CJ Day
Staff Writer
Emotions are to people what water is to fish – so much of life is colored by them and so it can be hard to recognize their presence. Dealing with emotions in a healthy way can be just as important to a person’s health as exercise or therapy.
“You’re always going to feel your emotions, they’re there for a reason,” said Carolyn Pepper, professor in the Department of Psychology and studies self-injurious behaviors for the University of Wyoming.
Pepper focuses on understanding why people might commit acts like self-harm or suicide. One of the keys, she said, is understanding how people who commit acts like those feel and regulate their emotions.
“A lot of times, we’re looking at a failure to regulate emotions,” said Pepper. “People might cut themselves, or punch a wall, because they’re experiencing an emotion that they can’t regulate. You can look at the thoughts you’re having, and challenge them. Ask yourself why you’re feeling like this.”
It may seem strange to try to logic one’s way out of a depressive state, but there is value in introspection. One of the few ways of controlling emotion is understanding what a person is feeling and when.
There are also some ways to physically trick someone’s brain into lessening emotion. New theories suggest that physical responses associated with certain emotions, like rapid breathing during an anxiety attack, might not be caused by the emotion, but could be the thing that helps cause it.
“Emotions are a complex interaction of our thoughts and physiological responses,” said Pepper. “It depends on who you ask.”
Under this theory, breathing deeply and relaxing muscles could help to reset the brain’s emotional response in some way, in addition to other benefits. Pepper recommends techniques like these for dealing with strong emotions.
Even though there are many techniques to control emotions, some emotions are so intense they can not be controlled, and not every technique works on every person.
For situations like these, Pepper stresses the importance of just feeling the emotion.
“We have something called distress avoidance, where we teach skills on just coping with emotions as they come,” said Pepper.
Just as it is not healthy to let emotions completely take over, it is just as unhealthy to shut emotions out. Control over emotions does not come when they can be turned on and off at will, but rather when they can be understood and felt in a constructive way.
Drywall-shattering anger over a sports loss is unhealthy, but it is just as unhealthy to not allow anger when real wrongs have been committed.
“Emotions are useful, you can’t just get rid of them,” said Pepper. “They tell you what’s up.”
Unlike physical health, there is no uniform solution to become emotionally healthy. There is no concrete plan to work towards, and the best strategy may be to work a little bit each day to become a more emotionally aware person.
