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What style of clothes do you prefer? What food do you like the most? We all have certain tastes, patterns of behavior, and personalities. The same thing happens in the emotional realm and there are enormous individual differences in the ways we process our emotions. As a matter of fact, each and every one of us is unique in this aspect.
It could be said that every family promotes its own forms of emotional processing. For instance, in some homes, contention and repression prevail. On the other hand, in others, there’s a lack of filters and a regulation of internal states. However, extremes are never good and there are more and less healthy ways to manage emotions.
The problem is that you might not be aware of how you react to what you experience inside yourself. Maybe you find it easier to explain what your favorite literary genre is than to define your style of emotional processing. Nevertheless, knowing your emotional processing style could offer you a really practical tool for dealing with complicated situations.
Living in harmony with your emotions would prevent you from falling into the black hole of anxiety, depression, and the multiple forms of mental suffering.
The five forms of emotional processing
Emotional processing defines the way in which you deal with what you feel in every different moment and situation. Thanks to this mechanism, you develop a series of responses with which you seek adaptation and well-being. However, although it’s easy to understand, it’s complicated to carry out.
In fact, such a craft requires, first of all, adequate literacy in terms of your emotions. Unfortunately, this is often something you’re not taught. We talked earlier about families. To an extent, the way you react to every emotion comes from what you’ve seen and have been taught at home.
If you were raised in a dysfunctional, oppressive, or neglected family environment, you’ll carry with you unconscious and distorted schemas about emotional processing. Those who aren’t capable of processing their emotional experiences are doomed to live their lives held captive by their fears, intrusive thoughts, lack of impulse control, and even obsessions.
Research conducted by the University of Bern (Switzerland), highlights the importance of this mechanism in order to advance more effectively in any psychotherapeutic process. So, how can you discover what kind of processing defines you? Find out here.
1. Avoidance: Putting what you feel aside
Avoidance is a behavior that reinforces many pathological patterns. It means, for instance, if you’re afraid of something, you avoid it. So, if you feel sad, you might try and get away from it by going to a party. Or, if you feel anxious, you may go shopping or have an alcoholic drink.
However, not wanting to make contact with your emotions and trying to avoid them makes your discomfort chronic. This is the most common form of emotional processing. Indeed, not thinking and not giving importance to what you’re feeling while trying to replace that emotion with an escape behavior is really common.
2. Outsourcing: letting your emotion break out
We see this mechanism in young children with explosive tantrums. If you get carried away by your emotions without putting any filters or barriers up, there’ll be serious consequences. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see adults taking out their anger and frustrations on others.
It’s also not unusual to be driven by irrational fears that completely restrict your life. This is another example of how poor emotional regulation creates conflict between you and others and prevents you from achieving your goals and objectives.
When you let yourself be carried away by what you feel, you often behave in ways that you later regret.
3. Suppression: swallowing what hurts
Another really common form of emotional processing is suppression. In this case, you internalize your emotion, repress it, and pretend it’s not there. Suppression isn’t the same as avoidance. You don’t escape from your sadness, fear, or anguish with behaviors that generate a dopamine rush to displace (forget) what hurts.
In suppression or internalization, there’s no escape behavior. You limit yourself to shutting up and moving on. One example is not reacting to those who make you angry and violate you. Containing your emotions causes you to somatize and gradually develop depression or an anxiety disorder.
4. Egodystonic: Not knowing what to do with how you feel
Egodystonia appears when there’s some internal aspect about which you don’t feel good. The feeling is usually one of disharmony. There’s an imbalance and this makes you uncomfortable. In your emotional processing, you might not really know what to do with the emotions you feel.
You know that your despair is there and that melancholy and sadness are weighing on you heavily. This is an uncomfortable and desperate situation. But you don’t know what to do with your emotion, how to manage it, regulate it, and mitigate its presence. This can lead you to look for mechanisms to mitigate it that aren’t always healthy or useful.
5. Positive regulation: emotional balance as a source of well-being
When it comes to taking care of your mental health, the most important aspect is correct emotional processing. Indeed, the ability to adaptively use and regulate what you feel gives you power, a sense of control, and well-being. After all, the world, your relationships, and your day-to-day life are full of challenges and complexities that you must know how to handle.
When you can express what you feel, you make better decisions, relate to others more effectively, and can face adversity with greater poise. Fortunately, you can enhance this psychological craft.
How to improve your emotional processing
You didn’t come into the world skilled in emotional intelligence or the ability to consistently manage your emotions. You started with trial and error and gradually managed to take responsibility for your entire emotional universe. But this vast palette of sensations and psychophysical states is like a chaotic ball of thread that you have to know how to untangle.
If you want to improve your emotional processing, consider the following steps. They’re some really basic guidelines but they’ll facilitate your journey toward psychological balance.
Emotional care
Pay attention to what you’re feeling and get in touch with your emotions, and with what your body and mind are telling you. Don’t displace your emotions and don’t evade them. Their mission is to give you a message and you must listen to it. Stay open-minded and connect with yourself.
Accept what you feel, without judging it
Your emotions are neither good nor bad. They’re merely psychophysical states full of meaning that define how you’re feeling at a specific moment. Nothing more. You’re not your emotions, you’re the person who contains them and, therefore, you must accept what you’re feeling, without valuing or criticizing yourself. There’s a reason for what you’re experiencing.
Label and analyze your emotions
When you identify the emotions you’re feeling, you offer them presence and the time will come when you take responsibility for them. So, make the effort and try to define and label what you’re experiencing and you’ll later come to understand what’s happening.
If you’re feeling anger and frustration, ask yourself why? What’s happened to make you feel this way?
Modulate and act on what you feel
Modulating an emotion means not letting yourself be carried away by it, but listening to it, attenuating its intensity, and thinking of a response. What could you do to feel better? What strategy can you carry out to solve what’s bothering hurting, or worrying you?
Remember not to leave until tomorrow the emotion you feel today. Indeed, effective emotional processing will allow you to enjoy life a great deal more.
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