctly.

Breathing is one of the key elements in body-oriented psychotherapy. “Square breathing” will help you balance your emotional state in a specific situation, where inhalation, exhalation and pauses between them are equal in duration.

7. Prayers. Praying is an effective way to calm your emotions. This is an effective tool for combating obsessive thoughts. Almost every religion uses prayers and mantras in one form or another.

When working with your own emotions, it is important to remember that feelings are, first of all, energy that is given to us by nature. Therefore, before looking for ways to return to balance, think: perhaps you need this state for some specific action? If so, then try to approach it consciously. And you certainly shouldn’t suppress your own experiences. They are important and valuable to us, they help us navigate in this world and in relationships with others.

How to get rid of negative emotions? A clinical psychologist speaks

“The fashion for “positive thinking”, stories like “thoughts are material”, esoteric trainings and marathons where they are taught that emotions destroy – all these are not the best guidelines,” says psychologist Denis Ivanov. – But, in addition to the informational context, the attitude towards our emotions is embedded in us from childhood, when “emotional schemes” are formed. “Girls should be kind”, “Boys don’t cry”, “No one will play with someone so angry” - such messages set a certain attitude towards one’s own emotional reactions. Now, having felt something “abnormal”, we rush to use a harmful strategy to “fix” the emotion.

Harmful strategies for regulating “wrong” emotions

“Forbid yourself from feeling” - such a rule is doomed to failure, since evolution cannot be argued against. Inhibitions don't work with an ironic brain: try not thinking about a polar bear for a minute.

“Avoid emotions” - switch your attention, go headlong into another activity, occupy your brain, be happy. So close to exhaustion.

“Freeze” - noticing that he is losing the battle with unpleasant emotions, a person admits defeat, turning to alcohol, taking pills, and falling asleep.

In fact, all emotions are needed - all emotions are important

“Emotions, like alarms, tell us about dangers,” explains the psychologist. – Some people have a sensitive alarm system, and then even a small threat triggers anxiety, sadness, and anger. Some people are more thick-skinned, but even in this case there are disadvantages. Emotions can be excessive and even pathological, so it is important not to tolerate them, but to learn to regulate them correctly.

There are several ways to regulate emotions

• Understand the “start buttons”. Keep track of who, what, when causes unpleasant emotions in you. If you cannot change your attitude towards such triggers, then try to minimize their presence in your life, at least temporarily. • Understand your thoughts. After all, our thoughts are the main cause of our excessive emotions. • Understand your harmful strategies for regulating “wrong” emotions. • Do not create secondary emotions. Imagine that someone threw a stone into a clean, calm lake and it sent ripples through the water. But what happens if you try to calm these waves? You will only create additional ones. When you try to prohibit yourself from emotions, you are doomed to failure, you begin to think: “I can’t calm down,” and cause “secondary” emotions: anger, anxiety, sadness. • Learn to accept emotions as important elements of our human nature. Be attentive to your experiences, pay attention to them, study them: when they appear, how long they last, what conditions they cause in the body. • Observe your emotions. Describe them, but don't fight them.

Reduce emotional vulnerability

To prevent your body from signaling you for no reason, reduce your emotional vulnerability. To do this, maintain regular sleep - 8 hours, go to bed and get up at the same time. Normalize your diet and physical activity. Make to-do lists and try to follow plans without self-criticism.

Be mindful of your thoughts

You can learn to control your emotions correctly. By exploring them, you will understand why something makes you angry, why emotions are so strong. You will learn to regulate them by changing the way you think about triggers and choosing caring strategies for your own behavior.

“Observe your thoughts, write down your thoughts, learn to operate with facts, making conclusions,” advises Denis Ivanov. – This skill does not develop immediately, and it is more effective to find a cognitive psychologist-psychotherapist for yourself.

How to deal with manifestations of alexithymia

Most often, emotional insensitivity occurs as a response to severe mental or physical pain. It is better to deal with the problem in the early stages of its development. Otherwise, such behavior can develop into a serious psychological illness. Here are some tips to help you maintain psychological balance.

Reduce stress

Accumulating stress and unresolved problems over time turn into an unbearable burden and can lead to emotional coldness and psychological problems. To protect your brain from overload and emotional swings, try to periodically restore your moral and physical strength.

Surround yourself with people who understand

Sometimes a heart-to-heart conversation with a loved one is enough to restore strength. Social contacts will help you in the fight against emotional insensitivity. Don't try to isolate yourself from other people. Prolonged loneliness is another factor that can lead to emotional problems.

