Accepting Releasing Emotions

[savon19]

I think a lot of people who have problems with drugs or alcohol don't know how to deal with emotions. I know I have a problem with that! Note especially the highlighted in Red. I thought I'd share this rather long article from "Daily OM" I get in my email:

Dealing with powerful emotions can be challenging, especially when we are going through chaotic, sad, or cruel experiences in our lives. Often, it can seem like we have only two options for dealing with our feelings so they don?t become too overwhelming. We may let our feelings out in an immediate and visceral way, or we may bottle them up by suppressing our emotions inside our bodies. Most people make the second choice, repressing their feelings in an attempt to deny them. The truth is that there are many positive ways to deal with emotions, and experiencing your negative feelings doesn?t have to constitute a negative experience. Denying your feelings is not only unhealthy for the mind and the body, but it may also rob you of valuable information you could be learning about yourself and your life. Suppressing your emotions can even impede your short-term memory. Acknowledging your feelings can help you better understand them and help you recover naturally from change, stress, and grief.

If you find that facing your feelings head on is proving too difficult during times of emotional distress, you may want to explore alternative ways of expressing them. Otherwise, the emotions you deny could morph into unconscious anger or self-hatred. Expressing your thoughts to friends or family can be helpful. If you don?t feel ready to share them, try giving them words by writing down what you are feeling. Give whatever you are feeling simple words like ?livid? or ?angry? or ?excited? You can also funnel your feelings into a creative outlet, physical exercise, or chores. Even just accepting and speaking your feelings out loud to yourself can be a healing release. In releasing intense emotions, it is most beneficial to acknowledge the feelings, allow yourself to feel them, and let the feelings go. Those who are willing to experience and release their feelings without judgment also find that their lives become less stressful. Breathing deeply, going for a long walk, or doing a constructive task can help you respond to your feelings in a healthy way.

While burying negative or uncomfortable feelings can numb the pain, it also may inevitably dull your ability to experience your more positive and pleasurable feelings. You may find yourself afraid to open up in the future for fear of getting hurt. The feelings we deny aren?t limited to anger and sadness. Suppressing our happiness or excitement can be just as unhealthy. In learning how to express your intense emotions in a healthy way, you are giving yourself the freedom to fully experience the more joyful emotions that come with being alive.

[Boss.man]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

I definitely agree with your article. I think people who supress strong emotions are prone to releasing them in unexpected moments. By expressing the same emotions, maybe in a positive way, the energy can be diminished.

But I think they key experience for most of us is that AL really makes us into emotional wrecks. When you drink to feel good, when you are hung over, your emotions go way below "baseline" but when you recover, you don't quite get back up to that normal line you had before. Repeat daily, and your "baseline" mood becomes a much more emotional, emotionally fragile, depression, and sadness.

At least that was one of the key factors I had to "get with the program".

[tlrgs]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

thank you for sharing love it and so true

[AAthlete]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

I would agree. Repressing feelings (both good and bad) can be dangerous. They have a way of building up, and then being dealt with in the wrong ways. For us, that way is all to often having a drink, but it could be just as easily lashing out at a spouse or a child, being mean to others, etc.

[vera-b]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Hi all,

I agree that it's important to express and thereby release our emotional energy. But to Gia, I'm not sure that realeasing them with a purpose to get through to someone works much of the time. Under that circumstance, we tend to expect some reaction - like an "I'm sorry" or "I won't do that again." In so many cases they did not feel the same way and are in no position to either apologize or change their behavior.
I do believe the release of emotional stress is like forgiveness - it's for our benefit, and not necessarily for anybody else's. So the important thing is to release the emotion - scream it out loud, whatever, but don't hold it in. Just my 2 little cents on what sounds like a very smart discussion.

Vera-b

[WaitingToExhale]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

I also agree. I am famous for holding my tongue and emotions in. Keep them bottled up long enough and they turn into nasty little creatures in your head. I think it's why at times I head "off to my cave" when issues are bothering me rather than deal with them, and be able to share what I'm going through with my partner.

Well, and besides that, there's always AL waiting for me in the cave.

Boss, I think you made a good point as well; we almost lose track of where "baseline' is. At least that is what has happened to me.

[startingover]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

That is so true. I have just started to let myself feel my emotions. It is a scary process but sometimes exciting too. Whichever, it is something I have never done really and I need to learn how to deal with them and not bury them anymore.

