Most of us have encountered at least a few people who have run from emotions that they didn’t want to deal with. Some have walked away from discussions or disagreements they didn’t want to have, while others nodded and agreed to just about anything if it meant that conflict would be avoided.
So what makes some people so much more comfortable with the type of emotions that others flee from? It’s rarely an innate superpower, but rather that they put the following habits into practice on a regular basis.
1. Accepting inevitable pain or discomfort, as well as the awareness that it will pass.
One of the most valuable lessons my dad ever taught me was the phrase: “This is going to hurt, but it will heal and the pain will stop”. I was a rather adventurous child, and not only did I get constant scrapes, scratches, slivers, and other injuries, but I also clamored to learn everything from cooking to fire building and maintenance. As a result, any time I asked if I might get hurt, or if the medical treatment I was about to receive would be painful, the answer was inevitably: “Yes, but it will heal”.
This lesson has served me well on countless occasions, including when dealing with difficult emotions associated with health scares, divorce, and many other stressful life experiences.
When a person runs away from emotions, those difficult feelings don’t disappear: they just get suppressed and will manifest in different ways. In contrast, Psychology Today advises that a person who acknowledges and accepts that this is going to suck, but will also pass, can face challenges with courage and move through them with much greater ease.
2. Understanding where these emotions came from.
No difficult emotion emerges from a vacuum: they all have a source, and being able to identify where these emotions stem from goes a long way towards helping to process them. For example, a person might have a disproportionate emotional response to a particular experience, and either lash out at those around them or be overwhelmed by their sorrow, anger, and so on.
Psych Central advises that in many cases, their response has little to do with what’s happened in the present moment and instead stems from an experience they had in the past. By taking the time to recognize the overlay, this person can acknowledge that what they’re actually responding to is an old wound that was never tended to properly. This way, they can both heal from the past hurt and work through the present issue with much greater ease and grace.
3. Examining the situation from different perspectives.
There’s an old parable from India about a group of blind men describing an elephant solely by touch. Each one thinks they know all about what the elephant looked like based on what they could feel, so one believed it to be spear-like, while another described a wall, or a sail.
This is what happens when one tries to see the big picture from only one perspective.
In contrast, those who process their difficult emotions try to see situations from several different perspectives. They have mastered the art of empathy. They recognize how they view what happened and how they feel about it, but also acknowledge that others involved have processed the experience through their own lenses in turn. Furthermore, they also recognize that another’s lens may offer greater clarity than their own, especially if they have limited experience in the subject.
4. Being introspective to separate emotion from fact.
Just because a person feels a certain way, that doesn’t mean that it’s true. For example, a person might feel that they’re being personally attacked when someone else disagrees with them, but that doesn’t reflect the truth of the situation.
Psychology Today reminds us that feelings are not facts, and those who process difficult emotions have learned not to believe everything they feel. Instead, they examine their emotions from the viewpoint of a detached observer, and analyze the situation without feelings getting in the way. They are emotionally intelligent. Once they’re able to determine the truth of what occurred, they can then decide how to feel about it from a grounded, rational perspective rather than being reactionary due to heightened, misplaced emotion.
5. Using breathing techniques to calm themselves and release body tension.
Positive Psychology advises that deep breathing techniques are essential for regulating and processing emotions. This is because slow, rhythmic breathing (especially when inhaling through the nose) quite literally calms your brain. People who know how to process uncomfortable (and often unwanted) emotions have found which deep breathing techniques work for them and use them to self-soothe during times of heightened emotion.
They also do mental “body scans” to determine where their difficult emotions are sitting within their body. For example, do they feel a knotting sensation in their abdomen? Are their fists or jaws clenched? By identifying where the tightness is, they can focus on actively releasing it.
6. Prioritizing personal space and time to rest after difficulty.
If you were to sprain your ankle badly, you’d recognize that you need to rest, elevate it, ice it, and allow it to heal. Unfortunately, most people who experience uncomfortable emotions don’t allow themselves time to decompress afterwards: they simply change direction and move onward, away from the discomfort those emotions caused.
Those who process difficult emotions rather than fleeing from them understand the importance of rest for healing emotional and psychological distress. They’ll set aside time alone to rest, sleep, and work through everything they experienced, which goes a long way towards healing from what they’ve been through.
7. Treating emotionally charged situations as learning experiences.
In addition to resting, many people who seem comfortable with emotional upheaval will also journal about what happened, either in a written paper journal or in a blog of some sort. They do this both so that they can work through everything they’re feeling, and so they can refer back to their notes if and when anything like this happens again in the future.
To them, every challenging experience is an opportunity to learn and grow as an individual. They might “write hot”, while their emotions are still roiling, and then come back to what they’ve written once their tempers have cooled and tears have dried.
They also take note of what did and didn’t work as far as regulating themselves, and what they would have done differently if they could go back and re-live that situation. Essentially, they learn to manage their emotions through trial, error, and future course adjustment.
8. Discussing how they feel.
When these difficult emotions are the result of interpersonal conflict, those who prefer to avoid them will pretend that the conflict never happened because they don’t want to deal with any more perceived “negativity”. In contrast, people who process difficult emotions instead of running from them will set aside time with the one they had conflict with so they can discuss what occurred.
By doing so, they seek to understand why the conflict occurred, what actions can be taken to avoid that kind of conflict again in the future, and how to best express how they feel in the moment so that they never reach a boiling point, so to speak.
This approach is an incredibly healthy one; it’s much less likely that these situations will end up repeating themselves. Meanwhile, when difficulties are avoided rather than confronted, they’ll inevitably happen again because the underlying issue was never resolved.
Final thoughts…
It’s important to keep in mind that not every challenging situation is a “trauma”, and most personal conflicts are not relationship enders. Running from any type of conflict out of fear that it’ll result in devastating loss can often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In reality, people who work through and process their difficult emotions generally have much healthier and long-lasting relationships and friendships because they’re willing to face their discomfort and understand where it stemmed from. These challenging emotions teach us a great deal about ourselves and each other, and can be immensely beneficial foundations to build upon.
