Emotional avoidance

Emotions are evolutionarily adaptive states that motivate behavior. Every emotion has or has had some utility in the evolutionary past. The sensations and thoughts associated with an emotion will peak and pass within 90 seconds if we don’t add anything to them. After the initial surge of emotion, we can choose whether we want to keep the thoughts associated with that feeling going. Thoughts will retrigger the sensations to keep that emotion going.

You only have the opportunity to choose whether you want to keep the emotion going if you are able to identify what’s happening. Many people do not have awareness of what’s happening to them when they are experiencing an emotion. The emotion feels like reality and the act to urge feels like the only option. It’s worth it for you to observe your emotional states and your urges to act in the presence of emotions so that you have the chance at more flexible behaviors.

The opposite of emotional avoidance is staying with emotions. Don’t just do something, sit there! When you choose to bring attention to and stay with emotion, you can know that you are on the right track if you can feel the emotion pass within a minute or two.

Here’s an application of this process to the feeling of fear:

You feel fear as evidenced by a rapid heartbeat, sweating, feeling hot, sudden tension, or a sudden flip of your stomach. Your self-talk is: “This is fear. Fear is an emotion that peaks and passes. I don’t have to listen to the message of uncertainty associated with these sensations. I don’t have to add anxiety.”

With practice, if you don’t add to or analyze the anxious content, the sensations will pass.

Emotional acceptance v. emotional dwelling

The difference between emotional acceptance and emotional dwelling is hard to identify by behavior but feels very different in terms of its emotional texture. When you are engaging in emotional acceptance, you accept the emotion compassionately, you refrain from judgment about the emotion, you observe it curiously in your body, and you let it pass without dwelling on the thoughts you have about it. When you engage in emotional dwelling, you hope that you will not have the emotion, you judge yourself for experiencing the emotion, and you dwell in the thoughts that the emotion creates as well as what the feeling means about you. Self-monitoring either on a daily basis or when you feel an intense emotion can help you identify what emotions are most common for you and what you are doing to keep it going.

Crying

As an example, let’s discuss crying. Sometimes the behavior of crying facilitates emotional acceptance. Sometimes the behavior of crying causes people to dwell.

Crying as a behavior could be the result of many processes including:

● Sadness + no secondary process (lasts around 90 seconds)

● Sadness + Anger

● Anger + Helplessness

● Anxiety + Helplessness

When you cry, it’s an opportunity to think about emotional avoidance. You might ask yourself:

● Under what other conditions do I notice that I cry and what tends to keep crying going for me?

● If I can’t cry, is sadness an area of emotional avoidance for me?