4 Steps to Better Manage Your Emotions and Stop Suffering Through Them

This article was originally published on Sous le tapis and written by Margaux Damain, mental health writer and podcaster. 

Managing your emotions isn’t innate—it’s a skill you learn! It involves feeling, naming, and understanding the origin of emotions and the messages they carry for us.

By taking the time to consider and decipher our emotions, we analyze the events of our lives more precisely. we become more aware of our needs and limits, we make more conscious and authentic choices, and we become less vulnerable to toxic relationships.

In short, learning to manage your emotions is an essential skill for feeling better in your own skin, weathering life’s storms with more resilience, and leading a more fulfilling life.

“Why Can’t I Manage My Emotions?”

Managing emotions requires developing several skills, as we will see in the following method. However, there are many factors in our lives that can slow down or even hinder our emotional regulation journey. Being aware of them is the first step toward allowing yourself to face your emotions and learn to regulate them.

One factor that limits this learning is the reluctance some feel toward actually experiencing their emotions. Some people grew up in environments where emotions were suppressed, whether explicitly or implicitly. They learned to sweep them under the rug.

Furthermore, emotions are rarely welcome in the corporate world, where employees are “invited” to leave them at home—as if emotions were luggage one could easily drop off at the door…

Finally, feeling one’s emotions forces us to acknowledge our vulnerability, which is often seen as incompatible with the “scripts” of masculinity. Boys learn at a very young age that emotions belong to the “realm of girls,” which does not encourage them to develop their emotional intelligence.

There are, therefore, many reasons why we don’t always give ourselves permission to feel. Yet, feeling is the indispensable first step to regulation: we cannot understand where they come from or what they have to say if we don’t feel them first.

By rejecting our emotions, we think we’re getting rid of them—we aren’t! An emotion is an automatic reaction that continues to manifest mentally and physiologically if ignored.

Over time, repressed emotions can gain intensity. They become overwhelming: that’s when we explode in anger, burst into tears, or find ourselves flooded with anxiety. Emotions are much harder to regulate at that point, and we might be tempted to push them even further under the rug for fear of facing them again. But it’s a vicious cycle: the less we allow ourselves to feel them to learn how to regulate them, the more overwhelming they become.

Lastly, some people struggle to manage their emotions because they lack the capacity to identify them. They may suffer from alexithymia, a condition that can impact mental health and often requires support from a therapist. This condition can be innate… or acquired! For instance, a man who learned from a young age to suppress his emotions can develop alexithymia. If you’re interested in this, American psychiatrist Alok Kanojia (Dr. K) discusses it often on his YouTube channel, Healthy Gamers GG.

In conclusion, if you can’t manage your emotions: you are not alone! The method that follows is a first step to help you. This journey can also be undertaken with a psychologist. There are many good reasons to seek professional support. If your emotions feel overwhelming, if some have persisted for too long, if you struggle to name them or don’t know where they come from, then the compassionate and patient guidance of a mental health professional is welcome.

On a personal note, I used to have self-sabotaging behaviors in certain areas of my life. It was through therapeutic work with a psychologist that I untangled many things and learned to validate and listen to my emotions. This has had a massive impact on my life: I make better decisions for myself, respecting my needs and limits (and it lifts a huge emotional weight off my shoulders!).

Here is the translation of the second part of the article. I have organized it to be scannable and clear, using tables and bolding to highlight the key concepts.

How to Manage Your Emotions in 4 Steps

The method for managing your emotions consists of:

1. Recognizing your emotions.
2. Taking the time to name them.
3. Understanding their origin.
4. Deciphering the hidden message.

Step 1 : Recognize the Emotions

Here is a simple method: sit comfortably and close your eyes. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Valence: Is my emotion pleasant or unpleasant?
• Intensity: How strong is it? Low, moderate, or high?
• Physical Symptoms: What do I feel in my body? Are there parts that are tense, knotted, or stuck? Or, conversely, relaxed?
• Thoughts: What thoughts am I having? What images come to mind?

This “inventory” often begins to soothe the emotion. Simply feeling and acknowledging an emotion can sometimes calm it. 

To go further into relaxing, breathe deeply several times, focusing entirely on your breath.

Step 2 : Name the Emotions

Once you allow yourself to feel, you will then name what you feel. 

This is about developing what psychologists call emotional granularity, which is the ability to differentiate emotions with more or less precision. 

A person with high emotional granularity knows how to differentiate their emotions with finesse. This then allows them to better understand their origin (step 3 of this method) and to decipher the hidden message (step 4) to make informed decisions. They will tend to take more time to analyze the situation and scan possible options before reacting. Conversely, a person with low emotional granularity will express their state using generic words and expressions like “I am not doing well.” 

Back to you: you have taken the time to feel and recognize your emotions (step 1). Next, ask yourself the following question: what am I feeling? Is it rather anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, or even joy? 

Obviously, if you have even more precise terms to name your emotions, do not hold back! Each emotion, such as anger or sadness, has degrees of intensity. Low-intensity anger is, for example, annoyance. Conversely, high-intensity anger can be rage! 

If you need to flesh out your emotional vocabulary, take a look at this article.

Step 3 : Understand the Origin

Ask yourself: What triggered this?

Don’t rush this. Describe precisely:

• Who were you with?
• Where did it happen?
• What was the context?
• Does this remind you of similar past situations?

Step 4 : Decipher the Message of the emotions

Like an investigator, you learn here to decipher your emotions. 

Each emotion has a reason for being: they express themselves to indicate that your needs are threatened (in the case of unpleasant emotions) or that, conversely, your needs are fulfilled (that is when joy and all its nuances manifest). 

Every emotion exists for a reason: they signal that your needs are either threatened (unpleasant emotions) or fulfilled (that is when joy and all its nuances manifest).

Below is a table of fundamental needs developed by Marie-France and Emmanuel Ballet de Coquereaumont, two psychotherapists, in their work “J’arrête d’être mal dans mon couple” (published by Eyrolles, page 114, section “taking care of one’s needs”):

To translate your emotions into needs and regulate them, you can ask yourself the following questions:

• Why are my emotions expressing themselves?
• What do I need?
• How can I respond to these needs? 

Behind each primary emotion (anger, sadness, joy…) hide particular needs.

Zoom on pleasant emotions 

Training to feel, name, understand, and decipher your pleasant emotions is interesting in many respects:

• Training in emotional regulation with emotions that are easier to live with.
• Gaining awareness of what makes us happy in life and thus giving us more chance to reproduce and prioritize fulfilling situations, activities, and relations.
• Growing pleasant emotions within yourself: they take up a bit more space, which helps to gain self-confidence (increased mental and physical well-being).

You may have noted that I do not speak of positive versus negative emotions but of pleasant and unpleasant emotions. I avoid the term “negative,” which can cause a rejection of the emotion. However, as uncomfortable as they may be, unpleasant emotions are legitimate and carry meaning. Just like pleasant emotions, they are your compass and only wait to be heard to help you make better choices in your life.

One last important thing: the steps described here require practice, patience, and a lot of kindness toward yourself. They are not always simple to perform alone, notably because confronting emotions sometimes comes to contradict the beliefs we have about ourselves, others, and the world. 

If you are struggling and feel that it is weighing on you to move forward with more confidence in life, you deserve to be accompanied by a psychologist. The key: having a secure space to express your emotions, conducting the investigation at your own pace, and more broadly developing skills that will be useful to you all your life to preserve your well-being and your happiness.

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