Dealing with Intense Emotions
In the last chapter you learned about how judgments can actually increase your emotional load, and that, by changing your judgmental thoughts to nonjudgmental or neutral statements, you can actually reduce the amount of emotional pain you’re experiencing. In this chapter, we’re going to continue with this theme of reducing the intensity of emotions to make them more bearable by practicing self-validation—essentially, practicing being nonjudgmental with emotions. When your emotions are less intense, you’ll have more ability to manage them, which over time will help you get off the emotional roller coaster.
Let’s start by having you think about the messages you’ve received about emotions. We all receive these messages, from family, close friends, and peers, and from society as a whole. Let’s take a look at some examples so you have a better idea of what I mean.
One message that’s quite common is that anger is a bad emotion, or that if you feel angry, you’re a bad person for feeling that way (remember, “bad” is a judgment). In other words, you shouldn’t (and “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” are almost always judgments) feel angry. There are lots of ways people might come to believe this. For example, if you have a parent who explodes with anger—or perhaps has even been verbally, emotionally, or physically abusive—you might have grown up being afraid of anger, and this has influenced you to believe that anger is a bad emotion.
Or you may have a family who believes that anger is bad, and so whenever someone in your family expresses anger, they’re given this message in some way: they shouldn’t feel angry. Maybe they’re being silly (judgment!) for being angry, or you or your siblings may have been sent to your rooms because you were expressing anger. You may also have grown up seeing your parents or other caregivers stuffing their anger—not expressing it, or pretending they didn’t feel angry—and this can also send the message that anger is an emotion that’s not okay to feel.
You may have heard these words when you’re feeling anxious or nervous about something. Take your parent, for example, who may have told you as a child that you were being silly for being afraid of the dark or of the monster under your bed. Although this is usually meant to be reassuring, when you hear it often enough, you may take it as a message that you shouldn’t be feeling this way: you shouldn’t be worrying, there’s really no reason for you to worry, you’re being silly or ridiculous (more judgments), and so on.
Similarly, have you ever been asked why you feel sad and told that “there’s nothing for you to feel sad about”? So the message is that you shouldn’t feel sad. Again, judgment. Just because there is no discernable reason for your sadness or depression doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel that way. And the more people question why you feel this way, the more likely you are to question it and judge it yourself: What’s wrong with me? There’s no reason for me to feel this way.
I mentioned earlier that we also receive messages about emotions from our peers. If you think for a moment, you can probably come up with some of these on your own. One example is kids daring each other to do things, and if they don’t, they’re “chicken,” which sends the message that being afraid of something is negative in some way; for example, it makes you weak. Similarly, a common message in society is that boys shouldn’t cry, but that’s it’s okay for girls to show emotion in this way.
These are just a few examples of the messages you might have received about some painful emotions. Let’s look now at why this is important, and how it might be fueling your roller coaster ride.
Over time, you come to internalize the messages you’ve received about emotions, and as you can see, these messages often have consequences for how you feel about your emotions. So if you’ve grown up in a family where it’s not acceptable to feel anger, for example, you’ll probably believe when you feel angry that you shouldn’t feel it. Or if you’ve learned from your peers that anxiety or sadness makes you weak, you might believe that having these feelings means you’re a weak person, and you’ll do everything you can to avoid feeling this way. And this is where the problem lies: when you have negative judgments about the emotion you’re experiencing, it actually increases your emotional pain, because you’re judging yourself for having the emotions. Also, people often then try to avoid the emotion, suppress it, or push it away, and this leads to all sorts of other problems; for example, you might continuously stuff your anger until finally one day you explode, or you may turn to drinking alcohol or using drugs to try to avoid feeling the pain you’re in. Welcome to the emotional roller coaster.
Before we get to the question of what to do about this, you need a bit more information about emotions. You may recall from chapter 2 that we don’t generally have an emotional reaction in response to a situation, but that our emotion usually arises in response to our interpretation of a situation. A primary emotion is the emotion that comes up first, in response to your interpretation of a situation, and a secondary emotion is the emotion that comes up in response to your primary emotion. Essentially, a secondary emotion is how you feel about your feelings.
It’s important that you understand the difference between these two types of emotions, because it’s the primary emotion that you’re going to use the skill of validation with. By validating the primary emotion, you won’t have the secondary emotions to deal with. So let’s look at an example.
