3 Steps for Tolerating the Pain of Painful Emotions

 

We can pretend our painful feelings don’t exist. We can ignore them. We can judge and resist them. And so many of us do, because we think that this will soften the blow. This will help us bypass the discomfort of our hurt, sorrow, agony, anger, anxiety. We assume the feelings will just go away (and they might, but only temporarily). Below is a three-step process to help you tolerate the discomfort of tough emotions. The order of the steps is KEY.
1. Distract
First distract yourself from the situation that is causing emotional pain. This is different from avoidance. With distraction, you’re shifting the focus away from painful feelings for a bit. Distraction techniques might be anything from counting to paying bills to washing dishes to watching a short video. This step should take 10 to 30 minutes.

2. Relax.
Relaxation might include deep breathing exercises, meditation, progressive relaxation or visual imagery. The key is that it’s easy and accessible. This step also takes 10 to 30 minutes. Here are some ideas for practicing deep breathing and visual imagery.

3. Cope.
Here there is a skill called “Wise Mind” to “balance logic with emotion.” This is important because being overloaded in one area — emotion — or the other — logic — prolongs suffering. Instead, we need both emotion and logic to make good decisions and cultivate healthy relationships. Wise mind basically shifts the brain from emotion overload (termed ‘flooding’) from the limbic system (‘emotional brain’) to balance it out with logic (prefrontal cortex or the ‘rational brain’).”

An example of Wise Mind is cognitive restructuring, which involves “replacing a powerless, victimizing thought with something empowering.” For instance you can replace “What will I do?!” (a powerless thought) with “I will handle it” (an empowering thought). You can replace “I’m never satisfied” with “I want to learn and grow.” And “It’s a problem” with “It’s an opportunity.”

Gratitude: The Holy Grail To a Happy Marriage/Relationship

 

The key to a happy and lasting marriage might be as simple as regularly expressing gratitude.After interviewing 468 married individuals on relationship satisfaction, covering everything from communication habits to finances, it has been found that the "most consistent significant predictor" of happy marriages was whether one's spouse expressed gratitude. "Feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it, and your belief that it will last," says study co-author Ted Futris.

And that goes for good times but perhaps especially bad ones—when couples experience stress and their communication devolves into what the researchers call a demand/withdraw cycle (i.e., one partner demands or criticizes; the other tries to avoid a confrontation). Gratitude can disrupt this, acting as a buffer.

"What distinguishes the marriages that last from those that don't is not how often they argue, but how they argue and how they treat each other on a daily basis," says Futris. Adds lead author Allen Barton, the study "goes to show the power of 'thank you'" and suggests a "practical way couples can help strengthen their marriage."

Article courtesy of USA Today