Emotions
3 Ways to Handle Tough Emotions
Overwhelmed by strong emotions? Use these strategies to face your feelings.
Posted January 6, 2025 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Certain strategies can help people deal with intense emotions.
- Suppressing feelings doesn't do any good. It is better to embrace them instead.
- Three powerful approaches rooted in mindfulness—awareness, stillness, and release—can help.
What do you do when you feel a difficult emotion? Do you push it away or dive into it? Do you express it in words or become flooded into a state of screaming, sobbing, or shutdown?
Every adult—and especially every parent—can use a sturdy toolbox of healthy ways to handle intense emotions. If we don’t have that, we are likely to try desperately to shove the feelings away and explode when that fails to work—which it always does, eventually. The three best tools I know are to be fully aware of the emotion, ease the emotion with a sense of stillness, and release the emotion.
This post is a guided meditation on these emotional strategies. You can read it silently to yourself, record it for yourself to listen to, or have a friend read it to you. With practice, you can use these tools even when you are experiencing an intense and difficult emotion.
A meditation on intense emotions
Get comfortable, settle in, and take a few deep breaths. Imagine yourself having a strong feeling. Or perhaps you are already deep in a feeling.
Maybe it’s anger, resentment, fear, sadness, or worry.
Pick one feeling and bring it a little closer. You will be spending some time with this emotion. You can choose whether to look at it from a distance or feel yourself fully in it.
It may be troubling to be in this emotional state or even just to think about it. You may want to get rid of that feeling. Let’s try some approaches that are very different from rejecting the emotion.
Awareness
Consider the possibility that you can be fully aware of that feeling instead of pushing it away or running from it. What if you are curious about it?
What is it like? Does it have a color, a shape, a sound, or an image?
Imagine sitting beside that feeling instead of fighting it, ignoring it, or turning away from it.
Don’t focus on the situation outside of you that triggered your feeling. Instead, be aware of the emotion from the inside. An emotion is not “what happened.” It’s not the story about it.
The emotion is what’s going on inside you.
Emotions have body sensations. Notice the body sensations of this emotion.
- Maybe your mouth is dry, or your muscles are tense.
- Maybe your eyes are welling up with tears.
- Maybe your hands are making a fist, or your heart is racing.
Let yourself experience those sensations. The sensations may be very strong, too intense to ignore. Or you may find it hard to be aware of your physical state. Tune in to your body.
If awareness and exploration of the emotion is very intense, you can say to yourself:
- “It’s OK; I’m safe.”
- “I can feel this without pulling away or getting overwhelmed by it.”
- “I can sit compassionately with this emotion.”
- “I can choose what to do when I have this emotion, even when it is strong.”
These are phrases you can tell yourself whenever you want to sit with an emotion, to bring it fully into awareness, to embrace it instead of fighting it.
Stillness
The next method is to gently ease the emotion. Go back to the emotion you began with, or choose a different one. Bring it in closer again.
- Take some slow, deep breaths.
- Imagine that you drop a stone into a pond, and then you watch as the ripples and waves slowly settle into stillness.
- Let your emotions settle in the same way.
- The feeling may settle into stillness quickly, or it may take a while. Give it the time it needs.
- If you want, you can give yourself a hug.
- Or pat yourself on the shoulder like you are soothing a fussy baby
Calming and soothing can be powerful responses to strong emotions. Easing an emotion is not the same as sending it away. Easing means that we acknowledge the feeling, face it, and let it settle.
Release
The third method is to let emotions release. Let them out of your body fully, in a strong, but not dangerous, way.
Imagine your emotion is fear. Picture yourself shaking and trembling to release your fear. You may start to actually shake.
Imagine your emotion is sadness. Picture yourself letting the tears flow to release your sadness. Real tears may come to your eyes.
Imagine growling like a lioness to release your anger. Stomp your feet!
We have all been given so many messages that emotions are dangerous, unladylike, unmanly, and a waste of time. But emotions have a natural need to flow, to be expressed physically, and then to be let go. You can release any emotion in a safe and healthy way.
Coming back to the here and now
Take a few deep breaths and rest quietly in your body. Feel your feet on the floor.
Appreciate yourself for opening up to this experience of being aware of emotions, easing them gently, and releasing them.
Too hot to handle
Sometimes, of course, emotions are just too hot. You may need to lower the heat before you can use any of these methods. Here are some ways to cool off—not to suppress emotions, but to bring them into a safe zone for awareness, easing, or release.
- Splash cold water on your face.
- Do some intense exercise.
- Go outside in nature.
Whenever you have a strong emotion, right in the moment, you can practice awareness, easing, or releasing. You will have many opportunities to practice because emotions are part of life every day.
