It’s been a difficult year for everyone. This year Christmas in particular may bring up so many strong emotions for us. Feeling painful emotions is hard. We simply don’t want to do it at times and we try to ignore them or dismiss them entirely.

So it’s not surprising that we may have been trying to suppress our emotions. We might have tried to numb ourselves out with the extra glass of wine, loaded up on TV box sets or computer gamed ourselves into oblivion. But that is never a good thing for our mental and physical health even in the short-term. So why isn’t it a good idea to suppress your emotions?

Why It’s Not A Good Idea To Suppress Our Emotions.

We’ve all tried to do this one. Suppressing our emotions has not only long-term affects but also short-term ones. We will feel the effects of doing this on our mental and physical health.

It doesn’t matter which emotion it is, anger, grief, frustration, sadness, etc., suppressing them in the short-term will all lead to an increase in your stress levels, memory, blood pressure, self-esteem. In fact the list of mental and physical health issues are long and gets longer the more we try to suppress our emotions. We increase our risk to so many health issues such as heart disease, strokes, diabetes, depression, anxiety, etc.

It is a simple fact that by not acknowledging our emotions we make them stronger. Suppressing them by shoving them down will only mean they do come out eventually. This may be at a time you don’t want and in a manner that is over the top considering what has happened and with the wrong person also. So if you feel frustrated with a colleague but suppress the emotion you may end up taking this out on the kids if they don’t tidy up quick enough.

So how do we cope with strong emotions in a healthier manner?

7 Tips On How To Stay Present With Your Emotions.

1 Awareness of our emotions will give us back our power.

Awareness of our emotions is the key to giving us back our power. It helps us choose how we will respond to what is triggering us in the moment.

Awareness of how we are feeling in the first instance is very important. We can simply do this in our head by stating how we are feeling such as “I’m feeling sad.” “I’m feeling frustrated.”

Sometimes we cannot do this in the moment but we can go back and reflect on what has happened and how we felt. In time and with practice we can learn to do this in the moment.

2 Accepting how we are feeling.

Don’t try to skip this step it’s too important. It’s great that we are aware of how we are feeling but we really need to accept that we are feeling this way right now. Often times when we become aware of something we automatically want to jump to the action step. We do all this without really investigating or accepting why we are feeling this way in the first place.

Some emotions come with negative connotations for us. In particular if we were raised around anger we many not feel we are able to, or are allowed to, get angry. That is simply not true. You do get angry it just may come out in an unhealthy manner such as turning your anger at others on yourself. Shame, guilt, sadness and even happiness can all have a negative or fear based connotation for us.

A simple validation of how you are feeling can help. Acknowledge that is how you are feeling is okay. Perhaps use your journal to go deeper and ask yourself what is the core emotion behind what you are feeling? Why did you response the way you did? This can be of huge benefit to us when we start to fully realize what is going on. It can help us break any negative self-talk we may be experiencing.

3 Try focusing on the present and the task at hand.

It can be helpful if we focus on the present moment. It does help if we acknowledge our feelings in a non-judgmental way and get on with a task at hand. We can so easily get caught up in rumination that we expand the emotions coming up.

Instead of ruminating try to refocus your attention to what you are doing. This is not the same as shoving down your emotions as you are aware of them and have acknowledged them. But you have also chosen to focus on what you are doing.

If you are angry with someone after a meeting when you get back to your desk try to give yourself a little pep talk. “I feel so angry with Mary right now. She really undermined me in the meeting taking all the credit for my work. I need to address this with Joe but I haven’t the time to do that now. Right now I need to get this report done so that’s where I’ll focus my attention.”  If you focus on your anger too much right now the rumination may stop you from giving your best to the work at hand.

This does take practice and as I said sitting with your emotions is hard. But with time, patience and practice you will learn this skill. Yes it is a skill and one you can learn. But knowing your triggers does help so let’s look at these next.

4 Know your triggers.

We need to become more aware of what and who triggers us. What is really going on? Do we act in a certain manner around one particular person?

Keeping a reflective journal does help with this. We can look back over what has happened, how we felt and see if this has happened before with a simple situation or person.

This type of reflection will help to train our minds to pay more attention in the present moment. So that we are able to take a mental step back in time and observe the person or situation more clearly. This is a very empowering position to be in as we start to take ourselves mentally out of the situation and deal with it in a calmer manner.

We are also better able to take on the other person’s perspective and see what is driving them to respond the way they do. We are more likely to not take their reactions as personal and respond appropriately while also setting healthy boundaries also.

Journals really are your best friend to enable you to do this so let’s look at how we can use them to better effect.

5 Make sure to use your journal and write it down.

Journals allow us to reflect on what has happened. I regard journaling as one of the basics of self-care as they have such positive impact on your physical and mental health. Even a simple brain dump each night can improve the quality of your sleep.

So get in the habit of writing down what happened during the day but make sure you add in how you felt. This will really help you clarify your thoughts and feelings. Tackling that entire jumble inside of you and making sense of what you want and feel? It will help you keep in touch with your emotions so you can learn more about what you are feeling.

If you don’t edit them you can use this exercise as a reflective process to train your mind to become more aware and accepting of your emotions in the present moment. You will then have better clarity and be more proactive in the present moment also. Regular journaling helps you get to know yourself better as well as reducing your stress and anxiety. But we also need to take some responsibility too.

6 Take responsibility for your emotions.

We need to take responsibility for how we feel and react to situations and people if we want things to change. As I said taking time to reflect will allow you to prevent you reacting that way in the future and be more proactive in how we respond. All emotions are unavoidable it is foolish to think you don’t have an emotion. You have a full range of emotions and you need to take responsibility for them also.

7 Take time out and do a little self-care.

I’ve said it time and time again self-care is so important to our mental and physical health. A basic self-care practice is also vital as a collapse point when our emotions take over.

Any self-care activities allow us to take a time out, calm down and relax. Then we can use that time out to think about what has happened. How did we respond? What do we want to do next? Any form of exercise or meditation will also release those stress hormones and help us regulate our emotions better.

Bonus Tip: Create your mantra.

When we recognize our core emotion behind some of our stronger emotions we might realize that it is based on some strong negative self-talk. We can create a mantra or affirmation that can help counter our thinking.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No woman is an island. In fact I would strongly advice you make sure you create a positive support system before you start to make any changes in your life.

My Book.

Did you know I talk about basic self-care in my workbook The Building Blocks Of Self-Care? The steps in this workbook were the ones I used after I left a DV situation. It helped me lay the foundations to rebuilding a more balanced life. You can purchase it on Amazon or here in my shop.