Percy’s Story
Percy grew up with a father who didn’t understand his anxiety and who was hard on Percy whenever he expressed anxiety. This of course didn’t help Percy’s anxiety, and it resulted in his believing that he shouldn’t feel anxious, which actually made him more anxious at times, as well as triggering frustration and anger at himself for feeling this way. Here’s how it would go: Percy would encounter a situation that made him anxious; for example, meeting new people. The thought would be something like What if they don’t like me or I make an idiot of myself? He would start to feel anxious in response to his thoughts about the situation (the primary emotion), and then his judgmental thoughts would kick in: This is so stupid. I shouldn’t be anxious about this. No one else feels anxious about situations like these; what’s wrong with me? What if I never get over this? These judgmental thoughts would then trigger Percy’s secondary emotions: he’d start to feel angry at himself and maybe ashamed for feeling anxious, and he’d also feel more anxious because he’d be thinking there was something wrong with him, and he’d be worrying that he’d never get over his anxiety.
So in this example, Percy’s primary emotion is anxiety, and his secondary emotions include anger at himself, shame, and more anxiety. Take some time to do the following exercise to help you become more familiar with how to identify your own primary emotions.
Exercise: Identifying Your Primary Emotion
For this exercise, you’ll need to think of a recent time when you experienced an intense emotion. Perhaps you became angry with a parent or friend, or maybe you felt sad, hurt, or frustrated about a difficult situation. Do your best to put yourself back in that situation and feel the emotions that were coming up for you; it may help if you close your eyes.
Once you have a good memory of the situation, as best as you can, focus on what emotions came up for you. Can you name them? If you can’t, try going back to chapter 2 to review the emotions listed there, along with some of the alternate words for those emotions, and the situations in which those emotions would be expected to arise. Then you can come back to your situation and see if you can put a name on the emotions you were experiencing at the time.
Once you can name the emotions you were experiencing, see if you can identify the thoughts that were triggering that emotion.
For example, Percy noticed the thought What if they don’t like me? and connected this to his anxiety, a fear related to a possible future scenario (“what-ifs”). He also noticed the thought There’s something wrong with me for feeling anxious about this, and he recognized that this was a judgmental thought that was triggering a secondary emotion: anger at himself for feeling anxious.
The easiest way to tell the difference between your primary emotions and your secondary emotions is to look at the thoughts triggering those emotions: the thoughts that are related to the situation (for example, What if they don’t like me?) will trigger primary emotions, and the thoughts that are related to your emotional experience (for example, There’s something wrong with me for feeling anxious about this) will trigger secondary emotions.
And actually, here’s a general tip: if you’re feeling guilty about the emotions you’re experiencing, you’re judging yourself. Remember, emotions are never wrong—how you’re feeling is how you should be feeling, given your current circumstances and interpretations of the situation. So if you’re experiencing guilt for feeling angry, for example, there is some kind of judgmental thought going on. Likewise, if you’re feeling the need to push a feeling away, avoid or escape it, or ignore it in some way, you’re judging it.
Now that you’ve got a better idea about how judging your (primary) emotions will trigger more (secondary) emotional pain, what can you do to help interrupt this cycle so that you’re no longer triggering extra emotional pain for yourself? I’ve already mentioned that this is about being nonjudgmental with your feelings; this is a skill known as self-validation.
Validating your emotions is basically being nonjudgmental with your emotions. It’s accepting whatever emotion is there—not saying that you like it, but being neutral or nonjudgmental toward it and toward yourself for having it. And, just like with a nonjudgmental stance, when you can validate your emotion, you prevent the emotion from escalating. Bear in mind that this is yet another skill that doesn’t aim to get rid of your emotions—remember, that’s not the goal with DBT. But the more you can reduce your emotional intensity, the more able you’ll be to manage the emotions that are present for you. So how do you do this?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the first step to validating your emotions is to become aware of when you’re judging them. Mindfulness in general—and specifically the Gatekeeper exercise you learned in chapter 4—will help with this, so hopefully you’ve been practicing this exercise and becoming more aware of your judgments, as well as of your thoughts and emotions overall. Once you become aware that you’re judging yourself for an emotion you’re experiencing, you’ll be able to work on validating yourself.
Remember, invalidating is when you’re judging yourself for the emotions you’re experiencing, so when it comes to self-validating, you want to stop the judgments and be more accepting of your emotional experience. There are a few ways of doing this.
The first way of validating yourself is by acknowledging what the experience is. By simply labeling or naming the emotion—This is anxiety or I feel angry, for example—you’re validating the emotion just by the fact that you’re no longer judging it. This is the most basic way of validating, but it’s still very effective. Think of Percy once again; if he had been able to acknowledge his anxiety rather than judging it the way he did, he wouldn’t have had all the secondary emotions pop up. Now think back to the situation you recalled in the previous exercise: how would you acknowledge your primary emotion in that scenario?
