How To Deal With Difficult Emotions - 2

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most popular posts on The Secret Of Life has been How To Deal With Difficult Emotions. Now a new piece of research gives me a good excuse to return to this important subject.

A study at UCLA has shown that labeling emotions - saying "I'm feeling angry," "I'm feeling sad" and so on - helps to make them less intense. Apparently when people see a picture of an angry or fearful face, they have increased activity in a region of the brain called the amygdala, but this activity is reduced when the emotion is labeled.

Why should this be, I wonder? The study does not suggest any explanation, and maybe we don't need to know. Maybe we should just put it into practice and see for ourselves what happens.

Even so, it is interesting to speculate about what is happening here, not least because this may point the way towards additional strategies for dealing with emotions...

First of all, it is worth pointing out that in many cases you may not even need to feel the emotion, let alone label it. If we feel anger, or any other difficult emotion, then perhaps our first response should be to ask ourselves where it is coming from. Do we really need to feel it or are we simply doing so out of habit? Are we responding to an event or simply to a story we are telling ourselves about the event? In such cases, simply changing our perspective on what is happening can be enough to jolt us out of the emotion altogether.

Something else we may need to look at is whether we can take some action to resolve whatever situation may be triggering the emotion. If so, then this may be another way of defusing it.

But if after all that, we are still left with the emotion, then we have to deal with it in some way. Suppressing it - simply pretending it isn't there - can be unhelpful. If the emotion is not expressed, it will simply surface again at some future date. Indeed, the emotion we're feeling now may be one that has been previously suppressed but has now been brought to the surface, triggered by some present event. If we are feeling anger which is out of proportion to whatever has just taken place, then this is probably what is going on.

At this stage then, perhaps we should do what the research suggests and label the emotion. But why should this help? Here are a few explanations which occur to me:

• Putting a label on it limits the emotion. It's like sticking it in a box. "That over there is the anger - this over here is the rest of my life." This is helpful, because when we are in the grip of a strong emotion, it can seem like it is taking us over entirely. This is a way of acknowledging its existence yet putting it in its place.
• And a slight variation on the above: in order to label something, we have to step outside it. So now we are observing the emotion from outside. Rather than being entirely overwhelmed by the emotion, we can clearly see what is happening and get things into perspective.
• And finally, in saying "I am feeling anger" or "I am feeling fear", we are focusing on what we know to be true. This may be the only thing about the situation which we know to be true. Anything else we might have been telling ourselves, such as "she did this to me because she hates me" or "it is always me that has to suffer" or even "these people are a load of incompetent b*****ds!" may be untrue, and will only serve to feed the emotion and make things worse. By contrast, focusing on the mundane truth that we are feeling a particular emotion helps to defuse it by getting it into perspective.

This reminds me of the use of the Sanskrit expression "netti, netti" or "not this, not this", which is a way of reminding ourselves that we ourselves are very much greater than whatever emotion we might be feeling. This, again, is a way of putting things into perspective. (See more about this in this previous post.)

The UCLA researchers also found that the use of "mindfulness", described as "a technique in which one pays attention to his or her present emotions, thoughts, and body sensations, without passing judgment or reacting" reduced the activation of the amygdala, so that the emotion was less intense. What is described here sounds remarkably similar to Nick Roach's technique for dissolving emotions, which I talked about in the original How To Deal With Difficult Emotions post.

You can read more about the UCLA studies here.

One of the researchers, David Cresswell, remarks: "This is an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha's teachings - more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labeling your experience - with modern neuroscience."

This is all very interesting - and it's great to have scientific evidence for some of these techniques - but I'm not so sure about that last bit. Have you heard of Buddhists labeling their experience? Would any passing Buddhists care to comment?

Comments

[Liara Covert]

Some people find it hard to describe emotions accurately using words. Thoughts of discomfort often cause people to squirm and anticipate further suffering. Maybe taking your mind of that would be desirable? How? Change your focus to the flip side.

Creative pursuits can also help you clarify and work through your feelings constructively. You could explore painting, drawing, sculpting, building things, dancing, singing, gardening in the earth, and drama. These are some things people explore as part of a process to vent and interpret their moods in dreams. The more you realize your conditioning limits how you perceive and react to emotions, the easier it is to step outside that and truly begin to open to the real possibilities.

[Sue Ann Edwards]

It may simply be that trying to 'label' our emotions, directs us to actually try to get in touch with them.

