Three Simple Strategies To Deal With Intense Emotions
Clinically proven techniques to help you stay grounded when you lose your cool.
4 min read | Illustration by Mayara Lista
Key points:
Sometimes we fear our emotions or suppress them because we were taught they are inappropriate.
Deep hurt and/or rejections in our past may cause us to see pitfalls where none exist.
Suppressing intense emotions can cause us to engage in harmful behavior.
Therapy is a healthy and safe space to explore intense emotions and to learn to sit with them WITHOUT acting on impulse.
There are other techniques you can practice on your own, such as controlled breathing, journaling and healthy distractions that can lower your temperature.
How can I deal with intense emotions?
You can deal with intense emotions by learning to feel them without acting on impulse. Many people fear or suppress strong feelings because they were taught those feelings are inappropriate, but suppression often leads to impulsive behavior. Therapy offers a safe space to explore intense emotions and build the capacity to sit with them. On your own, controlled breathing, journaling, and healthy distraction can lower the intensity in the moment.
Downtown Somatic Therapy is a New York City practice that helps people work with difficult emotions rather than suppress them. Clinic director Avi Klein notes that most clients struggle with their emotions in some form. The approach treats intense feelings as information from the body and nervous system, and builds the capacity to stay with strong emotion without being driven to react.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by your emotions? At Downtown Somatic Therapy, we believe in the healing power of emotion, but emotions can feel dangerous for some people. “The majority of our patients struggle with their emotions in one form or another” says clinic director and senior therapist Avi Klein. Emotions are nature’s way of helping us adapt to changes around us – when someone violates a boundary, it is good to feel angry; when we lose someone, grief is a healthy response. Sometimes, explains Klein, we fear our emotions because we were taught that our feelings were inappropriate.
Because of this, people often seek out therapy because they now feel disconnected from their feelings. But often the opposite can be true – many patients at Downtown Somatic Therapy experience intense emotions that can cause problems for themselves and their relationships.
“Sometimes, especially if we’ve been deeply hurt in the past, we can experience hurt or rejection VERY intensely,” explains Melanie Berkowitz, another therapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy. “It’s almost like a trauma – we are afraid it will happen again, so we vigilantly look for it and sometimes see it when it isn’t there.”
If you struggle with intense emotions, you’re likely familiar with the consequences of it. It can turn people off, scare partners, friends or loved ones and make you do impulsive things you regret later. Many people who struggle with self-harm also struggle with intense emotions.
“Intense emotions can turn people off, scare partners, friends or loved ones and make you do impulsive things you regret later.”
“I’ve worked with many women who felt intense anger or sadness and dealt with it by smacking themselves or cutting themselves” shares Christine Menna, a trauma and eating disorders specialist at our practice.
Why would someone resort to self-harm? “They know that their emotions are overwhelming and self-harm is the only way they’ve found to contain it and discharge that emotional energy without directing it at others.”
So, what should someone do if they’re struggling with intense emotions? Here are a few strategies that our therapists at Downtown Somatic Therapy rely on regularly:
First, use your somatic skills: breathe, scan your body, release tension: “So much of dealing with intense emotions is learning to sit with it without acting on it,” says Christine. Many of our therapists have meditation practices of their own, including Christine. We recommend it because to sit with uncomfortable feelings relieves our clients from needing to do anything with them.
Instead of breaking something or hurting yourself, try staying with your feelings until they dissipate. Avi has a variation of this style of meditation that was specifically designed to help deal with intense feelings and cravings without impulsive acting out.
“So much of dealing with intense emotions is learning to sit with it without acting on it.”
“The person who taught me this strategy called it ‘urge surfing’. Essentially, you start by taking your internal emotional temperature: how intensely do you feel this on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being barely at all to 10 being an emergency)? Set a timer for 5 minutes and breathe. After 5 minutes, check-in and see if you’re still at 10 (or 9 or 8). Continue to breathe for 5 minutes at a time until the feeling feels more manageable.”
Another strategy that our therapists recommend is keeping a journal. According to Melanie, “sometimes these big feelings cover up more tender feelings that are deeper down.” For example, while someone might be raging on the outside, they might be feeling deep shame or unworthiness on the inside.
Journaling offers a more contemplative mode of sitting with your feelings and exploring what might be triggering them. It allows you to mindfully explore your feelings while leaving them contained within a written page.
Lastly, when all else fails, consider distracting yourself. While we generally push our clients to engage with their feelings directly, there are also times when that’s not reasonable or feasible.
“While someone might be raging on the outside, they might really be feeling deep shame or unworthiness on the inside.”
“Therapy provides a safe space to explore feelings,” explains Christine Menna. “But that is something that is co-created by a therapist and their client. Being alone with intense feelings can be overwhelming.”
In that spirit, it is good to come up with a good distraction plan for yourself. Is there a tv show that reliably makes you feel good? What about an engaging book? A cleaning project you can take on or a run you can go on?
We recommend preparing some of your favorite distraction techniques in advance so that you don’t find yourself scrambling after an emotionally difficult situation.
If you struggle with intense emotions, want to talk about your coping strategies, and are curious about how somatic therapy works to heal trauma and soothe intense emotions, reach out for a consultation with one of our therapists today.
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Intense emotions can feel overwhelming partly because many of us were taught that strong feelings are inappropriate, so we learned to fear or suppress them. Past hurt or rejection can also make us anticipate problems where there are none. When emotion has been pushed down rather than felt, it tends to surface with more force.
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Several self-directed techniques can lower the intensity in the moment: controlled breathing, journaling, and healthy distraction that gives the feeling somewhere to go. These do not make the emotion disappear, but they create enough space to keep from acting on impulse.
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Suppressing intense emotions tends to backfire. It can lead to impulsive behavior you later regret, and it keeps you from understanding what the feeling is telling you. The aim is not to get rid of emotion but to learn to sit with it without acting on it.
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Therapy offers a safe space to explore intense emotions and learn to tolerate them. A therapist can help you see what sits underneath a strong reaction. As the article notes, someone raging on the outside may be feeling deep shame or unworthiness on the inside, and naming that changes how the emotion moves.
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Yes. Downtown Somatic Therapy describes emotion as having real healing power. Intense feelings carry useful information, and learning to feel them fully, rather than fearing them, is part of a healthier emotional life.