Allowing an emotion takes validation a step further, because you’re giving yourself permission to feel the feeling. So, instead of I feel anxious, the self-talk becomes It’s okay that I feel anxious, or I’m allowed to feel this way. Let’s be clear that this isn’t saying you like the feeling or that you’re not going to make efforts to change the feeling; it’s just acknowledging that this is a normal human emotion, and that sometimes people feel this way—it’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t mean anything about you as a person. Again, going back to the situation you were visualizing earlier in the chapter, what might you say to yourself that would allow your primary emotion?
Validating your emotion by understanding it takes this one step further again, by giving the emotion context. In other words, you’re saying that you understand why you feel the way you feel in that moment, that it makes sense given the circumstances and situation. To go back to Percy, for example, he might be able to say to himself, It makes sense that I feel anxious when I meet new people because I was bullied as a kid, and it’s hard for me to trust others now. So, going back to that situation you were visualizing one last time, can you validate your primary emotion from this perspective? I do need to point out that Percy might not actually know why he feels anxious when he meets new people. And that’s okay—we don’t always know where our emotions come from. If you can’t validate your emotion in this way because you don’t understand it, you can still acknowledge it or allow it. Remember, as long as you’re not judging yourself for feeling the feeling, you’re validating it.
Now let’s look at a mindfulness exercise that will help you change your attitude toward yourself and your emotions, which in turn will help you be more validating in the long run. You’ll start the practice by directing compassion toward yourself, and as this starts to come more naturally for you, you will then start to extend these kind thoughts to others as well. If it’s more difficult for you to turn compassion toward yourself, you can start with compassion toward others and work your way back to yourself as it becomes more comfortable.
Exercise: Loving-Kindness Meditation
Find a place to sit in a comfortable position. Once you’re settled, bring your attention to your breathing. You don’t have to change how you’re breathing; just notice how it feels to breathe. Then, gradually as you inhale and exhale, you can begin to regulate your breathing, so that you’re breathing slowly, deeply, and comfortably.
As you continue to focus on your breath, allow yourself to connect with positive emotions—feelings of kindness, friendliness, warmth, and compassion. These are the feelings you experience as you greet someone you really care for, when your pet greets you with unconditional love, or when you do something nice for someone. Let your memory drift to a time when you experienced that warmth and kindness toward someone. Allow those feelings to come into the present moment, and let yourself feel the joy, love, and other positive feelings that come up for you. As you experience these feelings of compassion, love, kindness, and friendliness, gently say the following phrases to yourself, directing them toward yourself:
- May I be happy.
- May I be healthy.
- May I be peaceful.
- May I be safe.
You can either think these statements to yourself or say them out loud; either way, as best as you can, really feel the words as you say them—putting feeling and meaning into each phrase as you say it. If you have a hard time directing these feelings of kindness toward yourself, remember that habits take time to change. In other words, don’t judge yourself or the exercise; just know that this is something you’ll need to spend more time on. Practice this exercise regularly, and you’ll find that you’re able to take a more kind, loving, and gentle attitude toward yourself and others, which will help you be more validating and accepting of your own experience and less judgmental of yourself and others.
Although you’re learning many skills in this book that are probably pretty new to you, you might have noticed that these skills are quite interconnected: mindfulness includes acceptance, which is being nonjudgmental, and validation is being nonjudgmental with your emotions, for example. So if you get overwhelmed, slow down (remember, I want you to work your way through this book slowly anyway, really working on understanding and implementing the skills you’re reading about). Go back to just one thing: perhaps mindfulness, since it’s the basis for so many of the other skills you’re learning. Or maybe you’ve found one skill that really resonates for you right now—focus on just that one skill. When things settle down a bit for you, you can turn back to the other skills. But the main thing is that in some way, you’re working on making these skills a part of your life.
In this chapter you’ve learned how to validate your emotions. Remember that it always starts with awareness—you can’t change a behavior until you’re aware of what’s happening, so make sure you continue to practice your mindfulness in a variety of ways. Noticing when your emotions seem to be stronger than what you think is warranted by the current situation is usually a good indicator that judgments are happening, so when you notice this, turn your attention to your thoughts and try to notice if you’re judging yourself for your emotions. And practice the loving-kindness meditation. It’s a wonderful way of working on increasing your compassion toward yourself and others—and heaven knows we could all use a little more compassion in this world!
When you’re feeling ready, you can move on to the next chapter, where we’ll be looking at skills that will help you be more effective in your life, which will result in fewer intense emotions.