Intimacy is a BIG issue for most of us. One the majority of us have spent a great deal of time and energy running away into our heads, our mentalities, to disconnect from.

Running away into our heads is an escape from being intimate with our own emotions. It's a way we created to distance ourselves from them.

Thus, the labeling. At least it gets us heading in a healthy direction to start dealing with them.

Our Responses to Life are our Responsibility.

[Gary]

Thats some pretty useful info. I find that for me, whenever I am angry at someone, I like to think of all the ways I could murder them in their sleep. Works great. But be careful though, don't use this technique if you have an impulsive personality.

[Sue Ann Edwards]

Oh...almost forgot...one of the most challenging things is actually CLAIMING our emotions. That means not only FEELING them but realizing no one or no thing outside our own self has caused us to feel the way we feel.

Like if I'm 'angry', the illusion is that I am angry with someone or something else. The Truth is that I'm angry with myself and projecting it outwards upon others.

[Liara Covert]

Sue Ann makes interesting points. I agree how we feel inside projects what we experience. Emotions are a tool through which humans can learn a lot about themselves, if they choose to open up wide.

[Sue Ann Edwards]

It's simple but not usually easy. It takes us exerting an inner discipline to stop ourselves from re-acting. For it's re-acting that we keep doing, over and over and over.

The way it is with all our habits is to try to replace the habit instead of breaking it. Once we've replaced the habit so many times, like 17 or 21 or something, by then we're entrenched in our new habit.

If we can stop our re-acting, then we have a chance to Act, consciously, without our actions being colored by ghosts of our pasts.

[Secret Simon]

Thanks for your comments!

Gary first: I can empathize with this, Gary. I had that same sort of feeling about the guy who designed the bathroom suite at our previous house. The ledge on the wash basin sloped precariously down towards the bowl so that the soap kept felling in; the taps were streamlined so attractively that you couldn't get a grip to turn them; and the plug was one of those new-fangled complicated arrangements involving a plunger which refused to open at all if you didn't whisper encouraging words and degunge it on a weekly basis.

On the basis that it must have taken a deliberate concentrated effort to make something which should have been so simple and straightforward so user-unfriendly, that designer suffered terribly in my imagination. It seemed to me at the time that he deserved no less.

The trouble is that since I've got into all this spiritual stuff, I've developed the sneaking feeling that my destructive thoughts might actually have traveled across and done the guy some harm. I try not to do that sort of thing any more, and I'm a bit concerned about all the karma I might have built up over that wash basin. It is irritating, though, when you keep losing the soap like that, don't you think? I like to believe that the universe *understands*...

[Secret Simon]

Liara and Sue Ann - The way I see it, we have to deal with difficult emotions from two sources: the ones we can pick up on a daily basis as we go through life, and the ones inside us that we've previously suppressed, which keep rising to the surface to trouble us.

With the 'new' emotions, Sue Ann's advice about not re-acting is paramount. As you say, Sue Ann, our emotions are our own responsibility. We go through life picking them up, but we can choose not to do so. And then comes the really difficult bit - we need to remember we've made this choice as we go through every day.

As for the emotions which ‘slip through the net’ (the deep-seated ones amongst them), as Sue Ann says, we mustn't run away from them. We need to allow ourselves to feel them and allow them to be released. The UCLA studies point to some ways of doing this, and I’ve mentioned others in previous posts. If you can suggest any more, please leave a comment!

It seems to me that Liara’s advice about creative pursuits may be another means of release. When things have been hard for me before – when a relationship has ended, for instance – I’ve thought of myself as ‘escaping’ into my writing. It’s been like taking a holiday from those painful emotions. But as you suggest, Liara, there may be something more important going on here. These pursuits allow us to ‘work things through’. It’s important that our emotions don’t get stuck inside us, so perhaps these pursuits allow us to – I don’t know - *keep them in motion*. Which, now that I think about it, may be the way that e-motions are meant to be.

[Liara Covert]

As you acknowledge emotions in writing for example, it is possible you work through them. To me, if you're honest with yourself, then you're not ignoring your inner self or taking a holiday from pain. You may simply be reframing it and realizing problems are like walls you create for yourself. You learn to tear them down or otherwise recognize new lessons learned. Good for you Simon!

[Secret Simon]

Thanks Liara - I like your problems-as-walls metaphor! It makes me wonder what it means if you paint your problems magnolia. Are you dealing with them or pretending they're not there? :-)

[Marion]

I step outside the situation. And then I write. Usually, at the end of all that, I've found acceptance.

