Bipolar Support Groups.com blog

For many people, emotions are a scary thing. Part of the problem is that we just don’t know what to do with them, according to Darlene Mininni, Ph.D, MPH, author of The Emotional Toolkit.

So we turn to the only strategies we do know. If you’re a man, you might distract yourself by playing video games, tinkering with your tools or drinking alcohol, she said. If you’re a woman, you might shop or eat.

Turning to these tools occasionally is OK, Mininni said. Making them part of your regular coping repertoire, however, is problematic.

Emotions are valuable, and offer a bounty of benefits. Once we’re able to process and cope with them effectively, we can learn a lot about ourselves and our needs, Mininni said. Emotions send us important messages and help us connect with others and accomplish great things, she said.

Using unhealthy strategies can sabotage our relationships, job and even our health, Mininni said. In fact, people who handle stress effectively have healthier immune systems, don’t get sick as often and age up to 16 years more slowly than people who don’t.1

What is an Emotion?

There’s actually no consensus on what an emotion is, Mininni said. She defines emotions as a “full-body experience,” an interplay between our thoughts and physical sensations.

As an illustration, Mininni created the following simple formula:

Thoughts + Body Sensations = Emotion

For instance, a kind of giddy happiness and anxiety have the same sensations, such as tight muscles and a pounding heart. What determines whether we feel happy or anxious are our thoughts.

Decoding Emotions

Mininni created a valuable step-by-step process to help people identify and manage their emotions. The first step is to figure out what you’re feeling – and you just need to choose from four main emotions.

Mininni said that all emotions fall into these categories: anxiety, sadness, anger and happiness. With anxiety, she said, your mind lights up with “What ifs?” What if I lose my job? What if I don’t meet someone? What if I fail my test?

You have thoughts of the future and everything that can go wrong, she said. Your physical sensations include a racing heart, tight muscles and clenched jaw.

With sadness, you have negative thoughts about the past. You feel tired and heavy; you might cry and have trouble concentrating, she said.

With anger, your thoughts are focused on how you or your values have been attacked, she said. The physical sensations are similar to anxiety, including a racing heart and tightness in the body.

With happiness, your thoughts are focused on what you’ve gained. Maybe you landed a great job, found a nice apartment or received a compliment. Physically, you feel light or calm, and you might laugh and smile, she said.

The next step is to identify the message of your emotion. To do so, ask yourself these questions, according to Mininni:

Anxiety: What am I afraid of?
Sadness: What have I lost?
Anger: How have I or my values been attacked?
Happiness: What have I gained?
Coping with Emotions

Once you’ve identified the emotion and its message, the last step is to take action. Ask yourself if there’s anything you can do to solve the situation, Mininni said. If there is, consider what you can do.

For instance, if you’re upset that you can’t find a good job, maybe you can have friends review your resume or hire a professional resume writer. Maybe you can sharpen your interview skills or extend your search a few zip codes.

If there’s nothing you can do, determine how you can cope with the emotion, she said. Mininni suggested meditating, getting social support, writing, exercising and seeking therapy.

Think of these strategies as an emotional toolkit. You simply reach into your kit, and pick out the healthy tool you need, Mininni said. In fact, you can create an actual tote, and pack it with comforting items such as sneakers, your journal, funny films, favorite books and a list of people you’d like to call when you’re upset.

The strategies that work best will vary with each person depending on your personality, physiology and other individual factors, Mininni said. For some people, running works wonders in alleviating anxiety. For others, meditation is better.

Emotions may seem confusing and threatening but applying the above practical and clear-cut approach reveals emotions for what they really are: useful, informative and far from murky.

