4 Ways to manage intense emotions in a healthy way

Painful emotions are something we all experience. But sometimes, emotions can get to an extreme level where they simply overwhelm your whole system. If you reached this tipping point, you are in a crisis. In this state of emotional distress, many of your normal emotion regulation strategies simply won’t work anymore. You may even have the urge to reach for unhealthy or risky behavior.

The Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has a multitude of survival crisis skills that may help you in your situation. It won’t make the pain go away, but it will help lower the level of distress to a point where you might be able to deal with your emotions more healthily. At the very least, it will help you to hang in there and get you through the intensity of that wave until the crisis is over.

Before reading further, if you currently are in one of those states and If you can’t guarantee for your own physical safety anymore, please reach out for help. I know right now it may feel like the world is nothing but endings, but I guarantee you, it is not.

Please remind yourself that this is an emergency state in which your thinking does not function as it normally would. Give yourself the chance to wait these emotions out. Call a friend, a family member, a suicide-hotline or an ambulance. Make sure to keep yourself physically safe.

Here are now 4 ways for you when dealing with overwhelming emotions:

1. TIPP the scale

Envision your emotions on a Scale from 0% to 100%. If the intensity is between 70%-100%, your organism is in a state of crisis. In this state, your normal body reactions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors are altered. It may feel like racing thoughts, you feel tense and as If you can’t take it anymore.

In this state, you firstly have to change your body chemistry. Here are a few ways on how to do that:

• Temperature: Stick your head in a bowl of ice-cold water. You can also chew on ice or put ice on the insides of your forearms.
• Intense Exercise: Turn to intensive training, even If only for a few minutes. Run the stairs up and down, do some jumping jacks or push-ups.
• Paced Breathing: Breathe in deeply in your belly. Slow down your breaths intently. Try to breathe out longer than you breathe in (i.e., breathing in for 5 seconds, breathing out for 7 seconds).
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Whilst breathing in, focus on one part of your body (i.e., your belly) and squeeze your muscles. Breathing out, let the tension in your muscles go whilst saying in your head: “letting go”. Watch the tension reside and be mindful of the different feeling. Do that with different parts of your body.

2. Soothe yourself through your Senses

These strategies help you to establish yourself back into the present moment. By using your five senses, you will feel better and more in control.

• Vision: Watch the sky. Watch at some pictures in a book/on the Internet that you like. Light a candle and watch the flame. Decorate a part of your room (i.e., a table) and make it pretty to look at. Look at nature, a plant, a flower. Watch people. Watch someone performing art or dancing.
• Hearing: Turn on the radio. Listen to your favorite songs. Listen to some classical music. Listen to the sounds of nature, like rain, wind or waves. Listen to the sounds of a city. Be mindful of every sound around you.
• Smelling: Open a package of coffee beans. Smell your favorite shampoo or perfume. Light some scented candles. Use smells like eucalyptus or lavender. Smell flowers. Bake something with cinnamon.
• Tasting: Eat one of your favorite meals. Eat a dessert, a sweet or some chocolate. Chew on some gum. Drink some sweetened tea, hot chocolate or juice.
• Touch: Take a hot bath or shower. Pet an animal. Give yourself a massage. Hug someone. Lay in your freshly sheeted bed naked. Cuddle yourself up in a comfortable blanket. Put lotion on your body. Lay something cold on your forehead.

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3. Distract yourself

Sometimes, our destructive thoughts won’t stop racing. Even though it is important to work through whatever it is you are struggling with, sometimes you need to get some distance between yourself and the situation. It will get you off that negative loop.

After a while, when the crisis is over, you can come back to the situation and might be able to taggle it from a different point of view, with a different mindset and with new insight.

Here are some tips on how to distract yourself. The acronym “ACCEPT” might help you remember it in times of need:

• Activities: Watch something. Clean your space. Play a game (computer or board game). Solve a puzzle or Sudoku. Focus on a task you have to accomplish. Train. Go for a walk.
• Comparisons: Read about catastrophes or problems of others. Compare this moment to a moment when you felt different. Think about others who handled a similar situation to yours. Watch a reality show.
• Contributing: Tell someone what you value about them. Sign up for voluntary work. Help a friend. Send someone a nice letter or E-Mail. Give some of the things you don’t need away.
• Emotions: Watch something with different emotions (comedy, horror-movie). Read an emotional book. Read some jokes online. Listen to music that evokes a different emotion.
• Pushing away: Imagine a wall in your head between yourself and the problem. Say “No” out loud if you have reoccurring thoughts. Step away from the situation. Block out thoughts, pictures and images for the moment.
• Thoughts: Read or watch TV. Count to ten in your head. Count a specific colour in your surroundings. Sing a song in your head. Do a puzzle.
• Sensations: Take a hot or cold shower. Listen to loud music. Squeeze something. Bite on ice.

4. IMPROVE the Moment

You probably can’t change what has happened. But you can change your attitude, feelings, thoughts and reactions towards the situation.

• Imagery: Imagine a phantasy world. Imagine a safe space inside yourself where nothing bad can enter. Imagine relaxing scenery. Imagine everything turning out just fine.
• Meaning: Find a purpose in what is happening right now, or at least a purpose in suffering. Focus on the positive that can spring from you experience. Read spiritual values and repeat them.
• Prayer: Open your heart up for a higher being, god, energy or your own intuitive self. Let things up to that higher force. Ask for the strength to make it through.
• Relaxation: Give yourself a neck and feet massage. Take a relaxing bath. Inhale some essential oils like lavender or orange. Do Yoga. Relax your muscles. Breathe deeply.
• One thing in the moment: Stay in the moment. Focus on the present. Focus on only that which you are doing right now. Focus on some physical sensations.
• Vacation: Read something whilst eating chocolate. Take a blanket to a park and stay there the whole day. Turn off your phone. Go in nature. Lay in your bed and put the blanket above your head.

Some final words

Try some of those skills out, even If you don’t really believe they will help you. Sometimes, more than one skill is necessary and that is perfectly fine. You might even do some of those things already, so stick to that if it helped you in the past.

The skills you find in the beginning of this blogpost are for acute stress reactions. Those more near the end are more accessible If you already have a handle on your emotions.

It might help you to write some of those skills down on a paper and keep that on your wall or inside your phone case. That way, whenever you feel yourself spiraling down, this simple reminder might help you to get out of that state.

Dealing with difficult emotions is tough, I get that. “Using skills” might even feel weird, dumb or simply unnecessary. You might be thinking “but that won’t solve my problem!”. The thing is, nothing is really ever as bad as it seems. No pain is ever just that: Pain. Everything, even your worst suffering can be transformed into something meaningful and beautiful. The choice really resides within you.

Pain is an inevitable part of life. We all experience it and you will have to experience a lot more of it throughout your lifetime. The problem often lays in the value we give to our momentary experience of emotions. We faultily believe them to be the one and only ultimate truth there is.

In reality, every person would have a totally different experience of the exact situation you are in. Maybe envision this: If this situation was part of a movie, how would the hero of that story come out of it?

By practicing your skills continuously, over time, your strong emotional reactions will be easier to handle. You will have the ability to think more clearly in tough situations and to see them in a different light.

You will realize that pain is never all there is, but instead, there is always a light that comes with it. Something to be learnt from it, an opportunity to get to know yourself more deeply, an opportunity to really deepen some core values like compassion, hope, faith or surrender.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all the best. I know you can get through whatever it is that you are dealing with right now. Stay safe, take care of yourself and allow your pain to be held by that unconditional love that is and always will be in the core of your heart.

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural–you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”

Thich Nhat Hanh