Dealing with feelings about feelings

 👉Dealing with feelings about feelings👈

Given that negative-negative meta-emotions are sometimes a part of daily life, what is the best way to respond to them?👇

First, it is important to know which emotions you are feeling before you can start to change your reactions to those emotions. (DBT), which is often used to help people manage difficult emotions, encourages you to label your emotions with words. (What exactly is that “bad” feeling you’re having? Is it sadness? Loneliness? Hopelessness? Fear?) DBT also teaches you to explore how you are experiencing those emotions in your mind and body. (Is your heart beating quickly? Do you feel pressure in your chest? Are you having the urge to leave the situation?)

It also helps to appreciate your negative emotions and the work they do for you. If your ancestors had never been scared when they saw poisonous snakes, you might never have been born! If you didn’t get angry when treated unfairly, you might not be motivated to make needed changes to your situation. Your negative emotions are important signals that alert you when something is not right in your environment. They can also serve as signals to others that you need help or support. When you are feeling anxious, for example, a friend might notice the muscle tension in your face or a change in your voice and ask you what is wrong.

In particular, negative emotions about negative emotions reflect that you are making a judgment or evaluation of those initial negative emotions. They can prompt you to seek a greater understanding of your emotional experiences and the contexts in which they occur. For example, if you feel guilty about feeling angry at your spouse, that guilt might encourage you to explore what made you angry and whether that anger is justified.

You can then choose how to respond to those emotions, based on how helpful you think the emotions are in a given context. If in the above example, your guilt led you to realize that anger at your spouse was unjustified, it might make sense to try to resolve the conflict with them. At other times, it might not make sense or it might not be possible to try to change a situation based on your meta-emotion. For example, when people suffer from clinical depression, they often feel guilty about how they reacted in the past to things that can’t be changed.

When we cannot address the underlying situation, it can be tempting to try to push away our meta-emotions. But actually suggests that trying to push away emotions can be counterproductive. Instead, try giving your negative emotions the space to come and go. A metaphor used in (ACT), a common and effective treatment for depression, characterizes negative emotions as unwanted houseguests: It reminds us that we can welcome in guests without being happy the guests are there.

If trying strategies on your own does not work, and you feel like negative-negative meta-emotions are interfering with your day-to-day life, it can help to work with a mental health professional trained in emotion-focused treatments, such as DBT and ACT.

Importantly, experiencing negative-negative meta-emotions is not inherently a bad thing. The trick may lie in learning to understand these emotions and being flexible about the way you cope with them.