From bipolar support groups.com

1. Identify the emotion you’re feeling. Identifying a specific emotion can be more difficult than you think. If you are struggling, start with the four basic categories: anxiety, sadness, anger, or happiness. By simply identifying exactly what you’re feeling, you can begin taking the power away from the emotion as you work through what’s causing it. Though your feelings may vary in intensity, most fall into one of these broad categories.[1]
Anxiety often takes the shape of “what if” questions. What if they don’t like me? What if I’m not accepted? Etc.[2]
Sadness tends to happen when we focus on things we cannot change such as death or loss.[3]
Anger is the response after being attacked, such as our values.[4]
Happiness is positive thought often around a gain, such as a compliment from a friend or a reward like a promotion at work.[5]

For many people, emotions are a scary thing. Part of the problem is that we just don’t know what to do with them, according to Darlene Mininni, Ph.D, MPH, author of The Emotional Toolkit.

So we turn to the only strategies we do know. If you’re a man, you might distract yourself by playing video games, tinkering with your tools or drinking alcohol, she said. If you’re a woman, you might shop or eat.

Turning to these tools occasionally is OK, Mininni said. Making them part of your regular coping repertoire, however, is problematic.

Emotions are valuable, and offer a bounty of benefits. Once we’re able to process and cope with them effectively, we can learn a lot about ourselves and our needs, Mininni said. Emotions send us important messages and help us connect with others and accomplish great things, she said.

Using unhealthy strategies can sabotage our relationships, job and even our health, Mininni said. In fact, people who handle stress effectively have healthier immune systems, don’t get sick as often and age up to 16 years more slowly than people who don’t.1

What is an Emotion?

There’s actually no consensus on what an emotion is, Mininni said. She defines emotions as a “full-body experience,” an interplay between our thoughts and physical sensations.

As an illustration, Mininni created the following simple formula:

Thoughts + Body Sensations = Emotion

For instance, a kind of giddy happiness and anxiety have the same sensations, such as tight muscles and a pounding heart. What determines whether we feel happy or anxious are our thoughts.

Decoding Emotions

Mininni created a valuable step-by-step process to help people identify and manage their emotions. The first step is to figure out what you’re feeling – and you just need to choose from four main emotions.

Mininni said that all emotions fall into these categories: anxiety, sadness, anger and happiness. With anxiety, she said, your mind lights up with “What ifs?” What if I lose my job? What if I don’t meet someone? What if I fail my test?

You have thoughts of the future and everything that can go wrong, she said. Your physical sensations include a racing heart, tight muscles and clenched jaw.

With sadness, you have negative thoughts about the past

With anger, your thoughts are focused on how you or your values have been attacked, she said. The physical sensations are similar to anxiety, including a racing heart and tightness in the body.

With happiness, your thoughts are focused on what you’ve gained. Maybe you landed a great job, found a nice apartment or received a compliment. Physically, you feel light or calm, and you might laugh and smile, she said.

The next step is to identify the message of your emotion. To do so, ask yourself these questions, according to Mininni:

Anxiety: What am I afraid of?
Sadness: What have I lost?
Anger: How have I or my values been attacked?
Happiness: What have I gained?
Coping with Emotions

Once you’ve identified the emotion and its message, the last step is to take action. Ask yourself if there’s anything you can do to solve the situation, Mininni said. If there is, consider what you can do.

For instance, if you’re upset that you can’t find a good job, maybe you can have friends review your resume or hire a professional resume writer. Maybe you can sharpen your interview skills or extend your search a few zip codes.

If there’s nothing you can do, determine how you can cope with the emotion, she said. Mininni suggested meditating, getting social support, writing, exercising and seeking therapy.

Think of these strategies as an emotional toolkit. You simply reach into your kit, and pick out the healthy tool you need, Mininni said. In fact, you can create an actual tote, and pack it with comforting items such as sneakers, your journal, funny films, favorite books and a list of people you’d like to call when you’re upset.

The strategies that work best will vary with each person, depending on your personality, physiology and other individual factors, Mininni said. For some people, running works wonders in alleviating anxiety. For others, meditation is better.

Emotions may seem confusing and threatening but applying the above practical and clear-cut approach reveals emotions for what they really are: useful, informative and far from murky.

101 TIPS:

What we think in our minds will eventually become what we believe. This is why it is so important that we start saying positive things about ourselves many times each and every day. Choose two or three of the statements below and repeat them to yourself throughout the day.

