0 
0 By Joey Askew
The emotions rise uncontrollably in their old familiarity. Immediately the mind tries to investigate the cause. “What is it THIS time?” It’s so frustrating to feel this over and over again. “I should(s)” begin flooding in. Mostly, “I SHOULD be able to control this”.
Yet, the thing is, no matter how much I simply want it to stop or tell myself I SHOULD be able to get over it, the feeling mounts up and up and up.
Thoughts about my job, money, relationships, PROBLEMS spiral round and round. It can quickly feel like a desperate situation; everything is crap and nothing I can think of “to do” feels “doable”. I just want to hide in bed. The worst is when I can’t even sleep when lying in bed because the rush of anxiety is relentlessly affecting my body and mind.
“I don’t have time for THIS!”
WHOA there! Time for some brakes.
STOP – Apply The Brakes
Thanks to attending Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), I feel a bit more versed in the theory of how to control my emotions nowadays (although it doesn’t take away the suffering). DBT has given me the STOP I need when my emotions suddenly explode. It has given me the opportunity to realise when I NEED to apply the brakes.
After stopping (literally using DBT’s STOPP skill – please take a look online), I trawl through some other skills and ideas in my mind. The problem is they don’t FEEL right, right now. I don’t want to do ANY of them, but I’ve learnt THIS is the trap.
The feeling of staying stuck in escalating emotion and thoughts IS THE TRAP. I need to be kind to myself at this moment – another concept which felt alien the first few times I tried it – even if the only way to explain this to myself is to avoid upsetting others.
Allow Yourself To Feel
What is the answer at times like these? What exactly is that ‘thing’ that I need to do? I think accepting that the answer is different every time has a big part to play.
Most importantly, before that, is ALLOWING myself to feel this anxiety and set of emotions:
“It’s OK to feel the way I am feeling…”
BREATHE
“Yes, it feels unbearable and I just can’t figure out the cause, no matter how hard I’ve tried…”
BREATHE
“But the ‘To Do List’ can go fuck itself…”
BREATHE
“I CAN do something positive to change how I am feeling right now.”
1in4 UK Book Store:
[amazon_link asins='1977009336' template='ProductGrid' store='iam1in4-20' marketplace='US' link_id='ffcb5f04-1297-11e8-8b2c-c721ea9703cc']
A Higher Purpose
The truth is that, although it feels undeniably horrible at the time, anxiety and the heightened emotions that come with it have a very important function in our lives. For me, someone who identifies very strongly as an empath and an emotionally highly sensitive person (HSP), I find myself questioning the higher purpose of such episodes of anxiety. What is this heightened emotion trying to tell me? Does acknowledging the emotion point to things in my life that could benefit from change?
Writing this article is one such example of a higher purpose for me.
Top Tip – Self-Care
As I mentioned before, I think it’s incredibly important to remember that taking action at such times is not a “one size fits all” approach. It changes not only from person to person but episode to episode. Prayer and meditation helped me out today but last week it was watching comedy clips on YouTube and falling asleep the time before that. The only “set” answer I can say comes from having a list of self-care activities that I can pick and choose from.
Make yourself a list of self-care activities that you would normally enjoy outside of heightened emotion and pick whichever one on that list that feels right at the time of anxiety. If you feel too overwhelmed to decide on an item, then please pick anything and see how it fits. If that item doesn’t work, please be kind enough to yourself to try another and another until you find yourself surviving the moments and maybe even feeling a bit of relief.
My TOP TIP is to have a list, ahead of time, of self-care activities that YOU would normally enjoy. While I, for example, enjoy meditation, my own sister would never want to meditate as a form of self-care in a million years. While others’ suggestions can be helpful, please don’t feel bad if you just don’t want to do exactly what they say. Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to resents the stereotypical crisis team suggestions to “make a cup of tea”, “go for a walk” or “take a bath”. Unless making clay owls really is your thing, please don’t feel bad for not wanting to do that activity, especially when you’re already feeling like crap.
My Inspiration Box
There are a few helpful images of “50 self-care activities” suggestions and similar on Google that might appeal to you. Another super helpful idea, especially if you are often too overwhelmed to make any decisions, is to make a crisis – or what I like to term inspiration – box. A literal box filled with some of your favourite things for the senses (touch, taste, vision and audio). Mine includes a hot chocolate sachet, funny photos of friends and family, technology and psychology magazines, a comedy DVD, lavender oil, inspirational and spiritual books and a grounding object – all of which I regularly switch around and update to avoid box boredom.
Another helpful, although often counterintuitive, idea suggested in DBT is to remember that feeling better isn’t the only goal for any self-care activities or skills that you try to use. The focus should be on surviving the difficult time without taking any negative actions that you might later regret, or which would conflict with your goals or values in life. Whatever the cause of your anxiety or overwhelming emotion please know that surviving it will, in time, lead you to feel better, even if that takes longer than any individual skill or activity application. Positive actions will add up in the end, leading to lesser episodes of intense emotions and faster recovery times.
Learning To Appreciate
Another key important tip is to acknowledge and accept that although you feel you “really don’t have time for all of these things”, you actually NEED to. It can be helpful to label this in the name of “efficiency”, if it makes the concept feel more acceptable than a form of self-compassion. When our minds are swamped in emotion, it can become physically and scientifically impossible to engage the more logical parts of our brain as most “to do” lists would require. You owe it to yourself to reduce intense emotions in order to become more logical and efficient for future tasks.
Finally, in acknowledging such emotion and taking action and embracing the function it is trying to serve, I share with you a reflection on my own episode directly prior to writing another article: “In working through hard times, we learn to appreciate the true value of things.”
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