Learn to recognize and experience emotions

Suppressing emotions does not lead to anything good. Unprocessed traumas and unexpressed emotions accumulate inside us, destroying the nervous system. The habit of hiding emotions can lead to a state of persistent stress. To avoid possible problems, you need to abandon the attitude that negative emotions are bad. Admit to yourself what emotions you actually experience and live them.

Help yourself: simple relaxation techniques

Get rid of muscle tension and information overload

Take breaks from watching, reading or listening to news, including social media. Give yourself “worry time,” for example, 10 minutes a day for information about coronavirus. Remove rumors and use in speech about the coronavirus and its pandemic. For your psyche, coronavirus is just a stimulus, a set of letters that is written or you read it. It is you who attribute this or that meaning to this stimulus. And here the question arises: should you attribute an overly catastrophizing meaning to this stimulus, or can you respond to it more flexibly? Take a white piece of paper, draw a dot on it and label it coronavirus. Look at this piece of paper and tell me, what else do you see besides this point? That's right, you see a white area that for some reason is not filled with anything. Your life has become one-dimensional, fill it with volume and those things that are truly and literally valuable to you at the moment.

Take care of your body

First, remove the fussiness. Notice when you start to either hold your breath or breathe rapidly (this especially happens when you read information about the coronavirus, or talk about it, or start thinking about it). the “quiet place” technique once a day find a place where you feel alone and, if possible, close the door. Sit comfortably. Take 5 deep breaths. As you exhale each time, breathe out the air through pursed lips. Give yourself permission to feel anger or disappointment. Notice where they are located in your body? Allow these emotions to rise within you. Watch them reach their peak. At this moment, imagine that you are rushing on waves of emotions. Look at yourself from the outside. Let your emotions carry you, let them grow. Now let them sleep on their own. Mentally direct your breath to the place where your emotions were hidden. Relax your body, straighten your shoulders, relax your abdominal muscles. With every breath, feel that balance is returning to you. Allow yourself to be with the emotions that are unpleasant for you without judging yourself.

Enter mindful walking

Remove all gadgets and music. Walk rhythmically, at a pace that is comfortable for you. Breathe evenly through your nose in time with your steps. Move your arms and let them relax. Lower your shoulders (remove the “stress penguin”). There is no need to swing your arms too much, just gentle swaying that relaxes your shoulders is enough. Notice what's around you. Feel how your feet step on the ground, how your arms sway. Watch your posture and how you hold your head. Notice what you see, pay attention not only to your thoughts, but also to smells and sounds.

Protect yourself from the news, monitor your mental and physical condition.

Why is stress dangerous?

When stressed, cortisol is released, which changes the functioning of the entire body. The cardiovascular and nervous systems are primarily affected. People who are often under stress experience the following symptoms:

• redness of the skin, appearance of a rash;
• chronic fatigue;
• losing weight or vice versa, developing obesity;
• bowel disorders.

Prolonged exposure to stress is dangerous for the body as it causes such consequences.

1. Increased blood pressure. At the same time, under the influence of adrenaline, cardiac output increases. All this leads to an increased risk of developing a heart attack. People who smoke and are overweight have a significantly higher risk of heart disease.
2. People who are constantly under stress are at risk of developing acute respiratory diseases and bronchial asthma. This happens because prolonged overexertion and hormonal imbalances disrupt the functioning of the immune system. Medical research shows that chronic stressful situations in adults adversely affect the health of their children.
3. Chronic stress negatively affects the functioning of the digestive tract. A person often develops gastritis and peptic ulcers. In addition, stress negatively affects the intestinal microflora, which causes pain, flatulence, diarrhea or constipation.
4. Problems of the musculoskeletal system. Increases bone fragility and the likelihood of developing a fracture.
5. Endocrine disorders. Stress leads to increased production of glucocorticoids, in particular cortisol. An increased level of this hormone in the blood can cause diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and depression. The risk of developing autoimmune pathologies increases.
6. Stress depletes the central and autonomic nervous system.

To prevent the dangerous effects of stress on the body, it is important to learn how to resist it.

"Strong" and "weak"

Natalya Kozhina, AiF.ru: Kristina Andreevna, why is emotional dependence dangerous?

Kristina Valentsova : You can depend in different ways: on the boss’s decision to hire, the bank’s decision to issue a loan or not, the relationship of a partner, medical assistance in a difficult situation, the help of a friend in a difficult moment, etc. Each of us is dependent on what something, but in some ways others depend on us. However, if emotional dependence is also attached to this “daily” dependence, you can cross a dangerous line that separates you from losing your personality and your power. If you think that your importance as a specialist depends on your boss’s decision, your value as a person depends on your partner’s attitude, and all relationships with other people depend on your friend’s help, you can safely talk about the initial stage of emotional dependence.