I love myself.

The world has a need for me.

I am unique.

I can and I will do things to promote healing in my life.

I can handle this one step at a time.

The sun is shining; I am ready to take on another day.

My problem has a solution; I will work on a plan.

I am a survivor.

I refuse to give up because I haven’t tried all possible ways.

I will inhale confidence and exhale doubt.

I may be one in 7 billion but I am also one in 7 billion!

I am smart.

I believe I can change the world (or at least my corner of it).

I am important.

Today, I will celebrate me.

I matter.

I can find peace through prayer and meditation.

I am strong.

My confidence is beautiful.

I am imperfect but I’m perfectly me.

My smile can make someone feel better.

I choose to focus on what I can control.

Everything will work out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out yet, it’s not the end.

I am happy with who I am.

Every day, in every way, I am becoming better and better.

I am a good person.

I keep going because I believe in myself.

I choose to see the good in the people I interact with today.

It is always too early to give up on my goals.

I can reach out for help if I need it.

I am special; I will not change myself for anyone.

I choose hope.

The answer is right before me, even if I do not see it right now.

I am thankful for…

I choose to take good care of myself.

I accept myself.

I can make a difference.

My past does not define my future, I do.

My life is filled with possibility.

I refuse to be pushed by my problems; I will be led by my dreams.

I am awake and ready to be awesome.

I will focus on my talents; I have things to share with the world.

I choose to have the strength to move on to healthier relationships.

I deserve good things in life.

I release myself from my anger.

I love who I am.

I will allow peace to fill my soul.

Today is a new day; I will see what adventure it holds.

I choose to be proud of myself.

I will do my absolute best in all things.

I will speak kindly to others and to myself.

I choose to be brave and tell others if I need their support.

I have the power to control my reactions to the challenges I will face.

I am becoming healthier each and every day.

I choose to see each obstacle as an opportunity to grow.

I will step out of my comfort zone and try something new today.

I am a success; I can make this a great day.

Note to self: You are amazing.

I can control my breathing.

I will stay calm, it will get better.

I allow myself to forgive; it will allow me to move beyond the pain, to a place of peace.

I choose to make today amazing.

I choose to let the past go and move on to the future.

Today, I will be courageous.

I release all fear from my mind.

I can reach my goals, I am unstoppable.

I am ready to write a new chapter for my life.

I will take the time to notice and be thankful for the little things.

I can write down my thoughts and take control of my emotions.

I am a child of God.

My hard work is already paying off.

I am thankful for life.

I choose to be happy.

I accept the good that is flowing into my life.

I will not allow anxious thoughts to steal my joy.

Today, I forgive myself.

My body knows how to get better; I will listen to it and rest when needed.

I am stronger than my worries.

I’m not the only one who struggles; I choose to be kind to everyone that I meet.

Yesterday was a bad day, not a bad life. Today will be better.

I am braver than I feel.

While I wait for the storm to pass, I will choose to dance in the rain.

I am loved.

I will remember; often difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations.

There is more to life than this moment; I choose to keep moving forward.

I am capable of bringing my dreams to life.

I am okay. I am breathing. I am alive.

I am capable of achieving great things.

I light the world with my smile.

My spirit is beautiful.

I make a difference in the world.

I allow myself to take a break and do something I enjoy.

I can make a difference.

I’m not sure what will happen tomorrow, but I’ll take care of myself so I am strong enough to face it.

I choose to approach my problems with a calm heart and mind.

I trust myself.

I will do my best with whatever comes my way.

I have a purpose that I am fulfilling.

I will listen to that whisper of hope that says, ‘you can do it, try again’.

I can change my life.

I will learn from yesterday, live for today and hope for tomorrow.

The Letting It Out Fallacy

This rests on the belief that people who hurt you or cause you pain should be punished. It often feels good to express anger when you are frustrated and hurting. It helps to discharge the pain. And it functions as a kind of revenge for any perceived injustice.

