There are many ways to decide how to deal with situations that bring up a lot of negative emotions. This video looks at how we might make an initial decision about how to cope with difficult emotions that can arise.
Welcome back, this is Dr. Matt B with your Emotional Minutes. Today we’re talking about coping strategies to regulate your emotions. In the last episode, I mentioned how the way you deal with emotions depends on the context because every situation is different.
Introducing Ways to Control Emotions
There are a couple of coping strategies that research has found to be generally pretty effective. While these strategies will not work one hundred percent of the time, there are some things that you can do when you have difficult emotions come up.
I want to say that anything we talked about today is not therapy and this isn’t a therapy session. This is just for your own general knowledge. If you have specific questions on how they apply to your life, I recommend contacting a mental health counselor. They do great work, and they can help you with your own individual situation.
Coping Strategies: Can You Control The Situation?
I like to talk about the first strategy for dealing with emotions effectively in terms of a couple of key decisions that you’re going to make or ways to think about things.
The first thing centers around how much control you have over the situation. If you have some control over the situation, research has found doing things to try to affect that situation improves outcomes.
Examples of Controlling the Situation
For example, you might be anxious about something happening at work or what your boss thinks of you. These situations might be helped by trying to work harder or asking your boss if they need any extra assistance. These actions might influence the situation to show your boss that you’re doing good work.
Another example is if you’ve got a lot of responsibilities you are feeling overwhelmed. A way to control the situation is asking someone if they can help you with some of the responsibilities. This will reduce feelings of being overwhelmed because you’re able to get support and you’re not taking on as much.
Coping Strategies When You Don’t Have Control
But what if you are unable to control or influence the situation? This happens frequently, whether it be the death of a loved one or events such as the COVID-19 crisis. In future episodes, I will cover ways to deal with situations that we can’t control, such as cognitive self-talk and emotional acceptance.