If you do not “return to yourself” in time, such a symptom can develop into a deep feeling of your own insignificance and facelessness, the emptiness of life without some person. Such internal self-destruction not only hinders self-realization and self-affirmation, but excludes harmonious relationships with the opposite sex, relatives, friends, and negatively affects social contacts and personal growth. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to get rid of this addiction.

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— Who becomes addicted more often than others? Is there any pattern?

— It is impossible to single out any specific age, gender or social status of people who are most susceptible to emotional dependence. This could be a poor teenage girl or a wealthy adult man. There are many examples. A 40-year-old man who lives with his mother and considers himself obligated to indulge all her whims instead of building his own life. A young girl who meekly submits to her man in everything and believes that “he knows best” is as dependent on him as he is on her. A teenager who cannot imagine his life without friends, sharing all his sorrows and joys with them, reporting on every small event of his day: what he ate, where he went, what he did. He is also emotionally dependent on the opinions and views of a group of friends, following their guidelines in his life.

Codependent relationships most often (but not always) originate where there is a “strong” and a “weak”. For example, someone in need of help and able to provide it, a teacher and a student, a parent and a child, self-confident and experiencing a tragedy, etc. The main indicator of such dependence: when a person considers someone else responsible for his happiness and the satisfaction of his needs.

Nowadays, many people suffer from emotional dependence to one degree or another. This is because when we believe that someone else is responsible for our happiness—a parent, a friend, a partner, a government—we lose some of the power of our personality.

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— What factors stimulate the emergence of emotional dependence?

- Remember the situations that made you experience the collapse of your personality: failed professionalism tests, bankruptcy, failed relationships, betrayal of a loved one, etc.

In fact, none of this makes us dumber, weaker or deprives us of the opportunity to be happy. Everything we experience at such moments is extremely subjective and is usually tied to deep childhood traumas. The main reason is that once upon a time we did not receive enough warmth, support, faith in us and attention to our emotional needs. And now the inner emptiness prompts us to frantically search for the “ideal” source to fill. Someone who will always love us unconditionally, who will support us at any moment in life in any condition, believe in us, inspire, give strength whenever required, accept us as we are.

This is all a child expects from his parent. But an adult is also a person and is not always able to satisfy all the needs of his child. Therefore, blaming him in this case would be a step TO dependence, and not FROM it. Can someone give it to us now? If you think about it, it's unlikely. What, then, is the source of the feeling of security, inner strength and self-worth? Who can be the person who will always support, take care of you and fill your life with meaning? I think you guessed it yourself.

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- So it’s not about the difficulties of life, but about our reaction to them?

- Yes. The same events, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or a change in the political situation in the country, can push one person towards codependency, while giving another an impetus to internal growth and change. Therefore, the causes of codependency lie within the person himself. This could be, for example, a reluctance to take responsibility for making important decisions in your life, as well as for your entire life in general. The habit of trusting a parent (hereinafter - any significant person) in assessing events and one’s own behavior. When, for some reason, a person has not undergone “separation” from a significant person and independent development as a person. A strengthened belief in one’s own inferiority and inferiority, the inability to love oneself, listen to one’s desires and independently satisfy one’s basic emotional needs.

Liberation of desires.

After enough practice in releasing emotions, moving in each session from specific feelings to one of the nine basic emotions, you may find that it is even more useful to turn to the deeper levels of your Self - the claims of your EGO - desires.

According to Levinson, the source of all our emotions, which we divided into 9 basic categories, are two even deeper levels - desires. I - desire for approval, self-affirmation; II - desire to control. Every act of desire is an indicator that you do not have what you want. In Levinson's words: "What we don't have is hidden in our desires." It may be confusing at first: what’s wrong with wanting approval and control? In fact, as already noted, to want means not to have. It turns out that often the desire to have something actually prevents us from having it.

What are the causes of stress?

There are many causes of stress. Each person has an individual body and psyche. The same factor may not affect one of us at all, but cause a violent reaction in another. The most common factors in the development of stress:

• conflict situations at work or at home;
• discontent;
• lack of money;
• long absence of a full vacation;
• routine life with no change;
• death of a relative or loved one;
• lack of vitamins, poor nutrition;
• problems in sexual life;
• fears;
• loneliness;
• sudden change in environment;
• other reasons that can hook a person.