There comes a time when you need to stop what is happening and take control of your life.

And a part of that is accepting, understanding, and coping with your emotions in a healthy way.

Emotional coping is when you effectively manage your emotional response to a situation, making it easier to regulate negative emotional reactions like sadness, anger, or anxiety. This can make you more empathetic to others’ emotions and more prosocial. 

I’ve put together a small guide towards emotion-focused coping that can hopefully help you!

1. Practice Emotional Mindfulness

Meditating with your emotions and focusing on them is integral to being able to manage your feelings. Try to soothe away your judgments, and be here in the moment with your feelings. And remember that being aware of which emotions are coming your way is key here. 

Mindful meditation is also useful since it can help you reconnect to the present moment by observing your thoughts and emotions, and letting them pass without any assumptions or opinions about them.

2. Reconnect with Yourself

In order to cope with your emotions in a healthy manner, first, you’ll need to reconnect with them. Ask yourself, have I been repressing anything as of late? Am I avoiding feeling negative emotions? Am I disconnecting from my emotions? 

Negative emotions aren’t inherently bad, we all have them and there’s nothing to run away from. Emotions are part of our human experience. Emotion-focused coping helps you with identifying these negative emotions and actually working through them, which will make you feel more in control in daily life.

Try something new today to remember who you are outside of the negative emotions: maybe go for a run, cook your favorite meal, or as a recent study found, take up yoga. The latter has been proven to improve your emotional regulation skills, self-esteem, and your experiences with emotions in general.

3. See the Different Angles of the Situation

Instead of looking at yourself as a victim of someone’s malice, you can try seeing it from their point of view: empathize with what they might be thinking and feeling. Could their behavior be a reaction to their own insecurities? It is absolutely okay to allow yourself to feel anger, betrayal or frustration towards the person who hurt you but it is important to not divert those emotions onto yourself in a detrimental way.

You can practice this ability with contemplative meditation, which positively influences your emotional regulation and can help you let go of the negative feelings you have.

4. Practice Forgiveness 

Oftentimes people hurt our feelings, whether intentionally or not. It’s perfectly okay to set boundaries and protect yourself from future harm, but holding in negative emotions only hurts you in the process. Learn how to forgive people for their mistakes, it’s better for your health and it won’t let your emotions pile up inside. It helps in reducing stress, increasing your sense of compassion and empathy, and relieves you from unhealthy negative emotions. 

5. Consider Going to Therapy

There are a lot of options out there to cope with your feelings, including healthy and not healthy ways that a lot of people practice instead of seeking help.

If you feel bad all the time, need a place to talk out your emotions, understand yourself more, and learn how to deal with your emotional responses, you should consider therapy.

It’s a space dedicated to you and your emotional growth, so don’t be afraid to reach out to a professional if you’re having a hard time in your everyday functioning.

Regulating your emotions in certain situations can be distressing, but with a little help, you can definitely get to your goals!