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.”