Difficult Emotions
Wow life sure is difficult, hard, unfair, just grrrrr sometimes. Right? There are times when we feel anger, anxiety, grief, embarrassment, stress, remorse or other unpleasant emotions.Don't you just want to escape the pain, drown it out or push it away somehow. We may begin a mental struggle with the pain trying to mentally talk our way out of it, or we distract ourselves with activities or drown it out with food or drink or and sometimes very risky behaviors that harm ourselves. All these ways of avoiding pain only mask it in the long run. Avoidance creates suffering and keeps us from living fully, this miraculous and precious life that we have.
Through mindfulness you can learn to turn your difficult emotions into your greatest teachers and sources of strength. How? Instead of ‘turning away from pain in avoidance we can learn to gently ‘turn towards what were experiencing. We can bring a caring open attention toward the wounded parts of ourselves and make wise choices about how to respond to ourselves and to life.
1. Stop Turn Towards
Once you have become aware of the feeling, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath and then ‘sit with the anger, shame, guilt, anger, anxiety, frustration and fear. Dont inhibit it, suppress it, ignore it or try to conquer it. Just be with it with an attitude of open curiosity and acceptance.
2. Identify The Emotion
Acknowledge the emotion is there. If you are embarrassed, you can specifically recognize that feeling. You can mentally say to yourself, for example, I know there is embarrassment in me.
3. Acceptance Of What Is
When you are embarrassed, or feeling another difficult emotion, you dont need to deny it. You can accept what is present. Look into how you are feeling with this feeling and try just to be "still" with it and not judge.
Now let's all join in on the discussion questions together
1. After reading this post how did it make you feel?
2. Can you share some difficult emotions that you find you are struggling with? (only if you feel safe and comfortable)
3. Mindfulness skills are very important in not controling, but helps you not to have INTENSE feelings, helps you to stop avoiding and judging, but take one feeling on at a time with care
which one of these 3 skills are you going to try and why?
4. Is there any other mindfulness skills you do to help you with difficult feelings that you like to share with others here?
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@RumpleSteeleSkin
ok I'll start this off
1. After reading this post how did it make you feel?
Honestly, I got to thinking to deep in some of my emotions
2. Can you share some difficult emotions that you find you are struggling with? (only if you feel safe and comfortable)
Rejection, sadness, lonliness
3. Mindfulness skills are very important in not controling, but helps you not to have INTENSE feelings, helps you to stop avoiding and judging, but take one feeling on at a time with care which one of these 3 skills are you going to try and why?
1. Stop Turn Towards
Once you have become aware of the feeling, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath and then ‘sit with the anger, shame, guilt, anger, anxiety, frustration and fear. Dont inhibit it, suppress it, ignore it or try to conquer it. Just be with it with an attitude of open curiosity and acceptance. I want to try this cause I don't want to avoid no more
4. Is there any other mindfulness skills you do to help you with difficult feelings that you like to share with others here?
hmmm. Doing mindfulness skills sometimes can be hard and draining, but I like to do fun mindfulness things as well. Like being silly and creative-like a 5 year old is with finger paint. Listen to music and grab paper and doodle, also focus on some one elses hurt or misfortine and learn their wisdom.
@RumpleSteeleSkin Awesome!
@RumpleSteeleSkin
1. After reading this post how did it make you feel?
I think this is worth to be learnt, turn difficult emotions into greatest teachers and sources of strength is a great and useful skill to have.
2. Can you share some difficult emotions that you find you are struggling with? (only if you feel safe and comfortable)
Rejection, frustration, irritation
3. Mindfulness skills are very important in not controling, but helps you not to have INTENSE feelings, helps you to stop avoiding and judging, but take one feeling on at a time with care which one of these 3 skills are you going to try and why?
1. Stop Turn Towards
Once you have become aware of the feeling, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath and then ‘sit with the anger, shame, guilt, anger, anxiety, frustration and fear. Dont inhibit it, suppress it, ignore it or try to conquer it. Just be with it with an attitude of open curiosity and acceptance.
