Stop avoiding difficult emotions
Whether you are already someone who struggles with anxiety or not, avoidance of feeling emotions, or even recognizing them, can happen in a variety of situations. Experiences such as difficult conversations, deadlines or being put in a situation where you may judged or rejected can create enough anxiety that the alternative of doing nothing seems to be the most painless route.
We avoid the heavy lifting of having to feel for different reasons. Fear that the problem feels too big or that starting into the world of emotions is going to lead to opening a pandora’s box that will overwhelm us, can lead us to not want to explore below the surface.
This tendency starts as a coping mechanism in childhood when we didn’t have the power to change our situation so we changed what we could: how we handled our feelings (which is to say that we didn’t handle them at all). We practiced avoidance by doing things such as staying away to avoid a critical parent or breaking up with a boyfriend because we didn’t have the skills to deal with difficult emotions.
However, when we repress the big feelings they tend to manifest in our lives in other ways.
First, when we avoid issues as adults, or run away from feelings, we miss out on learning the skills to resolve problems in a nonreactive way. When we don’t resolve small problems in our relationships with others, resentment start to build.
Secondly, we don’t learn how to tolerate discomfort and when we don’t know how to tolerate discomfort, we fear it. It’s that fear that causes us to doubt our abilities to get through tough situations, leaving us without coping strategies.
Studies show also how this over-regulation of emotion may lead to anger, rage or aggressive behaviour due to the increase in negative moods that arise from not saying what we feel. These bad moods reduce inhibitions against aggression or angry thoughts, compromise our ability to make decisions. As well, we feel more disconnected from our social networks. We also stay in fight-or-flight mode more often. This coupled with our inability to emotionally regulate prevents us from resolving difficult situations.
Another reason why it’s important to have emotional awareness, emotional proficiency and a variety of emotional regulation strategies is that avoidance can create new problems such as addictive behaviours. This happens because the more we avoid feelings, the more anxious and fearful we become of them, and the more we want to numb out using substances or other addictive behaviours.
So how do we stop avoiding the scary or overwhelming feelings?
The first thing is to recognize emotional numbness- can you feel your feelings?
Depression and/anxiety can be triggers for emotional numbness. If you feel like there’s a barrier between you and the enjoyment of others in your life, or as if you’re going through the motions on some level, your first step could be simply just learning how to feel.
Getting flooded with stress hormones in the past to the point that your body shuts down can be a reason why this is happening. Learning to identify and express your emotions may not be an easy process. Emotions may feel confusing, mysterious, and difficult to express constructively.
A good place to start is to practice with past life events where there could have been an emotional response that went unnoticed or ignored by you. Examples could be a loss of a pet, or a rejection letter. Find some acceptance around those emotional responses and some value in those reactions. Emotions are great motivators, they help us make decisions and they also are guides to where our boundaries should be set down and to know ourselves more deeply. We can develop more compassion for ourselves and in turn, for others as well.
Also, notice any physical shifts in the body when a triggering situation arises because those are signs that something is being felt. Pause there. Bring those shifts into your conscious awareness by asking, “what is going on for me in this moment”, and “what is this feeling telling me about this situation”.
Understand what you’ve been taught about expressing your emotions from your family or culture.
Unhelpful messages include:
Always treat other people’s feelings as more important than your own.
Never do anything that might cause conflict or negative feelings for someone else.
Don’t express anger.
Use anger to get attention.
Ignore your feelings.
Don’t trust others with your feelings; keep them to yourself.
Never trust your feelings; trust only your logic.
Be happy all the time, or “perform”
Healthy emotional expression is important for everyone. Learning how to experience those emotions in a healthy and adaptive way is a journey. Awareness is the first step on any path and then action to become more empowered is further along.
Pay attention to the lessons learned in your family about emotional expression and how those messages continue to influence your behaviour.
Be patient with yourself, the process will not be linear, you will have setbacks. Understand that the more triggered you are, the further away all of our tools of mental health become. Think of learning to experience and express your emotions as a life-long process.
