What to do when thoughts and emotions overflow? Try some of these tips to find emotional well-being.
In a previous article we explained an exercise carried out by editors and journalists of with the aim of offering practical and accessible ways to provide self-care in difficult times.
With a guide to mental health care, they recommend different activities for a person who is in a mental health situation to do. or, in this case, emotional confusion.
Don’t you know what you feel? Do one or more of the following activities to find out:
- Have a real conversation out loud with yourself. Ask yourself: “how do you feel?” or “what do you need to feel more relaxed?” Then think about what your body or mind would respond. You might be surprised how having a real conversation with yourself can help.
- Decide if you want to find a solution to what you’re feeling or just let the feeling take its course. Ask yourself: “Do you want a solution to this problem or do you just want to let this feeling go through you?” Sometimes our feelings are so overwhelming that finding the right solution for them can be difficult. In those cases, it may be best to let them be and feel them: cry, journal, etc. Other times, we may long for a more concrete solution or action. Decide and act accordingly.
- Nothing lasts forever, not even the best or worst feelings. Everything happens. Reflecting on living alone during the pandemic, the former editor of , wrote about how remembering that nothing lasts forever helped her get through her most difficult times: “The only thing I know for sure is that nothing lasts forever. Every horrendous low has finally dissipated. Every good feeling softens.”
- Allow yourself to distract yourself from how you feel. Doing so does not mean that you are denying your emotions or that it is negative. It is simply giving you the option to reset your mind to return to the moment and state you need with renewed energy. Watch the novel, movie, or series you’ve been putting off for a while.
- When you judge yourself or are hard on yourself, try a RAIN meditation: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Not Identify or Nurture. Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings as they occur; allows them to exist without pushing them away; investigate by asking yourself why you feel that way or what the emotion is trying to tell you; and then eliminate it from your self-esteem; In other words, disidentify with it.
- When you start thinking about what you “should” be doing right now., reframe your thoughts in terms of what you really want, like, or can do. It will help you meet yourself where you are in the present, setting realistic goals that can hopefully help you feel a little better.
- Remind yourself that it’s okay to take a break from your goals. During a crisis it is good to take the pressure off what you do on a daily basis and decide to review goals or plans at another time, accepting that change is constant and that life can change. It is part of normality.
- Identify the triggers for your current state. In this case it is important to give feedback on what happened in your day or the last few hours. You can keep a record of the times you felt this way and analyze later to see if there are any patterns or links. Identifying it can help you have a better relationship with yourself and others.
- If you want to cry, do it. Crying can help you achieve catharsis. In fact, feeling like crying when things are not right is a normal and natural physical response to emotions.
If you feel like you’re in a spiral, you can try the following:
- Create a self-care list to use in times of crisis. In it you can include the or which we highlight in this emotional psychological first aid kit.
- Sit for five minutes in your car, somewhere in your bathroom, or your closet. to achieve the mental separation you need. In silence and practicing deep breathing techniques, stay away from your partner, children, roommates, co-workers, friends or family.
- Immerse your face in cold water. What is the effect? Temperature “helps counteract that sympathetic stress response, and helps bring the body down to a calmer place,” Mona Potter, MD, medical director of McLean’s Anxiety Master’s Program, tells SELF. The feeling of freshness can be really helpful. Other ideas to change your mood are: splashing your face for a similar effect or taking a cold shower.
- Snuggle under a heavy blanket so that deep pressure helps reduce anxiety, by acting on the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and signaling to your brain that it is time to relax.
- Disconnect from everything. He It does more harm than you think, so if you need to delete Twitter or another social network to get away from the news for a while, that’s okay.
- Verify yourself. Existential anxiety and other anxious thoughts or fears can cause us to believe things that simply aren’t true. When these thoughts occur try asking yourself: “what evidence do I have for this thought?” This can help you separate worst-case scenarios from realistic situations that you probably have more control over. ‘