You Can Reframe, Suppress, or Accept Your Emotions. Which One Works for You?

Emotions rule our lives, probably more than we want them to. While we enjoy moments of joy, peace, and thankfulness, life sometimes delivers blows of sadness, grief, and anger as well. 

Clearly, we all look forward to sunny surprises that brighten our days with happiness. But with negative emotions, we resist, deny, rationalize, and try to reshape them, but they do not go away that easily.

The good news is that we can learn to control how we respond to these little explosions of good and bad, and everything in between.

Emotion regulation often occurs without even realizing how we automatically brace ourselves for bad news or do a conscious act to gear up for game day. To cope you can actually set a goal, such as doing a team cheer before a game to influence the dynamics and trajectory of your emotions

While it feels like feelings explode unannounced, they actually unfold over time, giving us a chance to deal with them at various stages of development by engaging the right strategy at the right moment. Here are some examples of how you can select and modify your emotional reaction:

• Dreading it or preparing another response
• Distracting ourselves by not engaging
• Reframe what it means by assigning more or less emotional energy
• Adopt a behavioral response that defies your natural feeling, such as smiling when meeting someone you don’t like

There are two key strategies in dealing with negative emotions in particular:

• Reappraisal – acknowledging a problem but finding some positives and communicating them with others. This helps people cope in a healthier way since it consciously reframes a situation and is flexible in its response.
• Suppression – inhibiting the reaction while still feeling the sadness or confusion. This creates a natural tension since you feel one way but don’t express it.

People who reappraise, reinterpret the information before them, and take a proactive role in adopting more positive attitudes. In turn, they are often rewarded with more positive emotions, which enhances their self-esteem, resilience, sense of team, and quality of life.

Meanwhile, suppression only deals with the outward response to the negative stimuli. The energy to control it takes its toll on your brain and your social connections. Their bad moods tend to last long as they mask their authentic selves, with fewer positive emotions to buoy them back to happier days.

The other option is to simply accept the situation and the emotions that come with it. You deal with the sadness or frustration then let it go. This also tends to make you more resilient.

By being mindful of what is happening to you, you are coping better than someone who delays or denies their reaction to their emotions. In that way, we welcome all the emotions that we experience in a day, just as we would guests who drop by our house. Some are warm and kind while others bring more baggage.

As poet Jalaludden Rumi captured so eloquently in The Guest House:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-you-and-me/201509/the-good-and-bad-emotion-regulation-strategies