How to Stop Struggling With Anxiety and Intense Emotions 5/30 How to Process Emotions

TL;DR

To stop making anxiety and intense emotions worse, notice when you are fighting, suppressing, judging, or repeatedly monitoring them. The lesson, skill number five from the course How to Process Your Emotions, explains why forcing feelings to change can intensify them, while temporarily setting emotions aside is useful only for short-term tasks. Read on to identify common struggle patterns and understand why emotions need to be processed and resolved.

Transcript

Imagine this for a moment, I have you hooked up to  monitors that measure your anxiety, they can tell   when your anxiety increases with perfect precision.   You also happen to be strapped to a chair, sitting   on a trapdoor, over a shark tank, filled with very  hungry sharks. You're perfectly safe in the moment,  but then I come in and I tell you... Read More

Key Insights

• 🦈 People often make their anxiety and other emotions worse by trying to avoid or suppress them, leading to a vicious cycle of heightened emotions.
• 🖌️ Skill Share offers a variety of classes, including a course on designing the life you want, providing tools for self-reflection and personal growth.
• 🌪️ Anxiety attacks can be triggered by stress, and struggling against these emotions can exacerbate the symptoms.
• 🛑 Emotional suppression is not an effective long-term strategy, as emotions need to be processed and resolved.
• 💪 Avoidance tactics, such as distraction or numbing, only temporarily mask emotions and can lead to more severe problems in the future.
• 💔 Judging emotions as "good" or "bad" hinders the process of working through them and can contribute to depression and anxiety.
• ♀️ Negotiating with emotions or catastrophizing can lead to despair and hopelessness, rather than productive action.
• 🔄 Constantly checking symptoms or distracting oneself from emotions can reinforce their importance and make them louder.
• 📲 It is important to drop the struggle with emotions and try alternative approaches, such as emotion processing and willingness.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can you stop struggling with anxiety and intense emotions?

Start by noticing whether you are forcing anxiety away, worrying about it, or closely monitoring its intensity. The transcript explains that this internal pressure can amplify anxiety, so the broader goal is to drop the struggle and learn to process intense emotions rather than suppress them.

Q: Why can trying not to feel anxious make anxiety worse?

Trying to force anxiety down creates more pressure and makes you watch for signs that it is increasing. In the shark-tank analogy, anxiety rises from level four to five as the person worries about reaching level six, causing it to shoot through the roof.

Q: How can stress and anxiety cause physical symptoms?

The speaker describes becoming shaky, nauseated, and sick-feeling during an anxiety attack after a period of stress in Argentina. After a friend offered gentle comfort and the speaker took a break, the anxiety subsided and the physical symptoms disappeared.

Q: What conditions can become worse when people struggle against their sensations or emotions?

The transcript names anxiety, chronic pain, panic disorders, depression, tinnitus, vaginismus, muscle tension, and strong emotions generally. Worrying about, resisting, or paying close attention to these experiences can make them feel worse.

Q: Is emotional suppression ever helpful?

Putting emotions aside temporarily can help someone complete an urgent task. The example is a police officer responding to a horrible car crash who must focus and perform in the moment, but suppression becomes harmful when it is the person’s only strategy.

Q: Why is emotional suppression ineffective as a long-term strategy?

When emotions are repeatedly pushed aside, the transcript says they build over time because they need to be processed and resolved. It also states that long-term suppression among police officers can be associated with higher rates of alcoholism, divorce, and suicide.

Q: What emotional advice can encourage people to suppress their feelings?

The speaker lists messages such as “get over it,” “look on the bright side,” “relax,” and “try not to think about it.” Many people also learned as children that crying, sadness, or anger was not acceptable, leaving suppression as one of their only emotional strategies.

Q: What does skill number five in How to Process Your Emotions teach?

Skill number five teaches viewers how to recognize whether they are making emotions or physical sensations worse. The next two videos on the channel are described as teaching how to escape that cycle, get better at feeling, and resolve intense emotions.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• When we fight and struggle against our thoughts and emotions, we tend to make them worse.

• Avoidance, judgment, and suppression are common ways in which people inadvertently make their emotions more intense.

• By learning skills such as processing emotions and practicing willingness, individuals can break the cycle of struggling with their emotions and find peace and happiness in their lives.