The underlying belief is that you are not responsible for your pain, someone else is. That person must have done wrong for you to feel so badly. Therefore, he or she deserves every bit of anger you feel like expressing. Maybe he or she will learn to do better in the future.

The problem with this whole line of reasoning is that you are responsible for your pain. And taking care of yourself is always your first responsibility. Pain and pleasure are essentially private experiences. No one else can be held responsible for your private experience. You know it and you feel it. Therefore you are the only one who can be responsible for it. If someone is frustrating or hurting you or causing you pain, your job is either to negotiate for your needs or let go of the relationship.

The second problem with letting it out is that anger destroys relationships. When the object of your anger is to inflict the same degree of hurt that you are feeling on someone else, people begin to erect psychological barriers to protect themselves from you. The tissue of a relationship becomes thickened and scarred. And finally you both become insensitive to pain and pleasure. This is how anger kills love: it make you thick-skinned, untouchable.

The last reason letting it out doesn’t work is that anger rarely gets you what you want. What you want is to be listened to, appreciated, cared for. Anger gets you coldness, withdrawal, and anger in return. Letting it out feels good, but it’s like smoking crack: a five-minute high followed by depression, pain, and emotional bankruptcy.

Exercise: When you are tempted to let it out, first review the positive and negative consequences of using anger with this particular person in the past. Make four columns down a piece of paper. Over two of the columns write “short-term consequences” and over the other two “long-term consequences”. Label the two short-term columns “positive” and “negative”, and the same with long-term columns. Write down all the short and long-term consequences you can think of, both positive and negative. At the end of the exercise, ask yourself this question: “Did anger get me what I wanted?”

Conditional assumptions are based on a syllogism like this:
“If you loved me, you’d pick me up at the subway station after work (or do the dishes, or show more sexual interest, or get home earlier, or help me when I’m tired, or spell me with caring for the kids, or fix things in the house, or finish school so you could get a real job).”
Some other variations:
“If you were a real friend, you’d initiate more often (or just spend some time with me rather than always having something else to do, or take more interest in my problems).”
“If they valued my work here, they’d get me a nicer desk (or give me a raise, or give me a better secretary, or ask what happened when I was sick last week).”

It’s possible to love or care for someone and still not meet his or her needs. Disappointing others does not make one uncaring, and caring doesn’t obligate one to never disappoint. No matter how much someone loves you, that person is still responsible for taking care of his or her own basic needs. That person is still responsible for saying no, setting boundaries, and protecting his or her own limits. “If they cared, if they loved me,” is a setup to make you feel righteous and make the other person feel bad. Truthfully, it’s a strategy for manipulation. But the result is rarely what you might hope. In the long run, making others feel bad doesn’t reinforce them to do what you want, it makes them want to run away, to avoid you.

Exercise: List the times you have disappointed someone you loved or cared for. Remember the times you have had to make difficult choices, when you decided to take care of your own needs over someone else’s. As you think back, notice how little your choice had to do with how much you loved, but rather how much you needed, or how much you were afraid, or how much energy you had.

Coping statements:
1. “Disappointing someone doesn’t mean you don’t care.

2. 2. “Our biggest task, no matter how much we love, is to take care of ourselves.”
3. “His or her needs are as legitimate as mine, and we can negotiate.”

This one is based on the assumption that you really can have control over the behavior of others. While sometimes people do change if you ask them, the fallacy of change reflects the belief that you can make people different if you just apply sufficient pressure. This is ignorant of one basic fact of human behavior: people change only when they are reinforced to change and capable of change. In other words, people change when they want to, not when you want them to.

Expecting people to change leads to frustration and disillusion. If you can’t find a way to make them want to change, you have undertaken a quixotic mission—you are tilting at windmills.

Exercise: Think about and answer the following questions.
1. How many times have you made a major change and sustained it because someone pressured you to do so?
2. What percentage of the people you have known have made a major metamorphosis to satisfy the needs of someone else?
3. How often have you succeeded in changing someone by pressuring him or her with anger?

