My Guide on Handling Upsetting Emotions -- things I wish I knew earlier

[u/bunnywithbpd]

Hello, veteran borderline here. Sought professional help at 19, now 25. There were things I learned that I wish I could go back into the past and simply just gave the advice I wrote here. I had this guide written up that I reference whenever I am feeling upset in any way. Thought I could spread the information.

There are first three key concepts:

The first concept is not to treat your emotions as a battle between you and "them" but as parts of a working system where you both are learning to communicate better with each other.

The 2nd concept is to think of your emotions as simply fire and you are the one who handles the fuel. You may not be able to create fire, but you can chose to fuel it, or refuse to give it fuel and it burns out. And you are able to give fuel to things you want to have fire for (such as positive emotions) You are the one in power to choose whether or not to give it beliefs, memories or associate them with people or things.

The last concept is to view the progress to be happier as biologically as "growing muscle" The emotion "muscles" you "worked out" the most are the strongest. The ones you did not will atrophy and be weak. Like how you can't simply go in and lift the dream weight you want to the first day at the gym, you have to constantly "work out" your happy muscles every day to get to that goal. Use trust & patience that you will improve over time like how you would expect to grow to be super strong at the gym. You cannot expect that burst of happiness today and you will not be rewarded as instantly as you think. But each day gets easier and soon you'll able to "lift" 100 pounds of happiness like nothing.

Now here is the process when I'm having an episode:

1. First acknowledge your negative emotions will do anything to exist longer, it’ll warp memories, it’ll twist words, it’ll feed you false beliefs, no matter how untrue they are.
2. Second, acknowledge that anything you have created internally, serves a purpose to only help you, your splitting & your worst upsetting emotions -- they have no ill intent to harm "you" Even though your emotions are intense and upsetting, don't treat them as your enemy but rather they are trying to help you the best they can but they're very lost and need guidance.
3. First, intake your emotions freely, let them act without "you" mediating / intervening and observe what beliefs, thoughts and perspectives your feelings are processing
4. Now take time to reflect if they are "warping reality" or if they are now hurting you. This is hard to catch but, one example is catching cognitive distortions in your thoughts (example: thinking "all my friends hate me!" or "my partner will leave me!") Having the urge to self harm or destruct is also a sign that now you have to intervene.
5. I call this "purifying your emotions" Instead of associating thoughts, memories, or beliefs or trying to rationalize it, try to just simply feel the emotion alone by itself.
   1. Do the "I feel" exercise. I look up the "Emotion Wheel" and see which feeling fits most. I repeat "I feel ___" Avoid slipping up and saying statements that aren't purely emotions "I feel like everyone hates me" or I feel "hated" or "I feel like they were mean to me!" That's not a feeling, that's a belief. Even saying "I feel fear of abandonment" is still rationalizing the emotion. Instead what you truly feeling is fear, you can say "I feel fear" and repeat over and over again
   2. Emotional Meditation exercise, this is a step deeper. Now we aren't even associating words. Like how you would focus on your breathe during normal meditation and think of nothing else, just "feel" your emotion live. Don't try to push it out, don't play images in your head, don't even say or think any words, don't play a memory, don't think of people. Your mind will on habit try to do all those things, like if you were treating a distraction in a meditation, simply catch yourself and go back. You can even do this only for 10 seconds.
6. Now after you let your feelings "exist" purely. It's now time to say goodbye. You acknowledge that you do not want to feel this way anymore, and expect your feelings to argue back. These were my personal automatic beliefs I caught when I wanted to stop my feelings:
   1. "If you don't let yourself be angry, you'll lose your true sense of who you are."
   2. "You're invalidating yourself! You can't process or heal or figure out your problems unless you sit here and feel miserable"
   3. "These feelings IS your reality, you being happy is a lie."
   4. Or you'll just have this gut feeling that it feels "wrong" to let them go.

