More about Emotions
Do you find that you struggle with or fear one or more emotion. The good news is you are not alone. There is no human being born who will go or has gone through their life without emotional pain of some kind. As we grow up we develop various relationships with our emotions, some of these may be helpful some not. Many of us use avoidance tactics so that we don't feel the feared emotion. This continued avoidance as you've probably noticed leads to a never ending struggle that prevents us from living the life that we want. We can help you to learn how to live with the hurt and pain without damaging or restricting the possibilities in your life. You will no longer need to struggle even harder to manage or eliminate your feelings, you can stop your emotions from determining who you are and how you live your life. Contact us and let us help you to live your life to the fullest. It may be that your feared emotion is anxiety or anger and sometimes you even feel scared at the thought of feeling anxious or angry. Well there are many of us who act just like you. Everyone of us at some time has some degree of feelings of anxiety and anger. Anxiety is necessary to keep us safe. Imagine not fearing or feeling anything, how long do you think that you would survive in the middle of the African jungle living in a tent. Anxiety is a primitive emotion that originates from the flight, fight or freeze response which as cavemen often kept us safe from preditors. In our modern society anxiety is helpful to keep us safe when crossing a busy road or in any potentially dangerous situation. Without anger we may never be motivated to make difficult changes. Imagine what type of society we would live in if no one ever got angy about things like murder, rape, famine, the credit crunch and resultant recession and any other events in which there are helpless victims. Thus our emotions in conjunction with our minds can help us to keep ourselves safe and control or change our external environment. Problems arise when we use this control strategy to get rid of or control our thoughts, memories and feelings. The more we struggle to control or change our internal environment the more these uncomfortable feelings come back.
Try not thinking about your favourite food, notice your mouth salivating as you try not to think of your favourite food. How easy was that, we guess that it wasn't. In the same way it doesn't matter how much you may want to get rid of difficult memories and the associated thoughts and feelings they just keep coming back.
This need to control our thoughts and feelings are frequently reinforced as we grow up. How often are we told to 'keep a stiff upper lip'or 'get over it', 'don't cry over split milk' what this really means is don't cry or get upset as I will get upset and I don't like getting upset. In this way our emotions are continually being invalidated (viewed as unimportant) and we never learn how to validate our own feelings. We can't help you get rid of your feelings but we can help you to gain control of your behaviour and begin living the life you want without fearing your emotions.
At Life That U Want we would agree with many in the therapy community that the use of labels for problems are not always helpful to the individual who suffers from them. However, you may have been shoehorned into one of them and may find it helpful to get an idea of what they mean. To find out more about a diagnosis that you have been given go to NHS Choices website Generally for a professional to have given a specific diagnosis you would have needed to have experienced specific problems for a certain amount of time. If you have been given a diagnosis please remember that putting labels on jars does nothing to change their contents. So please hold any thoughts or ideas about any diagnosis lightly and no matter what your problem remember that there is help available if you are willing to accept it. If you haven't been given a diagnosis please notice any urge to pin a label on yourself the way in which you behave in the presence of uncomfortable feelings is not who you are, it is how you behave. Like any behaviour, we believe that although it may at times be very difficult and painful, it is possible with patients and self-compassion to act differently. See our interventions page for how we can help you do this.