#emotional processing

preamble: a note on avoidance

If you identify with the above you probably have avoidant patterns when it comes to your emotions to one degree or another, although exactly what that looks like will vary a bit person to person. If not, feel free to skip this section and then probably need to revisit it in about six months when you figure out you were repressing/dissociating/ignoring that you have avoidant patterns to begin with.

Avoidance as a cope generally means you're dissociating a lot of it, when you can. So you will have some ✨fun times ✨ trying to get to the core of it and sometimes even registering / feeling your feelings in the first place… until they become painful enough to exceed your ability to cope in that way, and spill over.

As a starting point, see if you can find any early memories of parents or caregivers rejecting you, reprimanding you, disciplining you, harming you, or generally being extremely unhelpful when you were small and failed to do your own emotional regulation because you were a fucking child that hadn't been taught any of it yet; that was your parents failing to do their job.

That memory is a part of you, there is a part of you that probably felt like shit in that moment and remembers that on some level and still probably feels fucking horrible about it. If you can step into that memory strongly enough you can try to help that part of yourself regulate and give them the comfort, reassurance, and guidance needed to process that feeling from that moment. See below for the rest of that.

If you can't find any of those memories, that's also okay. You might find you start to uncover them later, or you may not. Either way, you can start in the now.

ok what the fuck is processing emotions

and why is it bullshit

The shitty part about dealing with emotions is you do kinda have to accept that sometimes you're just gonna feel like shit. No, this doesn't feel good. No, it doesn't stop you feeling bad. No, it's not actually avoidable, ultimately. Sorry.

Trying to avoid feeling shitty just means it piles up until you can't ignore it anymore, and then you eventually get to places where it feels like the only times you feel negative emotions, they always feel absolutely fucking horrible, and like you can't possibly ever manage them, and you have no choice but to avoid them as much as possible… which. Brings you right back into the worst case scenario.

It sucks. And despite that, because of that, you need to hold it and feel it anyway. Feelings aren't really things that can be "fixed," really. They're things that need to be experienced, held, accepted, and comforted, until they pass on their own. Even/especially when they suck.

You hold onto them, push back hard on the impulse to reject them and try to engage with something or someone else too much as a distraction or to try to find someone who can fix it for you. Yes, talking through your feelings with others can help, but the hazard you'll run into (especially early on) is that you will tend to use that as an avoidance based cope rather than as a means of helping you keep in touch with and explore and express the feeling.

Some examples of emotional avoidance

Looking for interaction and discussion and ways to rationalise or invalidate your feeling, rather than ways to validate, explore, accept, understand, and comfort it.

Outright rejecting sympathy or empathy from others, or invalidating it based on some rationalisation of it not applying to you, specifically, not being correct or speaking directly enough to you.

Directing the emotions at others, either to hurt them in an attempt to make yourself feel better, or expecting them to fix them for you and do something about it.

Spiralling into the emotion but never comforting it yourself, so the engagement of others furthers the spiral by giving you something to latch onto and avoid the emotion by engaging with them.

Seeking out things that further hurt you emotionally and fixating on just feeling even more emotional pain and distress without being able to or even wanting to comfort and help your body through the emotions it's already dealing with. (Sometimes referred to as emotional self-harm.)

That is very much not a "don't reach out for help". Remembering what the fuck you need when you're feeling like shit can be hard. Having someone to help you process through it is super useful. These are just patterns to look out for in yourselves and others you may be trying to help; try to nudge yourselves or others towards better processing patterns instead of being someone they come to in order to rationalise or avoid processing their emotions.

For some of us, feeling emotions feels innately hazardous; feelings in general provoke anxiety and stress, regardless of whether they're good or bad. If that's your experience, try to regulate that response down first.

The recommendations to follow are more direct and may provoke the anxiety response; use the recommendations in the above article to help manage that and lessen it over time.

yes i know it feels like it's bullshit, but

Instead, you need to treat the negative emotions as kind of… a physical fact of your body. It hurts, it feels uncomfortable, it feels irritating, weird, pressure, whatever.

