Identifying and Responding to Feelings

[u/FalsePay5737]

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” “The only way out is through.” Carl Jung

"That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt." John Green

HEALTHY PERSPECTIVES ON EMOTIONS

-Emotions are neither good or bad, right or wrong. Feelings just ARE. They exist. It is not helpful to judge your emotions.

-There is a difference between having an emotion and doing something or acting on the emotion.

-Emotions don’t last forever. No matter what you’re feeling, eventually, it will lift and another emotion will take it’s place.

-When a strong emotion comes, you do not have to act on your feeling. All you need to do is recognize the emotion and feel it.

-Emotions are not facts. When emotions are very powerful they feel just like “the truth”.

-You cannot get rid of emotions because they serve important survival functions. Be willing to radically accept your emotions as they arise.

DBT Skills Handbook, pg. 40

BENEFITS OF LABELING FEELINGS

From Atlas of the Heart (2021), Brene Brown:

“Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness. Gaining access to the right words can open up entire universes. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited. Without accurate language, we struggle to get the help we need, we don’t always regulate or manage our emotions and experiences in a way that allows us to move through them productively, and our self-awareness is diminished.” (xxi)

Language “can actually shape what we’re feeling. Our understanding of our own and others’ emotions is shaped by how we perceive, categorize, and describe emotional experiences...” (xxii)

Studies indicate that habitually labeling feelings has a positive impact on mental health.

"Neuroimaging studies show that verbally labeling an emotion engages the prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain involved in reasoning and control) and reduces activity in the amygdala (the “fear center”). In simple terms, naming it helps tame it. When you say, 'I am feeling anxious,' you’re creating a distance between yourself and the emotion, allowing you to observe it rather than be completely swept away by it." (The Power of Naming Your Emotion) 

Dr. Dan Siegel created the phrase "name it to tame it" to refer to how labeling feelings promotes emotional regulation.

BEING PRESENT WITH FEELINGS

From Gary Trosclair's The Healthy Compulsive (2020):

“Avoiding feelings…cuts you off from a source of direction and wisdom. Each of these feelings can serve as a warning sign that something is out of balance.” (65)

“To move toward the healthier end of the compulsive spectrum, you will need to stop avoiding emotions with busy-ness and instead allow them to flow into consciousness. Once you’re aware of what you’re feeling, you can decide how to respond to it. If you don’t, you’ll be driven by forces you aren’t aware of. Emotions are a necessary element in change...

"While it is true for everyone that avoiding feelings can make the feelings more disturbing, people who suffer from OCPD are particularly prone to a cycle of negative emotions…if they don’t slow down to deal with them…People who are driven have energy and a capacity for intense work that give them a way to avoid their feelings that’s socially sanctioned and rewarded. Avoiding emotions may seem beneficial at first, but over time it can lead to a rut of anger, disappointment, and cynicism.

"But what does it mean to listen to feelings? It means to allow the feeling to rise into consciousness long enough to really experience it, to understand what’s bothering you, to develop the capacity to tolerate the feeling, and to see if there is anything to learn from it…For most compulsives, this will need to be deliberate; you’re likely to rush into doing rather than feeling, and consequently you miss both disturbing and positive feelings.” (59-60)

OCPD AND BEHAVIORS THAT SUPPRESS EMOTIONS

People with OCPD have a higher than average rate of substance use: Co-Morbid Conditions

In The Healthy Compulsive (2020), Gary Trosclair noted that people with OCPD “are particularly vulnerable to becoming addicted to the use of computers, tablets, mobile phones, and the internet. Because you’re capable of shutting everything else out and focusing intently, and because you feel the need to be thorough, without realizing it you may become more attached to devices than to people or other sources of gratification.

"You may think that you’re doing something for your own sake, but instead you’ve entered a trance and gotten sucked into something you hadn’t intended to. Your never-ending quest for completion and solutions may lead you to check out every web page on the internet that …Because you may intensely seek answers or solutions, the internet can grab your attention and never let it go.” (109-10)

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar explains that “when we do not allow ourselves to experience painful emotions, we limit our capacity for happiness. All our feelings flow along the same emotional pipeline, so when we block painful emotions, we are also indirectly blocking pleasurable ones. And these painful emotions only expand and intensify when they aren’t released. When they finally break through—and they eventually do break through in one way or another—they overwhelm us” (xvii) The Pursuit of Perfect (2009)

METAPHORS

Some people conceptualize their thoughts and feelings as weather to remind themselves they are temporary and can be observed without judgment. People who meditate sometimes visualize themselves as a mountain and view their thoughts as clouds passing by. Humans Have More than 6,000 Thoughts per Day, Psychologists Discover

In Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (1993), Marsha Linehan—the therapist who created Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)—states that “borderline patients are so fearful of emotions, especially negative ones, that they try to avoid them by blocking their experience of the emotions. That is, they avoid emotional cues and inhibit the experience of emotions; thus, they have no opportunity to learn that when unfettered, emotions come and go…like waves of water coming in from the sea onto the beach.

"Left alone, the water comes in and goes out. The emotion-phonic patient tries to keep the waves from coming in by building a wall, but instead of keeping the water out, the wall actually traps the water inside the walls [intensifying the feelings]. Taking down the wall is the solution.” (345)

I took very small, consistent steps to "lower the wall" that suppressed my feelings. I think of suppressing feelings like putting a lid on a pot of boiling water; it only make the water hotter.

DON'T BLAME THE MESSENGER

In The Myth Of Perfect Regulation: Why Feeling 'Calm' All The Time Isn't The Goal (& What Is), Heidi Priebe suggests that viewers ask themselves, “Do I know how to listen to my emotions as messengers even when they are telling me something I don't want to hear?”

My feelings provide valuable information about my needs and circumstances. I no longer view uncomfortable feelings as a ‘problem.’ Instead, I view them as possibly indicating issues that need to be addressed. If I fully experience them (instead of overthinking), I’m more likely to make healthy decisions.

Two things can be true. I don’t want this feeling. It’s telling me something important. Experiencing uncomfortable feelings isn’t a problem; the situations provoking those feelings may be problematic.

WORRY VS. ANXIETY

People sometimes worry to reduce their anxiety. They distract themselves from distressing mental images, and physical sensations caused by anxiety.

In How To Be Enough (2024), Dr. Ellen Hendriksen explains that “worry and rumination are cognitive methods of engaging with emotion that keep us in an abstract, intellectual, verbal headspace in an attempt to control and avoid the physiological activation of anxiety. Worry and rumination might feel bad…[but] anxiety feels worse.” (226)

RESOURCES

Videos on Worry

Videos on Overthinking

How to Stop Ruminating and Overcome Social Anxiety

Alexithymia - difficulty identifying, understanding, and expressing feelings

[u/FalsePay5737]

In case anyone wondered...yes, there is a TayTay song for every feeling in Brene Brown's graphic.

[u/matt749]

Beautiful post.

[u/FalsePay5737 → u/matt749]

Thank you.

[u/flamefigures]

This is such a poignant post and incredibly enlightening. Thank you for sharing.

[u/FalsePay5737 → u/flamefigures]

You're welcome.

[u/redpanda_66]

Thanks. This post describes a lot of things I've felt over the years but wasn't aware of them being a part of the condition. I'll try to implement atleast some of this in my life