How (Not) to Control your Emotions
By Mary Cook, AM, LSW
Imagine that you and I are sitting in a park enjoying each other’s company. We’re chatting away when suddenly, you notice a robin fly by. All sorts of birds have been chirping and flying by this whole time without giving you any pause, but this isn’t any bird...it’s a robin. And every time a robin passes, you become upset - you are no longer present to our interaction, but consumed by the task of making sure that no more robins come by. Perhaps a robin brings you back to a traumatic memory, a disturbing thought, or even a core sense of feeling that you are not enough. And then suddenly, all you can focus on is the fact that you need to get rid of robins to live well, rather than being present in the moment to the people, values, and tasks in the room that matter the most to you.
We can probably all relate to the desire to control our thoughts and emotions. I can’t feel angry and be the kind of parent I want to be - how do I get rid of the anger? I shouldn’t have mean thoughts…if I do, I must be a bad person. I can’t stop worry thoughts from showing up, and I’ve tried everything I possibly can to get rid of them. Why won’t they go away? Some of us have tried substances, binging, purging, and cutting, others have tried restricting or keeping so busy they have no time to feel. In some ways, we’ve become experts at attempting to control our emotions through escape and avoidance - but to no (long-term) avail. Robins - thoughts and feelings and urges and sensations that we just do not want - keep flying by, no matter how many strategies we throw at them to get them to stop, and all the while, our life is waiting to be lived.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we do the counterintuitive work of learning how to live full and meaningful lives with robins, rather than continuing to buy into the hopeless control agenda of trying to get rid of them. When we start therapy, up feels like down, left feels like right, and moving forward feels like moving backward. We’ve operated for a long time from the assumption that in order to live well we need to control our distress, so at first, learning to live with distress without relying on escape or avoidance can feel quite confusing.
Perhaps one more metaphor - one about quicksand - will help this sink in for you (pun intended). Like most people, your initial impulse at getting caught in quicksand would be to struggle - to try and claw your way out, to fight, scramble, and panic. But as you do so, you end up sinking deeper and deeper into the sand. The counterintuitive way to get out of quicksand is to slow down, spread out, lie flat, and increase the amount of surface area contact you are making with the sand. You can then begin to roll out by leaning into the sand.
With most people I see in therapy, we get to this point of examining how well their attempts to control distress have worked (often not well), and they go, why the heck would I lean into my distress when it’s the very experience causing me so much pain? Good question. And I’m actually relieved to hear that you’re struggling to make logical sense out of something that feels so backward. It doesn’t make logical sense, but we’re more interested in whether or not the approach works. And as hard as we’ve tried to use all those tools and strategies to get rid of robins and get out of the quicksand, usually we find that in the long-term, the robins keep flying by, and we keep sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand. When we exercise the muscle of responding to distress in values-oriented ways, rather than relying on escape and avoidance, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to the meaningful life we want to live. We no longer become consumed with trying to get rid of robins in order to be present to the people and things that we value.
Those of us who struggle the most emotionally tend to flip the Serenity Prayer on its head - “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” We tend to put the majority of our effort into attempting to control our thoughts and feelings, rather than learning how to change our responses to thoughts and feelings in ways that serve us. But to cultivate the wisdom to know the difference will require the challenging, yet rewarding, work of willingness to experience all that this moment has to offer you.
Here’s where I’ll invite you to practice. Over the next few days, when you experience any emotion of low-to-moderate intensity (start small!) and have a few moments to yourself, take inventory of a few things: thoughts associated with the feeling, bodily sensations associated with the feeling, and urges associated with the feeling. Where do your mind and body want to take you in the face of having this feeling? Continue to notice your mind and body showing up and gently redirect your attention to detecting everything you can about how the emotion feels. Observe carefully and with eyes closed or softly open, in a relaxed position, send a few deep, loving breaths toward the emotion. Imagine that you are here just to lovingly witness the feeling - not to change it, fix it, do what it tells you to do, or to escape from it, just to witness and validate yourself as you experience it. Now consider, how would the person I want to be in the world respond to this emotion? What does it have to teach me about what I value, what my limits are, or how to take care of myself or someone else?
Sending you peace and compassion on your journey of cultivating the wisdom to learn what you can control.
Mary Cook, LSW
“Mindfulness does not fight anger; it recognizes it and says hello. ‘Breathing in, I know that anger has manifested in me; breathing out, I smile to my anger.’ This is not an act of suppression or fighting. It is an act of awareness. Once we recognize our anger, we can embrace it with kindness.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Fight
*The ideas and metaphors in this article have largely been shaped by the work and writings of Steven Hayes, creator of ACT, and by the mentorship of Paul Holmes, PsyD.