As often as I say that your feelings are your friends, I also must acknowledge that they can become your worst enemies. And many fine people are set up to have this happen to them more than should be.Behavioral and cognitive learning they are set up by growing up in families which ignore or minimize, or simply do not talk about, feelings. I call this common childhood experience childhood emotional neglect.Behavioral and cognitive learning

But this is a powerful force that, unfortunately, when misused, can turn against you. For example, the anger that should be driving you to protect yourself, can get turned toward yourself, and begin to harm you instead.Behavioral and cognitive learning the feeling of loss that should be helping you to let go gets pushed underground and ends up draining you instead. Or the anxiety that’s telling you to prepare ends up causing you to avoid instead.Behavioral and cognitive learning these are only a few of the ways that your emotions can turn against you.

Here are 4 strategies that I have used effectively with many of my clients.Behavioral and cognitive learning whether your painful problem feeling is a one-time experience or revisits you periodically (or often) throughout your life, these strategies will help.Behavioral and cognitive learning they are tried and true and have proven themselves immensely useful. 4 effective coping strategies for tolerating strong emotions

• writing: other than therapists, few people know that the only way to effectively manage and work through emotion is to allow yourself to feel it.Behavioral and cognitive learning in saying that, I’m fully aware that I have delivered you some bad news. However, writing is an amazing way to help yourself sit with a feeling.Behavioral and cognitive learning if you find yourself eaten up by anger or some other strong emotion, grab some paper and a pen — you can type on your laptop but I think there is a more powerful connection between your feelings and your pen than your feelings and computer keys — and write whatever comes to mind.Behavioral and cognitive learning spew it, cry it, or slop it onto the paper as long or as much as you need. Then put it away and distract yourself by doing something else.

• sharing: there is something almost magical about sharing a strong emotion with another person.Behavioral and cognitive learning possessing this magic is one of the great advantages of having a strong emotional bond with a trusted someone in your life, like your spouse or friend.Behavioral and cognitive learning this magic is one of the reasons that therapy and support groups work. Saying, “I’m really sad today,” and, if possible, talking about why you feel it with another person requires you to name what you’re feeling and drag it from your inside to the outside.Behavioral and cognitive learning it works.

• meditating: intense feelings have a way of driving your brain. It can almost feel like someone else is in charge of it. It may make your thoughts race or become very negative or disjointed.Behavioral and cognitive learning the beauty of meditation is that it is the exact opposite of all of this. Meditation is essentially the process of taking charge of your brain.Behavioral and cognitive learning if, when you are feeling powerfully bad, instead of trying to escape that feeling you sit down and focus inward, you can take over the driver’s seat and find stillness and peace.Behavioral and cognitive learning

• processing: this is the granddaddy of all emotion skills. It consists of all of the steps above, combined. It involves sitting with the feeling while sorting out what the feeling is, why you are having it, and what the feeling is telling you.Behavioral and cognitive learning when you write, share, and meditate, you are doing the exact process that your intense feeling needs. When you do this, you not only listen to it, you take charge of it.Behavioral and cognitive learning this is, by far, the best way to take it’s power over you away.