[RubyShooZ]

I see labeling those feelings in whatever way we choose to do it - by saying them, by writing them down, by drawing or sculpting something representative of the emotions/feelings we might be having is an act of getting them outside of us so that we can examine them and see them for what they really are. Then comes the point where we can *do* something about them.

Peace to all today.

~ RS ~

[Secret Simon]

Thanks for your comments, Marion and Ruby!

I think you are right, Ruby. Creative pursuits can be seen as a way of what Marion calls 'stepping outside the situation'. What is important to realize is that we are not our emotions. Then, as Ruby suggests, we can do something about them.

[alex]

I am interested in your response to those who hold the view of needing to express your emotions rather than dissasociating from them. The above techniques are ones I have used in the past, but it makes me wonder about where the role of expressing emotion comes into it, and healthy ways of doing that. For instance, if you were happy, would you also label this (eg. I am feeling happy, and that over there is me) and put it in a box, or does it work differently with positive emotions?

[Secret Simon]

Hi Alex - I wonder if my talk of putting things in a box was misleading? I was not talking about disassociating from our emotions as opposed to feeling them. If in the first place we can avoid re-acting, as Sue Ann puts it, then all well and good: we may not need to feel the emotion at all. But once the emotion has been triggered, it is necessary to allow it to be expressed. If instead we suppress it - as many of us have tended to do through our lives - then it will only surface again later.

What helps, however, is to take a step back and observe the emotion without getting into an internal dialog about why we're feeling it. Labeling may be a way of doing this, of seeing it as it really is: a form of energy passing through us, rather than as a drama in which we are obliged to participate.

How to express emotions such as anger safely is a very good question - and a difficult one to answer. The techniques mentioned should diffuse the emotion, but what remains may still be very powerful. Can anyone offer any ideas? There's a lot to be said for punching a pillow, I think. I remember a school of meditation reporting that they had a lot of young men with broken hands - due to them punching the walls as their emotions were released. I can't say I recommend this - though at least it doesn't hurt anyone else!

You make a very interesting point, too, about positive emotions. Should we treat them the same way? Well yes, we should express them just the same. I'm not going to encourage anyone to turn their back on happiness - or feel guilty about feeling that way!

Even so, I guess an enlightened person would realize that laughter and circumstance-induced happiness are only another form of energy and observe them in the understanding that they too will pass. And it is worth pointing out that Eckhart Tolle warns to be careful of such positive emotions, as they can lead us back into reactive behavior even after we have learned to cope with our negative feelings. It is the latter which are more likely to point the way to enlightenment!

The deeper sense of peace and happiness which comes from connection with our true nature, however, that is authentic happiness. In that we can surely trust.

Thanks for your comment, Alex! I hope to hear from you again...

[Amit Sharma]

A very well written article...and sure gives helpful tips..however, the tips seem to be reserved at the level of the intellect - and when an emotion takes over (Fear, anger, jealousy,lust or greed)-it is like a storm- the intellect is blinded or lost till the storm of the emotion lasts...and it is only after the storm goes past that the intellect realizes that a person should not have reacted-and then it naturally progresses to the stage of of regret or guilt. In a nutshell, by the time intellect wakes up it is way too late!! ...

Now here is the tricky part- storms dont come after announcing, so what can u do to ensure that you are protected even while the storm rises and shakes up the entire constitution??

The answer lies in the breath... :) and i am willing to share how...

If this description has made you connect to something deeper- or even made you think that you would like to know more, please feel free to write to me [email protected] and I will be glad to share the details with you- this is not an advertisement- am just one seeker trying to contribute...the intention of asking you to write a mail at the address given above is to ensure that you really want to know and are willing just one simple of writing an email and asking...

[Simon]

Hi Amit - I've summarized numerous ways of dealing with emotions - including some breath-related techniques - in this more recent post:
http://secretoflife.typepad.com/the_secret_of_life/2008/11/letting-go.html

[Dimitris]

Hello,

I have been practicing a form of mediation called Vipassana Meditation, and labelling your thoughts, as well as your emotions, is a key aspect of the technique. This helps you as you mentioned to detach yourself from the thought/emotion. Through this you can observe whatever comes up more objectively, while allowing it to express itself, develop, and gradually calm down. This is a somewhat different technique to trying to counter-balance a negative emotion with say positive thoughts – which is something commonly taught in the west. I am sure you can find a lot of information on the internet about it. I hope this helps.

Regards,
Dimitris