Emotional strength is a prized trait. However, emotional turmoil can wreak havoc. There are ways to manage your most powerful emotions.
Emotional Strength: Ways to Manage Life’s Powerful Emotions
Emotional strength can be cultivated. Even when you experience tremendous emotional pain, you can learn to manage it and regain balance and control. Here are some ways to manage some of your most powerful emotions.
Emotional Strength: How to Manage Anger
Of all the emotions that could affect you in recovery, anger is one of the most powerful and potentially self-destructive. Whether you mismanage your anger or don’t recognize the signs, you can learn to be more proactive in dealing with anger and its aftermath.
Signs of Anger
First, you must learn how to recognize when you are angry. This is more than when you feel like throwing something against the wall or yelling angry words. It is also when you feel bottled up and like something is about to erupt inside, with predictable and nasty results.
Signs of anger include:
- Denial that you are angry.
- Rationalizing that something else is going on.
- Rattling your words off in rapid-fire.
- Sarcastic or biting comments.
- A mounting list of pains: stomach, neck, head, back, and muscles.
- Resorting to violence.
But this may drive those angry feelings deeper where they will fester and boil up again, probably at the most inopportune moment or when you least expect it.
Coping Methods
When you get angry or suddenly realize you are angry, can you “own” that anger? Do you have coping methods for dealing with it, or do you ride it out until the anger subsides?
- How do you deal with angry feelings currently?
- Do you hide away or isolate yourself so that anger doesn’t jeopardize relationships, your job, or other situations?
- To help mitigate anger, do you engage in other compulsive behaviors?
Now, think about what causes you to become angry. Who were you with, and what else was happening to you then? Were you lonely, stressed out, feeling ill, exhausted, hungry, or scared? When pinpointing those situations, you will better deal with the emotion.
What to Do
After recognizing when you are angry, listing the signs that show you are angry, and figuring out what causes your anger, you are ready to do something constructive about it.
- The most crucial thing to remember is that you decide how you will behave.
- You can make wise choices or poor ones. It’s up to you.
- By weighing behavior choices, you should be able to make the right decision.
In a way, this is like talking yourself through a difficult decision. Use reason and be calm. If you have someone to talk to about your feelings, do so. Consider professional counseling to deal with your anger.
Bottom line: Don’t let anger hold you back from moving ahead and gaining emotional strength.
Emotional Strength: How to Manage Fear
Being so scared of taking action that it results in a state of paralysis is no way to live. Sometimes, anything you say or do is enough to bring on more fear when you feel intense fear.
Negative Effects of Fear
Fear prevents you from pursuing action plans to achieve particular life goals. But it also has a negative cumulative effect unless you get help treating and managing fear.
- You may be afraid of going back to work.
- You’re afraid others will treat you differently, exclude you from conversations, and even go out of their way to avoid contact.
- You may be afraid that your performance will suffer, which could jeopardize your job or cause you to miss a promotion.
Fear about how to control your impulses and what you’ll do when overwhelming cravings and urges strike is another damaging emotion that you may need to deal with.
What to Do
Like anger, the critical steps to overcoming fear and gaining emotional strength include:
- Recognize when you are afraid.
- Identify the signs when you are afraid.
- Figure out the causes of your fear.
- Then, decide how you will cope when you are afraid.
Determine the best strategies to use and vary and modify them as circumstances and situations demand. A previous strategy may have worked well to help you overcome fear, but it isn’t working now. Be willing to be flexible, adapt, and create new coping strategies.
Bottom line: Fear will overcome you if you let it. But most fear involves things that have not happened yet or may never happen. Get past fear by letting go of the future. Live in the present. Owning the fear and learning how to proceed despite feeling fearful will take the negative power out of it and promote emotional strength.
Guilt
Some of us carry immense and overpowering feelings of guilt. When so much has gone wrong, feeling some guilt is normal. People should feel remorse for their actions that have brought pain and harm to others and themselves. However, guilt should never be allowed to proceed unmanaged, as it is highly counterproductive to a happy and productive life.
