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Dealing with Emotional Confusion During COVID-19
Three steps we can take honor our emotions while avoiding destructive actions.
Posted April 15, 2020 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Human beings are, by nature, emotional creatures. Many of our most commonly experienced emotions are involuntary, triggered by situations that can bring out our deepest feelings whether we want them or not.
If we’ve been raised in homes where there was some kind of abuse, our ability to feel our emotions may be compromised. We may not feel anything at all, or the opposite might happen – a challenging situation can open the floodgates of feelings. Extreme responses might even occur in people who grew up in healthy families.
When things go wrong – for example, this COVID-19 pandemic – it is understandable that our emotions can get quite dark and volatile. A threatening event like this can trigger fight, flight, or freeze responses. The fight response comes from anger; the flight comes from fear; and freezing can come from either anxiety or sadness.
How best to deal with all these emotions?
One effective way to handle our darkest feelings is known as the three "A"s – Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.
1. Awareness of feelings
Research shows that people are most distressed when they feel bad but are unable to identify their feelings. There are emotion charts designed to help us know exactly what we’re feeling. Just knowing that we are feeling frustrated, or lonely, or sad helps us process those emotions and deal with them in a healthy way.
Emotional intelligence is defined, in part, as the ability to identify our emotions. With practice, we can improve our ability to pinpoint what we are feeling. We can indeed become more emotionally intelligent over time. Once we know which particular emotion we are experiencing, we are in a better position to do something about it.
2. Acceptance of feelings
Carl Jung once wrote, “That which we resist, persists.” Rather than fight our feelings or beat ourselves up about having negative feelings, we can recognize that experiencing dark or anxious emotions is perfectly normal and perfectly human. Accepting that our emotions are normal and natural is a good step toward managing them in a healthy way.
Feelings, it turns out, are not facts. Both positive and negative emotions are important parts of the human experience. Rather than avoid or deny our feelings, we can mindfully sit with them and practice accepting them, knowing that even the darkest parts of human feelings can be used as fuel for personal growth.
We can also accept that emotional experience takes time to run its course. Allowing our human feelings to unfold and resolve themselves, even embracing them as healthy and natural, is the pathway to good emotional health. Remember, acceptance does not mean we approve of the situation – it means accepting the fact of the situation which makes good choices possible.
3. Acting on feelings
Once we’ve grown in our awareness and our acceptance of our negative feelings, we are in a better position to take appropriate action. At times, the best action to take is to do nothing. We can take comfort knowing that our feelings will pass and that we can be patient with this normal human process.
Often the best actions we can take is to express our emotions in writing, or with another trusted friend. The act of expressing emotional experience has been shown to have very healing properties. This is why people keep a journal or seek out supportive others who are there not to fix you but simply to listen.
Sometimes we can use our darkest feelings to discover new hidden talents. Here it is important not to place any pressure on ourselves to accomplish anything. But if compelled, we can examine our gifts and ask ourselves whether our feelings can be used for some purpose. Anger can be turned into exercise; anxiety can motivate us to call and comfort a friend; sadness can inspire us to paint, draw, or sing.
It is important that we use all three of these "A"s in the proper order. If we move from awareness to action without practicing acceptance, we may not be positioned to take appropriate action. Accepting our emotions allows us to calmly and confidently do what is best for us. Practicing these three A’s will help us grow in our emotional intelligence and can guide us through even the most challenging of circumstances.
