Why You Need To Face The Hard Feelings

Emotional Regulation is our ability as humans to experience emotions as authentically as we can and is essential to our survival - but what happens when you find some feelings hard to tolerate?

As a human, you have the potential to feel a lot of different things. You can feel content, excited, happy but you can also experience emotions that are uncomfortable like feeling hot, cold, in pain, severely anxious, etc. Now, it's a very human experience to dislike the negative emotions. However, it's important to know that there's a difference between disliking unpleasant emotions and just being incapable of tolerating them full stop. If you dislike that you're feeling negative emotions, you might find that although the experience is awful, you're nevertheless accepting that they are an inevitable part of life and hence riding through the feeling. However, if you're struggling to just tolerate these emotions, you may experience them as completely unbearable and feel an immediate need to get rid of them.

Think about it - do you ever feel like you just can't face or can't stand difficult emotions? And when you feel that way, do you find yourself engaging in habits that don't help? For example, we know when we avoid our feelings, we limit our lives and can even make our emotional discomfort worse. This is sometimes know as distress intolerance.

Think of distress intolerance as the feeling that you simply can't handle or can't stand difficult emotions. It's not about the emotion itself, but about the urgent, desperate need to escape it. This is often driven by a deep fear of the feeling.

It can be a powerful, "hot" emotion like intense despair after an argument or overwhelming fear before a big speech. But it can also happen with milder, "cooler" feelings, like nervousness before a doctor's appointment or a pang of sadness recalling a past relationship. The key isn't the emotion's intensity; it's how much you fear it and how unbearable it seems to you.

To help you understand this, here's some of the common difficult emotions put into three categories:

The Sad: This group includes emotions like sadness, despair, guilt, and shame. They can make you feel heavy and tired, or sometimes lead to intense crying and restlessness. You might have thoughts of hopelessness or loss, and the urge to hide from the world.

The Mad: This category covers feelings from irritation and frustration to rage and hatred. These emotions are usually "hot," causing your heart to race and your body to feel tense. They often come with thoughts of unfairness and injustice, and the powerful urge to lash out.

The Scared: This group includes emotions like nervousness, anxiety, fear, and panic. These feelings can make your heart pound, your breathing quicken, and your stomach feel aflutter. You might have thoughts about being in danger or feeling helpless, and the urge to avoid or escape the situation.

The irony is that the more we try to get away from unwanted emotions, the stronger they become, and the more the distress of them increases. Learning how to ride the wave of these emotions is the most effective way to let that emotion go. This is where distress tolerance and emotional regulation skills can be really helpful. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Dialetical Behavioural Therapy are both types of talking therapies that can be used to understand emotional difficulties better and find tools to try to improve emotional regulation. In my therapeutic practice, I regularly help people understand their relationship to their emotions better and then equip them with practical tools to try to grow their emotional tolerance. It can be challenging work, but is ultimately very rewarding. You can find out more about me and my approaches here.