Thank you for sharing that Savon.

[bestlifeldms]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Thanks, Savon, great article and good topic. An old expression from my MANY therapy sessions came to mind when I read this. "Anger is pain unexpressed"! Once I realized that, I now let er rip!

Well, not really. LOL! I am consious of drawing healthy boundaries and when someone does something that tresspasses those boundaries, or angers me, after carefully assessing the situation and understanding my feelings, I communicate that. Other wise, I was like a pressure cooker. Watch out!

[fickle]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Hi All,

Great thread Savon & everyone! Very thought provoking.

Someone here used to have a saying something along the lines of 'an addict is someone who uses their body to let people know something is wrong'.

There is not enough investigation into self-harm and the self-destructive tendancies that some emotional states can bring on. After years of trying to understand why I drink and periods of successful sobriety, I just have to accept there are times when I am powerless over my emotional state and can not stop myself. These failures occur at times when I don't even have any cravings! (thanks to Roberta & MWO supps).

It is pure self-harm from fear particularly relating to my family. I always think it will be over soon and it will just be a short survival technique until they go away... but it never goes away completely because there is always a next time... the next visit.

Apologies, just my rant.. anyone relate??

Fickle

[A Work in Progress]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

This is an area that I have done a lot of working (professionally as well as personally) and thinking on! Human emotional behavior, and our responses to our own emotions, are fascinating areas in psychology. And they are such very important aspects of our lives and our quality of life, especially for those of us with alcohol problems, because our emotional distress, if not handled skillfully, can easily trigger a drinking episode. I found a new article about all this this morning, and wrote a blog post about it, thought I'd share it:

There's new evidence of the effectiveness of what is known as a "distancing" approach for dealing with one's uncomfortable emotions. This approach is closely related to the practice of mindfulness (meditation), within which one takes what is sometimes called an "observer" stance in recognizing emotions, without getting overly enmeshed in them. I have often taught this approach by using the term "optimal emotional distance." When distressing emotions occur, we have three possible stances that we can take. One could be described as a cool, dismissive, rejecting stance, in which we ignore or try to "get rid of" the emotional experience. Another is a hotter, over-involved stance, in which we tend to make matters worse by getting deeply engaged in the emotion (much like throwing gasoline onto a small fire). Most effective is a position somewhere in the middle range between the two, in which the emotion is recognized and named (it is observed), and it is felt ("I am feeling angry right now,") but the mind steps back just enough to prevent it from being overwhelming, and from allowing it to dominate one's entire experience.

The practice of mindfulness meditation appears to be helpful in learning this "middle" stance, because it encourages the consistent practice of adopting a "compassionate observer" stance toward all phenomena, including one's own emotional experience, thoughts, impulses, and sensations.

The Science Daily description of the study is found here. And here's an excerpt:
[There is a well-known] psychological paradox: Pocessing emotions is supposed to facilitate coping, but attempts to understand painful feelings often backfire and perpetuate or strengthen negative moods and emotions...

The solution is not denial or distraction. According to University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross, the best way to move ahead emotionally is to analyze one's feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective...

"We aren't very good at trying to analyze our feelings to make ourselves feel better," said Kross, a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and an assistant professor of psychology. "It's an invaluable human ability to think about what we do, but reviewing our mistakes over and over, re-experiencing the same negative emotions we felt the first time around, tends to keep us stuck in negativity. It can be very helpful to take a sort of mental time-out, to sit back and try to review the situation from a distance."

This approach is widely associated with eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, and with practices like [meditation]. But according to Kross, anyone can do it with a little practice.

Kross and Ayduk randomly assigned 141 participants to one of three groups that required them to focus (or not focus) on their feelings using different strategies in a guided imagery exercise that led them to recall an experience that made them feel overwhelmed by sadness and depression.

In the immersed-analysis condition, participants were told, "Go back to the time and place of the experience, and relive the situation as if it were happening to you all over again…try to understand the emotions that you felt as the experience unfolded…why did you have those feelings? What were the underlying causes and reasons?"

In the distanced-analysis condition, they were told, "Go back to the time and place of the experience…take a few steps back and move away from your experience…watch the experience unfold as if it were happening all over again to the distant you… try to understand the emotions that the distant you felt as the experience unfolded…why did he (she) have those feelings? What were the underlying causes and reasons?"

