We all experience emotional pain at times. Sometimes it’s significant and prolonged and requires treatment and clinical intervention. Other times it’s fleeting and temporary, a dip or difficult part of a day or week. Sometimes it’s just a lower than normal or more anxious mood for a time.
Here are some ideas for digging deeper, increasing self awareness, and better understanding how our moods affect us. As we grow and live more consciously and with more self-awareness it’s important to prioritize providing love, care and compassion to ourselves. As we see our selves more clearly it’s necessary to be a friend to and take care of ourselves along the way. You wouldn’t set out on a long hike without food, water, good shoes, and the necessities for survival and some comfort. It’s the same for other types of journeys. Self-care and love are the necessities for the journey into awareness and acceptance of yourself, with all your beauty and flaws.
Awareness of Thoughts. We feel differently depending on how we think about and interpret events. Our thoughts and beliefs happen automatically and rather quickly, which means we may not even be aware of the thoughts and beliefs that are contributing to our moods. Become aware of that automatic thinking that happens in response to events in your life. Write down all the thoughts going through your head when you notice an emotional reaction to a situation. Do this every time you have a strong emotional reaction and you’ll learn a lot about yourself. Why write them down? Considering them and writing them down adds a layer of inquiry that can help you start the practice of questioning and evaluating your thoughts and beliefs and increase self awareness. It can also help interrupt that automatic pattern of following worrying, sad, angry or unrealistic thoughts down the road into difficult, hard-to-get-out-of moods and the behaviors that accompany these moods (i.e withdrawal, isolation, impaired communication and avoidance through alcohol to name a few).
This exercise also sets the stage for looking at your thoughts objectively, evaluating and considering them. One way of doing this is to tell yourself “I just had the thought that this chest pain I’m having could be lung cancer.” This reminds you that it’s just a thought and not an automatic truth. Purposefully labeling your thoughts provides some distance, along with a reminder that we are not our thoughts and are thoughts aren’t necessarily true. This can help manage the emotional reactions we have in response to our thinking.
Look for biased, distorted thinking as you consider your thoughts. We all do this automatic thinking that can be unrealistic, unhelpful and biased. Sometimes our thinking is very black and white and we forget about all the area in between the two extremes we’re focused on. Other times our thoughts get consumed with one specific negative criticism and we forget all the positive comments we’ve heard. Selectively focusing on one piece of information doesn’t take into account the larger picture. Evaluate your cognitions, challenge your thinking and look for other ways of viewing the situation.
Sometimes we feel something, like anger, and think that the person we’re feeling anger toward must have done something wrong. That’s circular thinking. Because I feel angry you must have done something wrong. Recognizing this distorted thinking allows you to step out of the automatic cycle of anger and assumptions, consider a different perspective and choose a different reaction. Practice looking objectively at the situation and consider whether there’s any evidence that another person has wronged you.
Evaluate behavior. What do you do when you’re angry? Do you replay the offending situation over and over in your head? Do you call or seek out people to retell (and relive) the story. These actions intensify angry feelings, as you then re-experience the event and the feelings of anger all over. We’ve all done this and remained stuck in and fueled a feeling that we’re wanting to be rid of. When you become accustomed to evaluating the thoughts going through your head you’re better able to assess and intervene. You can consciously choose another reaction, such as telling yourself to stop because you don’t want to spend your day stuck in anger and resentment, even if it means telling yourself this 100 times a day. Choose behaviors that align with your goals and values. Maybe consider the situation from another perspective, practice compassion (for yourself and even for the person you’re blaming), feel your feelings, look into them and then purposely release the feelings and refocus on the present.
Feel your feelings. Carl Jung said “What you resist persists”. Emotions and moods, and our reactions to them, tell us a lot about ourselves. Feelings aren’t meant to be constantly suppressed or ignored. Sometimes we distract ourselves from feelings and this is an effective, healthy coping skill. If you’re anxious or depressed, there are times to sit with and feel your feelings and times to distract yourself.
It’s important to have other coping skills too. If you’re always distracting yourself from your feelings or staying so busy that you don’t need to feel or acknowledge them then explore why. Look deeper into your behavior and thinking around this. Are you scared of the feelings? If so, allow some time and space for feeling them to challenge this fear.
Challenge the idea that you’re supposed to always be happy. Recognize that feelings come and go and let the feeling move through you. Sometimes we forget to feel the feeling in our desire to fix and change. Stay with the feeling and explore it. Don’t overreact to it. See it, go into the feeling and then release it. Sometimes the very act of feeling and allowing helps move through the feeling. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk and author of numerous books, has an excellent strategy for feelings: embrace and cradle the feeling as if it were a newborn baby and tell it that you’re here and will take great care of it.
Practice Self-compassion. Love yourself. Be compassionate and understanding toward yourself. Remind yourself that you are enough and catch and discard critical, judgmental thinking about yourself.
Practice Gratitude. So often people have trouble getting to sleep or they wake frequently and report they can’t shut off their thoughts. One practice at night before bed is to think of things you are thankful for. You can do this individually or with your partner or your family, making it a bedtime ritual. Focus on and express blessings from your day. Consciously search out things you can be grateful and thankful for and then feel the gratitude. Notice the shift in your mood. You can intentionally shift your thinking into practices of gratitude and self-compassion. This daily act can shift perceptions and perspectives and provides an alternative to automatic negative thinking that creates and fuels anxiety and depression.
Increasing awareness, of ourselves and our reactions, is the starting place for change. Experiment with these ideas and practices and evaluate their impact on your own moods. Explore. Practice. Find what works for you.