Do your best to breathe, try to keep something nearby to hold onto for comfort that has a physical sensation to focus on, to help you to focus on your body. If you're at home, a large plushie/blahaj or a nice comfy or weighted blanket can be lovely; at work, maybe sensory stim toys are more acceptable to keep around. Something that doesn't require a lot of thought but has a comforting or reassuring physical sensation to it.

Focus on the actual physical feeling of the emotion and just breathe through it. If you're used to rationalising your feelings, you might go "I feel really angry / hurt / sad," but that doesn't say anything about what it's actually doing in your body. For example, sometimes when we're miserable we feel acute stabbing pain in the chest, we feel cold and hollow, tension in the stomach and chest. Those kinds of things.

Naming or identifying the emotions ("Sad") is a useful shorthand for communicating to others, but doesn't help you focus on your body and so it doesn't help. Instead, ignore the temptation to reach for the labels of the emotions, and focus on:

Where does it hurt? what kind of pain is it?

Does your body feel hot or cold? Both? Where in your body?

Is there tension somewhere in your body?

And so on.

To us at times it feels stupid, pointless, dogshit, we just want the feeling to stop, we don't wanna feel that way. But pretty much all the time? It's what we need.

If the emotion sparks thoughts, and it often will, note them, accept them, and pull your attention back to what it feels like, physically, in your body. Give it what it needs physically. Sometimes that's warmth, or something (or someone!) to hug. Sometimes you just need to cry: we've found mood-appropriate music to help us cry is extremely useful. Sometimes you need to stim and shake your limbs, or go for a walk or a run for a little while. Sometimes you just need to literally have a fucking meltdown. Is it ideal? No. But that's what happens when you spend a lifetime avoiding feeling negative emotions. They pile up.

Some other physical comforts that can help to process things:

comfy temperatures

a shower, or a bath

comfort foods

hot tea (ideally low or no caffeine) or other comforting drinks.

If you live with others you're close with, they can help with the regulation some (hugs and cuddles are fucking great). But… you will still need to be willing to accept the feelings and focus on them long enough for that help to be meaningful and effective.

why tho

By responding to an emotion with a physical sensation, a physical comfort, you keep yourself focused on your body and give your nervous system something comforting to help soothe it and work through it.

The annoying fucking thing is that trying to process your unpleasant and horrible feelings will be an inconvenient mess that takes way too damn long for a bit. The more you do it, the more you learn what helps your body to regulate and do it, the easier it gets to hold onto, the easier it gets to manage, and the quicker it will resolve.

Brains like to think emotions are their domain. They're really not, though. Emotions are physical responses the body / the nervous system has in response to stimulus. The brain can contribute to the input, but it cannot control the response; attempting to do so results in dissociative and avoidant responses, ultimately leaving the nervous system to its own devices. The end result? Emotions appear to be explosive, sudden, severe, uncontrollable, and unpredictable.

The brain is always affected by the nervous system, and can help a little in processing along the way (or severely hinder, which is probably more your experience, if you're reading this) but ultimately the body needs to feel that shit, or it stays just... accumulating over time.

… so yeah. That's. The how. Getting to actually do it and learning and using the new coping patterns is a battle we're still fighting, ourselves. Yeah, it's a bitch sometimes. But. Hopefully that's… a start.

so is avoidance just Bad™️then?

Also nope! Which is really frustrating sometimes. It can get tempting to try to just throw yourself off the deep end and immerse yourself in all your emotional pain in an effort to just be done with it all in one big pile, and not have to deal with it again.

But ultimately, you are going to need a fucking break. You're going to need to be able to handle life too. And that means you need to set aside some time for handling your difficult emotions, and be willing to do a little avoidance at other times, so you can keep living, working, having some fun, and not just being miserable all the time.

As with a lot of things, balance is both annoying as hell, but entirely necessary. You will likely struggle with finding a good balance, you will probably fall back into avoidance more than is a good idea at first. Progress is hard, and slow as all fucking hell.

Take breaks when you need to, when you have stuff to do, but be sure to come back to it as well and give yourself the time to sort through your difficult feelings and your pain. If you have to defer a difficult emotion during the day, make some time to pull it back up when you next can and work through it, give it some comfort and acknowledgement. Sometimes it helps to write it down (what happened, what feeling is that, what does it feel like, etc.) and revisit that at a later time, so you don't just forget and leave it buried.