Previously you shared ONE SKILL about examine our feelings. I want to try this because I think after being able to examine, it would be good to accept it.
4. Is there any other mindfulness skills you do to help you with difficult feelings that you like to share with others here?
Umm, not yet 
@adaptiveLight27 Good inputs! Light
@ASilentObserver
Thank you
1. After reading this post how did it make you feel?
Post was nice and I loved to read it. I really thankful to you for bringing this topic on table. :)
2. Can you share some difficult emotions that you find you are struggling with? (only if you feel safe and comfortable)
Generally I get irritated and annoyed with certain things. But, with the help of mindfulness practice I try to keep it minimized.
3. Mindfulness skills are very important in not controling, but helps you not to have INTENSE feelings, helps you to stop avoiding and judging, but take one feeling on at a time with care which one of these 3 skills are you going to try and why?
Actually, I'm practicing mindfulness for more than couple of years now and using those skills. Though, I'm more into acceptance of what I'm going through.
4. Is there any other mindfulness skills you do to help you with difficult feelings that you like to share with others here?
Not now. :p Because you already shared some of the major effective skills in this and another post how to mindfully handle rejections. Probably in near future, we could bring a discussion on table about various skills we can use for mindfulness. :)
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These were my thoughts! Determined to learn others. #Care2Share :)
1. After reading this post how did it make you feel? Aware of my emotions I feel mostly aware of the anger.
2. Can you share some difficult emotions that you find you are struggling with? (only if you feel safe and comfortable) anger
3. Mindfulness skills are very important in not controling, but helps you not to have INTENSE feelings, helps you to stop avoiding and judging, but take one feeling on at a time with care which one of these 3 skills are you going to try and why? I'm going to try all three of feel it is important that I do all three in order to cope with my anger and how to handle it in a healthy way.
4. Is there any other mindfulness skills you do to help you with difficult feelings that you like to share with others here? I meditate now but I used to just lash out people or at myself out of anger or even punch walls.
- After reading this post how did it make you feel?
For a very long time, I have often avoided difficult emotions by pushing it immediately away, not acknowledging it, or distracting myself from it. Back then, I often thought and believed that my strength comes from being able to resist these difficult emotions and not let them show to the surface, that was my interpretation of "not letting these emotions get to me". However, I realized that masking these difficult emotions did not really make them go away, but they were like being bottled up somewhere deep inside me instead. In the long run, they weighed me down and probably even hindered the emotional growth that I could have experienced if I understood back then that these difficult emotions are there to help me, to teach me, to make me understand some things needed for growth in life.
Thinking on it nowadays, some of my anxiety symptoms may have been connected to all those years of "bottling up or burying" difficult emotions, like inability to properly express certain emotions to other people, or maybe inability to properly respond to social situations. or unable to properly identify the emotions I am feeling needed for ease in conversations. It could be something, or it could be actually nothing. But what I learned from the resources and guides I have read, it made me change how I view and interpret the phrase "not letting these emotions get to me". It is okay to feel these emotions, it does not mean I am weak. It is in fact a healthy sign to show a variety of emotions, not just the good and happy ones, or rather than to be "emotionally numb". What makes you strong is accepting and just letting yourself feel these emotions, and then making something productive out of it, something that would make you a better person and better in handling yourself in your life.
- Which one of these three skills are you going to try and why?
I am trying (and hopefully already made progress so far) with the 3 skills shared. I am really trying to acknowledge to myself every time I feel a certain emotion in me, both good and bad, and try to identify it and put a name on it. I have already with me list of emotions to help me in naming or identifying them, hoepfully with practice I can identify what kind and to what degree is the current emotion I am feeling more easily. It does usually take more effort in bad or difficult emotions, to not try to ignore or suppress them immediately, but I am practicing it with patience and determination. It is indeed challenging to not immediately "judge" yourself for having that emotion, but to take more time being familiar with it instead.
I've struggled with pent up urges to cry and it's not releasing