Implement Strategies Managing Difficult Emotions

I don’t mean “water in your basement” kind of flooding… I mean emotional flooding. It’s when your emotions take over and overwhelm you. Flooding makes it difficult to think, process your emotions, and take appropriate action.

It’s common to become emotionally flooded when you are dealing with stressors without the skills it would take to manage them. Perhaps you experience something that takes you back to a traumatic event (in other words, you are triggered). Or perhaps you experience intense emotions without piecing together that there is a trigger in the first place.

Emotional flooding can scare people away from wanting to process their feelings. Over and over again, clients in my psychology practice express fears of exploring feelings that hold deep pain. It’s such a valid fear, especially when my clients have been taught (directly or indirectly) that their emotions are unimportant, bad, dangerous, or burdensome.

To decrease emotional flooding, it’s crucial to develop a relationship with your emotions. If you don’t have a relationship with your emotions, chances are high that “in-the-moment coping” will be extremely challenging for you. The only way out is through. Unfortunately, there aren’t shortcuts or workarounds. It’s instrumental to have a roadmap for getting through your emotional overwhelm.

First, let’s talk about why you might have a rocky relationship with your emotions in the first place.

Childhood Emotional Neglect: A Wall Between You and Your Feelings

Childhood is a crucial period for learning and growth, but when emotions are not acknowledged, children learn to suppress their feelings. This emotional neglect creates a barrier that persists into adulthood, leading to confusion and emptiness. Eventually, suppressed emotions may surface, causing overwhelm due to a lack of emotional management skills. However, it's never too late to learn these essential skills to manage and express emotions effectively.

8 Steps to Manage Difficult Emotions

1. Welcome the feeling.

This is the most important step of all. Allowing your feelings goes against everything you believe. When raised with emotional neglect, you learn that emotions should be avoided at all costs. But that’s what created the wall in the first place. Try to fight the urge to push down your feelings and instead get curious.

2. Create language for the feeling.

Identifying something can make it less scary to deal with. See if you can come up with feeling words that match your internal experience. Powerful emotions tend to be a mixture of multiple feelings in one. Here’s an example: hurt, sad, disappointed, and hopeless.

3. Don’t give the feeling too much power.

A feeling doesn’t define you. Imagine yourself in the driver’s seat and your emotions as passengers. You don’t need to let them drive. But perhaps they have some very helpful information to share to get you about where you need to go.

4. Cry if you need to.

Tears are your body’s way of processing and releasing emotions. Don’t hold back, allow whatever comes to the surface. On the other hand, you do not have to cry to process your feelings so please do not pressure yourself to do so.

5. Understand that processing a feeling decreases overwhelm.

The more you allow space for this feeling, the less it’ll take over and overwhelm you. Imagine that your difficult emotions are quicksand. The more you fight and resist, the further you sink. The secret to getting unstuck from quicksand is to stop fighting and accept… you’ll float to the top.

6. Imagine the feeling as a wave.

No matter how big a wave can be, they always come to shore. Your feelings are just the same. Ride with the wave and make it to shore safely.

7. Breathing can help you.

Take deep breaths as you process a difficult emotion. Close your eyes and on your inhale imagine you are breathing in strength and clarity. Remind yourself you are building your ability to tolerate the strong feeling that you’re having. As you breathe out, imagine the feeling releasing from your body. Do this over and over again as needed.

8. Welcome the feeling back again in the future.

Intense emotions need to be felt and processed more than once before they resolve. Each time you allow this feeling in, take note if it gets easier to process. Chances are it will. Treat your feelings as though they are your friends — be kind, open, and compassionate to them. Invite them back again after the visit is over.

Breaking Down Your Wall

When discussing healing, we often focus on the before and after. We consider what occurred (or in the case of childhood emotional neglect, what didn’t happen) and how individuals have healed. But what about the challenging middle part? The time when you’re actively engaged in the healing process and confronting painful emotions.

This stage isn’t glamorous or easy, but it’s an essential part of healing. To reach the other side and heal, you must work on breaking through the barrier that separates you from your emotions. This involves relaxing the constraints and allowing your feelings to surface—not to overwhelm you, but to gain control over them. It is these constraints that create the tension and overwhelm you might be experiencing.

Provide yourself with what you lacked in childhood: an environment where you can listen to, accept, and effectively manage your emotions.