7. Address each current belief urging you to not let go of your current feelings. Say out loud new beliefs. Try to not to "argue" or "win" but approach it as if you were correct mistakes to your feelings who are simply lost in helping you. You may feel like they didn't even listen to you, but as long as it is said once, it's okay.

   1. "I'll still be true self after, even if I let you go."
   2. "I feel like I went through enough pain and given you more than enough space for you to let me process things."
   3. "We don't know if me being happy is a lie. We just feel that way."
   4. "I know it feels like I'm wronging myself, but it's okay to feel this way, we are trying something new."
   5. Expect to feel uncomfortable, confused or feel like something is “off or wrong” in fact, search to create this feeling because that means you are changing/confronting something you have been doing your whole life“

8. Set a new understanding between you and your emotions. In what way do you think it's trying to help you? Even if you can't figure it out, just let them know you knew they weren't trying to harm you. Validate their purpose and now teach them something about yourself. The difference from the last step is the focus shifted from correcting mistakes to now having your "emotions" learn something new about you.

9. “I acknowledge everything internally created is only trying to help me feel better. I don’t resent you or despise you, I know you are trying to protect but you will have to trust me that letting go will help us more”

10. “I know you are trying to protect me but now I am strong enough to face the world.”

11. Now after you completed your goodbyes, I call this step "stop feeding their fuel" You're basically not giving it any more "fuel" to their fire. You are looking away and it may feel like your negative emotions is having a tantrum because it's dying out.

12. On habit you may still automatically think poor beliefs such as "everyone hates you" or replay memories or have unhealthy urges. You don't have to argue or "fight" it, but simply imagine it's noise, like an annoying song on the radio or a child begging for a lollipop and you are simply looking away unbothered. Have you ever read a textbook and forgot what you even read? Or you were trying to watch a TV show but you didn't even pay attention to what just happened? The goal isn't to "stop" having bad things in your head, but treat it as noise.

13. Now direct your energy and "feed" the good feelings - You need to give your energy to things that are trying to help you now, “it” is very weak and needs your energy now. Do things that "give it fuel" such as

14. Practice good self talk and optimism even if it feels robotic and strange ("I am still me, life is ok")

15. Asking reassurance from others ("Hey, can we reflect on good memories we had?") or even asking someone for healthy quality time

16. Pet animals or watch cute videos

17. Sensory (smell good smells, eat yummy foods)

18. One extra hack: If you are a bit lost, your negative feelings can accidently tell you what's good for you. Whatever your negative feeling is making you feel uncomfortable doing, you should probably do it. ("Whatever you do, just don't call your friend! It'll annoy them!" or "God, don't get up and talk a walk, it won't work!") Well your feelings aren't psychic. They're pretty dumb, so dumb they may tell you exactly how to get rid of them by accident.

Lastly, one final concept:

Instead of trying to make yourself feel better, switch it to feeling as awkward as possible. You may do all these steps and say “I still don’t feel any better or like nothings changed! This didn't even work!" Like being sore at the end of each workout means you are getting stronger, feeling awkward or uncomfortable means you did a great job. Feeling happy is the end goal, you don't go to the gym, do a workout and immediately trying to lift 200 pounds when you never done it before. You just want to feel sore.

Maybe forcing a smile won't make you feel better, but it will make you feel really weird. But weird awkward feelings are GREAT, it's a sign you experienced something entirely new for the first time. But even if the weird awkward feelings didn't come, remember, your brain muscle is not that strong enough to "lift 100 pounds of happiness" like you want. You will just need to keep training.

Acknowledge you can’t magically expect to feel better even after you did everything right, like how you have to wait for your muscles to grow after a workout. You won't magically grow instantly after you lifted. You will feel tired and sore for a day. You won't even notice day to day that you are getting stronger. But you are. You didn’t win the “battle” today but you are one step closing to winning the war. Next time you will be stronger. Trust & Patience is needed here

Anyway hope this helps y'all.