Helping our patients with emotional processing, emotional regulation, and conscious emotional activation for action

When an uncomfortable or unpleasant feeling shows up for us, we have a number of options.

1. We can react to it or suppress it.
2. We can try to run away or detach from it.
3. Make sense of it and reason with it.
4. Acknowledge it, name it, and process it.
5. Create space for it and allow it to be. Observe it mindfully and with curiosity.
6. Hold it or “cloak it” it with another feeling like hope, optimism, gratitude, compassion or kindness, and take action with those.

Which ones do you or your patients tend to do when it comes to uncomfortable feelings?

Many will often follow the path of the first three with negative consequences. Counseling is to shift from the first three, to more of the latter three. It’s part of emotional processing, emotional regulation, and conscious “emotional activation” for action.