What to Do
What can you do to overcome guilt?
- Acknowledge the wrongs you have done.
- Begin to make amends to those you have harmed, if you can, and it won’t cause them further pain.
- Talk over your feelings with a therapist if guilt threatens to overwhelm you.
- Refrain from using your guilty feelings as an excuse to return to destructive behaviors.
The bottom line: Don’t use guilt as an excuse to engage in destructive behaviors. Acknowledge what you have done wrong and work to make appropriate amends.
Emotional Strength: How to Manage Shame
Shame is another powerful negative emotion. Guilt arises from feeling you have done something wrong, and shame occurs when you believe you are bad or that something is wrong with you.
When shame takes over your life, you tend to have low self-esteem. You don’t value yourself very highly and feel that nothing you can do will improve your life. Why? At the core, you don’t believe you are worthy.
Negative Effects of Shame
Shame keeps you from getting the most out of life. It often results in fear, an inability to form close relationships, and an unwillingness to seek help, as if you deserve to feel this way. If you feel shame, you may not be able to enjoy whatever small successes you achieve. Becoming overwhelmed by shame, you may think that the only way to stop feeling this way is to go back to self-destructive behaviors.
What to Do
Learning how to overcome shame may require the assistance of a therapist. Talking with a trusted friend, loved ones, and family can also be very beneficial.
- The key to overcoming shame is to build or rebuild self-esteem.
- When you begin to feel better about yourself, the shame you once felt will disappear.
- Some mental health experts recommend mindful meditation and keeping a journal to help individuals overcome shame.
Bottom line: Recognize that you are not your failures. While you may have experienced setbacks, you are not a bad person. Begin to work on valuing yourself more highly. Understand that this may take some time, but the effort will pay off, especially when you are willing to tackle more goals.
Loneliness
Being alone and feeling lonely are not the same. You can be alone and perfectly content to be that way. But you can also feel lonely even in the presence of others. Being alone is a fact. Being lonely is an emotion.
The Dangers of Loneliness
What are the dangers of loneliness? Beyond the apparent negative effect of isolation, loneliness makes you more susceptible to other self-destructive thoughts and behaviors. It keeps you focused on all the negative things that have happened and may continue to happen in your life instead of proactively taking steps to move forward with goals.
What to Do
While the last thing on your mind may be to go out and be with people, when you are experiencing loneliness, this is precisely what you must do. Make the situation as pleasant for yourself as possible.
Bottom line: Give yourself time to start feeling like you again. Recognize that it may take a while to erase these feelings of loneliness. But by being active and surrounding yourself with others, you will take the first constructive steps to deal with loneliness so that it doesn’t derail your life.
Emotional Strength: How to Know You’re Making Progress
It may be tough to see past the current pain in the heat of your powerful emotions. Yet this leap of faith is necessary to start making progress. You can act now and reap the benefits even if you can’t see immediate results.
Emotions Ebb and Flow
Often, someone feels overwhelmed by an emotion or a combination of emotions. They want to give up, believing whatever they’ve been doing doesn’t work and there’s no use in continuing. But this is misguided. The fact is that emotions tend to ebb and flow, varying in duration and intensity.
Much like learning how to cope with cravings and urges, managing your most powerful emotions involves:
- Having a ready toolkit of coping strategies.
- Using them.
- Gaining more emotional strength over time.
Emotions Cannot Be Willed Away
Remember that you cannot will away your emotions. You cannot simply banish them forever. It doesn’t work that way. But to make substantial headway in emotional strength, learn to manage them so they don’t keep you from enjoying life.
Life Is a Journey
Life is a journey, not a race. No timetable or list of absolutes dictates when and how to proceed. You will find what works best for you. Remember to stay diligent, have hope and faith, and be willing to try to achieve better emotional strength.