Coping statements:
1. “The amount of support, help, and nourishment I am now getting is all I can get, given the strategies I am using.”
2. “People only change when they are reinforced to change and capable of change.”
3. “People only change when they want to.”

This belief hinges on the application of legal and contractual rules to the vagaries of interpersonal relationships. The idea is that there is some absolute standard of correct and fair behavior which people should know and live up to. The conviction that relationships must be fair reduces the complex give-take of friendship or marriage to a set of entries in privately held books. Your books tell you whether you are in the red or the black, whether you are getting as much as you give, whether you are owed something for all the sacrifices you have made. The difficulty is that no two people agree on what fairness is and in personal relationships there is no court or arbiter to help. What is fair is totally subjective and depends entirely on what you expect, need, or hope for from the other person. The word “fair” turns out to be nothing more than a disguise for personal preferences and wants. What you want is fair, what the other person wants or does is unfair.

When you say “This is fair” what you’re really saying is my needs are more legitimate than yours. No one wants to hear this. People resist and defend against such assertions. The better approach is to throw out the concept of fairness altogether. Reframe each situation as one of competing needs or preferences. Each person’s need is of equal importance and value, and is equally legitimate.

Once fairness is thrown out, real negotiation can begin.

Exercise: If you are struggling with the issue of fairness try reframing the problem as competing, but equal needs. Then attempt to make a clear, unbiased description of the other person’s need. Don’t try to evaluate whether it is more or less significant than yours.

Coping statements:
1. “Our needs are equally important.”
2. “Each need is legitimate, we can negotiate as peers

you pay attention to your inner monologue with which you analyze and interpret your experience, you will notice that many times each day you are judging the behavior of others. These judgements are based on a set of rules about how people should and should not act. People who behave according to the rules are right, and those who break the rules are wrong. You assume that people know and accept your rules. When they violate your shoulds, their behavior seems like a deliberate break with what is correct, intelligent, reasonable, or moral.

So the first problem with shoulds is that the people with whom you feel angry rarely agree with you. Their perception of the situation leaves them blameless and justified. Their rules and beliefs always seem to exempt them from the judgments you think they deserve. The more you try to convince them of their wrongness and their failure, the more indignant and defensive they become.

The second problem with shoulds is that people never do what they should do. They only do what is reinforcing and rewarding for them to do. Shoulds are YOUR values and needs imposed on someone with different values and needs. 

When you demand that people behave according to YOUR rules, you are violating reality in two ways. First, in most cases others will not agree with your values and rules. Their unique history and needs shape their perception in a way that justifies their behavior. Since you can rarely get others to agree that they are wrong, applying your shoulds to their behavior is an exercise in futility. Second, since behavior is shaped by the formula of needs minus inhibitions, should have almost nothing to do with it. Judging behavior according to your own arbitrary standard of right and wrong really seems to miss the point. The real issue is how much does this person need to act this way and what inhibiting influences, if any, might stop him.

Exercise 1: Stand in their shoes. When you are angry at someone, answer these 4 questions.
1. What needs influence him or her to act this

What beliefs and values influence him or her to act this way?
3. What aspects of his or her history (hurts, losses, successes, failures, rewards) influence this behavior?
4. What limitations (fears, health problems, lack of skills) influence this behavior?

If you don’t have all the information make up something that seems likely. The purpose of this exercise is to explain the behavior you don’t like from the other person’s point of view.

Exercise 2: Accurate Empathy. Imagine a dialogue between yourself and the person with whom you feel angry. Start by accusing him or her of acting wrongly, of violating some basic rule of conduct. Really try to articulate your should. Now imagine yourself as the other person, trying to answer your attack. Do your best to really become this individual, to see the world from his or her point of view. After you’ve answered as the other person, go back to your original feeling of anger and expand on your accusations. Keep up the attack. Now go back again and answer as the other person, really explaining his or her viewpoint. Do this at least three times. Notice how your feelings begin to change as you acknowledge the other person’s unique experience.