Stop Gaslighting Yourself: Learn to Accept All of Your Emotions
Written By: Margaret Wooll, Clinical Trainee at ACS, On-Campus Counseling Program
WE ALL HAVE INTENSE EMOTIONSsometimes. Part of growing up is learning to handle the big ones. Somewhere along the way, though, a lot of us get the message that we should be able to just control whether we even have certain emotions.
It doesn’t work that way.
While learning to manage your response to emotions is important – for example, not exploding or collapsing tends to make it easier to get along with friends, classmates, and family members – that doesn’t mean you can pick and choose what you feel.
When you deny your emotions, it affects you: physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s exhausting, and it changes how you relate to yourself and others.
In this article, we’ll explore “negative” emotions, and how a big part of dealing with them is learning to accept them rather than push them away. The RAIN method is an example of a more effective way to manage negative emotions.
Emotions “good” and “bad”
Powerful emotions, like anger, disappointment, and jealousy can be a lot. Sometimes we see them coming. Sometimes they catch us by surprise. But you feel what you feel, and everyone has these big emotions. They’re part of our shared human experience and our hardwiring for survival.
How we think about our emotions matters. They can be pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable. However, our emotions aren’t good or bad. They just are. And you aren’t good or bad for having them. When we judge ourselves harshly for having emotions, our feelings start to control us.
Our emotions are not good or bad, but that doesn’t mean they always feel good. Sometimes the negative emotions feel really bad or uncomfortable. Maybe you believe that you’re a failure for feeling afraid when you should feel excited. Maybe you believe that you should be able to control what you feel. You can do anything you put your mind to, right? Maybe you just want to be happy.
It’s normal to want to push negative feelings away, try to ignore them until they disappear, or deny they exist. We call this suppression.
Wanting to suppress intense emotions is understandable because they make us uncomfortable. Also, big emotions can be pretty inconvenient, and you have a lot of other challenges right now:
- Academics are demanding
- Your parents have high expectations
- You’re still figuring things out
- And your friends are going through all of this, too.
Why suppression isn’t the answer
Unfortunately, even though we have lots of reasons to avoid our negative emotions, it isn’t a good strategy. Emotions are useful – even negative ones – if we pay attention to what they’re telling us. They give us important information, such as when there is something in our environment we need to react to. It’s information we might not be conscious of, and it’s useful for motivating and guiding us. For example, disappointment in a grade might cause you to seek extra help. Anger might move you to stand up for yourself or someone else.
What if you don’t want to experience an emotion? Sorry, but no matter how good you think you are at control, suppression doesn’t work.
Think of your emotions like a beach ball. When you try to suppress them, it’s like pushing a beach ball underwater. You can push it down and down and down, but as soon as you let up, the beachball shoots to the surface – with FORCE!
Suppressing your emotions affects you physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s also exhausting. Research also shows that suppressing emotions is linked to greater stress which weakens the immune system making you more likely to get sick. Suppression also changes how we relate to ourselves. We lose resilience and stop trusting ourselves. With all this effort to not feel, you can’t be authentic in relationships, either.
If suppression doesn’t work, what does?
RAIN: A powerful technique for experiencing emotions
There are many techniques to manage negative emotions. One simple research-based mindfulness technique is RAIN. The RAIN acronym stands for the four steps: Recognize, Accept, Investigate, and Nurture.
- R – Recognize & Label It
What am I feeling? Name each emotion and be specific. “I feel anxious about my upcoming exams.” “I’m so angry and overwhelmed!” Labeling is a way to open up our experience and observe it without judgement or attachment. - A – Accept & Let It Be
Acknowledge that the emotion is there and give yourself a little pause to experience it. You don’t need to like it or decide if it is good or bad, simply let it exist. Research shows that Acceptance is beneficial for resilience in teens (Geng et al., 2020). For example you might say, “I feel anxious right now, and it’s okay. I’m not going to try to avoid, change or fix it.” - I – Investigate with Care
Experience the negative emotions and explore with curiosity. How does it affect me physically, and where is it in my body? “My heart’s racing. I feel hot and uncomfortable. My head’s pounding.” “Hmm, why do I only feel this way with this friend group? Maybe I should spend more time with people I connect with better.” - N – Nurture with Awareness.
Create space, observe thoughts objectively. You are not your emotion – this emotion is just a tiny portion of YOU! Be kind to yourself, invest in your happiness. “Maybe I’ll watch a funny video for a few minutes or journal. Then I’ll have a chat with Sarah.”
As you can see, the RAIN approach is an effective and simple practice. Try it out the next time you are facing a difficult emotion.
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References
Willroth, E. C., Young, G., Tamir, M., & Mauss, I. B. (2023). Judging emotions as good or bad: Individual differences and associations with psychological health. Emotion, 23(7), 1876–1890. https://doi-org.libproxy.scu.edu/10.1037/emo0001220
Geng Y., Gu, J., Zhu, X., Yang, M., Shi, D., Shang, J., & Zhao, F. (2020). Negative emotions and quality of life among adolescents: A moderated mediation model. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 20(2), 118–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2020.02.001