In the distraction condition, participants were asked to think about a series of non-emotional facts that were unrelated to their recalled depression experience. Among the statements: "Pencils are made with graphite" and "Scotland is north of England."
After the experience, participants completed a questionnaire asking how they felt at the moment, and wrote a stream-of-thought essay about their thoughts during the memory.

Those who had used the distanced-analysis approach... showed lower levels of depression than those who had used self-immersed analysis and distraction, providing evidence to support the hypothesis that distanced-analysis not only helps people cope with intense feelings adaptively in the short-term, but critically also helps people work-through negative experiences over time.

wip

[Evie.Lou]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Great Post Savon,I think that feeling guilty for my drinking made me feel as if I had to keep my mouth shut about anything else.I swallowed other emotions and for a short while i became a people pleaser.I wanted everyone to like me and not remember that i was an IDIOT,while drinking...I managed a month or two sober,being quite and people pleasing until I once again drank.This time I see where my recovery means real recovery.Not to stuff my emotions but to express them.I am at a place in my life where emotions are running extra high so I have started journaling my feelings to read later and see if that is truly how I feel.I am finding that is helping me cope with my (emotional out bursts) and still gives me an outlet for my true feelings.Journaling is a great tool for me and is cheaper than therapy.

[fickle]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Hello AWIP,
I am so grateful for your response. I hope I can catch you while you are still online! Another question from me...
What about those people who have learned from an early age to 'distance' themselves whenever anything unpleasant happens or else when it comes up in memory? In other words, I am referring to the 'dissassociative' types. A coping mechanism. No memory of trauma.. just a habit of zoning out completely in stressful moments. When this is not permissable, drinking or other forms of dissassociation occur.
This is me and I am the most 'normal' person alive apparently so nobody can understand why I go 'off air'. Even my doctor thinks I don't have a problem as I am so damnd functional. This is despite the fact that I can drink 1.5 litres of wine alone each night. Go figure.
Regards,
Fickle

[savon19]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Great stuff, WIP!

I can relate to the "reviewing our mistakes over & over" part! Oh yeah.

I believe God forgives us our sins/mistakes, etc., but I remember saying to a Christian friend not long ago that I REMIND God, after being forgiven, of my sins, etc.! It's like I say, "It's great to be forgiven for this... but Don't Forget what I did/said 10 years ago!!" HUH??

Guess I'm a born Masochist??! Pretty sick! But, I'm Learning (I think!!).

I really think stuff like this should be taught to kids in HS (old enough to Maybe understand?). It's very possible, going back to my first thought, that it could help kids avoid using drugs/AL to "stuff their emotions"... which then only build up... causing more stuffing, etc.

But not only in terms of AL, if we learned early on how to meaningfully cope (the Middle Way, as you say) with emotions, many lives would be better in the long run.

[A Work in Progress]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

Yes, Fickle, that type of extreme distancing sometimes called "dissociative" is not necessarily the result of any kind of trauma, but it can be described, as you said, as "zoning out" and also as just getting the hell away from (mentally, internally) anything unpleasant in the way of memories or emotions. Drinking is another way to do that... for many of us!

A good approach, if you want to stop doing that, is to take some time doing some observation of your own physical sensations. Sounds counter-intuitive, of course, since we usually don't recognize physical sensations as related to emotion... but in fact they are closely related. We experience our emotions BOTH in our bodies AND in our minds (usually as specific thoughts we can identify, such as an internal voice saying (in the case of distressing emotions) "I hate this... I can't stand this... " etc.). There is a practice known as the "body scan," similar to the process used in "progressive relaxation," but not used as a way to deliberately induce relaxation. We just sit quietly for a few minutes, up to 10 or 20 minutes or more, systematically and non-judgmentally feeling/experiencing whatever is "going on" in the way of physical sensations throughout the body. From the bottoms of our feet all the way to the tops of our head. Just feeling. This is one of the main practices taught in Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs, and is can be VERY helpful in learning better emotion regulation (better awareness of our emotions and improved coping with emotions).

wip

[fickle]

Accepting Releasing Emotions

EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique
EFT Provides Impressive Health and Emotional Freedom--New Discovery Often Works Where Nothing Else
Love
Fickle