How To Process Emotions: Helpful vs. Unhelpful Ways Explained

There’s a big difference between experiencing your emotions and processing them. We feel all the time, and what happens afterward largely depends on what we choose to do with our feelings. 

There are helpful ways to channel, recognize, and organize your emotions. There are also unhelpful ways to let our emotions, particularly negative emotions, overstay their welcome.

The social support system provided by Hero Journey Club can help you process and navigate your feelings in a safe environment. Our gaming sessions led by mental health experts set the stage for gentle emotional processing among like-minded people.

What Exactly Are Emotions?

Your emotions are how you experience the world and everything that happens within it. Your reactions to events around you, sights you see, and even aromas you smell elicit an emotional response. Emotions are your natural response to stimuli.

Some emotions are beautiful. Seeing and smelling beautiful blooming flowers in a pristine botanical garden can elicit a strong positive emotional response. Everything about a tranquil situation makes you feel warm or content.

Some emotions are painful. Losing a loved one or moving far away from your friends and family can elicit a negative response. You’ve lost something, your comfort zone has changed, and you’re less complacent with your position in the world. 

Your emotions influence your behavior. When you’re happy, you’re probably eager to enjoy more happiness. You might call up your friends when you’re in a good mood and arrange an outing for coffee or a trip to the bookstore. 

When you’re sad, you’re less likely to feel extroverted. You may not feel up for a coffee run or a bookstore trip because your mind and body are processing something upsetting or traumatic. 

Why Is It Important To Process Emotions?

Your emotional well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Mental health and physical health are tightly intertwined. Mental and emotional stress can cause physical tension throughout your body, excessive tiredness, and trouble sleeping. 

Processing your emotions allows you to find a safe and healthy way through negative emotions that may have lingering effects. Acknowledging what you feel and dealing with your feelings in a productive, appropriate way allows your mind and body to reach a state of comfortable homeostasis. 

What Are the Helpful Ways To Process Emotions?

There are many helpful ways to process emotions, and none are a “one size fits all” solution. You may need to experiment with several ways to process your emotions to find an outlet that provides you with the most relief. 

Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness and meditation practices encourage you to acknowledge your emotions without lingering on the negative emotions for too long. Over the course of a few quiet minutes (sometimes as little as five), you’ll center yourself in the current moment and allow overwhelming emotions to pass. 

Journaling

Journaling is an excellent way to organize your emotions. When you’re writing out the things you’re experiencing, you’re able to get intense emotions out of your head and into a notebook. Writing makes you take the time to think about why you’re feeling what you’re feeling, articulate your emotions, and understand the cause of your emotions.

Physical Activity

Exercise can be cathartic. Some people find that the endorphins released when they’re running or bicycling help relieve stress. Physical activity doesn’t always have to be something as textbook as traditional exercise. Some people find they’re able to process their emotions through dance, mindfulness yoga, or even martial arts. 

Artistic Expression

Painting, writing, making music, sculpting, sewing, and making jewelry are all healthy forms of self-expression. By channeling your feelings into your creation, you can purge your feelings and create an exterior physical representation of what’s trapped inside you. Let it out and share it with the world — you never know who will empathize with your expressive creations. 

Participating in Supportive Communities

Supportive communities give you the opportunity to process your emotions among like-minded people. Hero Journey Club uses mental health expert-guided gaming sessions as a backdrop for a supportive environment. You’ll have fun exploring fantasy worlds with similar people who also want a comfortable place to explore and process their emotions. 

Therapy and Counseling

Mental health services can be useful for people who are dealing with trauma or mental health concerns that regularly complicate their ability to process or regulate their emotions. If you believe you’d be a good candidate for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), talk therapy, or counseling, there are plenty of resources available.

What Are the Unhelpful Ways To Process Emotions?

Avoiding problems or failing to work towards a solution can often make you feel much worse. If you’re engaging in risky or harmful behavior instead of processing your emotions, you should seek help immediately. 

Avoidance

Some things will eventually go away if you ignore them, like a coworker who talks too much or a stubborn pimple. Your emotions are a lot more complicated. You take them with you wherever you go, and failing to acknowledge them will only allow them to negatively impact you for longer. 

Substance Abuse or Self-Harm

If you’re engaging in substance abuse or self-harm, you should seek help immediately. You’re worth the effort of finding inner peace. Contact the lifeline now for immediate resources and assistance. 

Overeating/Undereating

Eating behaviors can be used to find a semblance of control in your life. Disordered eating habits like undereating can be a way to find control in a world that feels uncertain. Overeating, or “eating your feelings” can be used to distract yourself from uncomfortable emotions. Both sides of the coin can be harmful to your health.

Aggression

Many of us have lashed out when we’re angry. It’s never the right thing to do, but it can happen sometimes. If you feel like your aggression is more than occasional or if you’re damaging your relationships with the people you love, this is a sign of a much larger issue. 

Overworking

Burying yourself in your work might feel like the right thing to do because it’s productive, but you can’t work your way out of your emotions. You could be heading for burnout that can damage your career potential while your emotional concerns are boiling over in the background.

Isolation or Over-Dependence on Others

Human beings are social creatures. We need to be able to talk to people we love and share social experiences. Some people deal with strong emotions by isolating. Others may rely too heavily on others to help them carry their emotional burdens. Both can alienate you from the people you care about. 

Overreacting

If you aren’t productively processing your emotions, the anxiety and overwhelm you feel may cause you to overreact to simple things. By untangling the strings of your emotions one at a time, it will become much easier to react appropriately in stressful situations. 

Engaging in Risky Behavior

People sometimes engage in risky behavior to distract themselves from intense emotions. By shifting the focus from emotional pain to physical or emotional risk, they’re diverting their processing power to something else. This can have damaging, longstanding consequences.

How Can We Shift From Unhelpful to Helpful Emotional Processing?

The first step to correcting harmful habits is to acknowledge they exist. If you aren’t processing your emotions in a helpful way, you’re likely already aware of some of your coping mechanisms and the harm they may be causing. 

Increasing your self-awareness can lead to increasing your self-acceptance. You can’t change how you’ve handled your emotions in the past, but you can change how you’ll handle them in the future. It’s okay to acknowledge that you’re upset or angry. It’s also okay to notice that you’re reacting in a way that isn’t helpful. 

Accept yourself, forgive yourself, and change course when you realize you’re not coping how you’d like to. Give yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling, space to take a moment to explore that feeling, and time to act on it appropriately. 

Many people find that professional help can be useful when they’re struggling to process their emotions. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a very successful and widely adopted form of therapeutic intervention for people who would like to adopt healthier coping strategies. CBT works by teaching you to recognize your trains of thought and behavior and become more aware of how you deal with negative emotions.

How Can Hero Journey Club Support Your Efforts?

Hero Journey Club’s therapeutic group gaming sessions focus on peer support, social connection, and psychoeducation. Our gaming groups are led by mental health experts who work to create a productive social environment where everyone feels heard and supported. 

Using games as a backdrop for our virtual support groups helps to keep the environment friendly, welcoming, and approachable. Our research shows the overwhelming majority of Hero Journey Club members feel better after their gaming sessions with their new supportive friends. 

Embracing Emotional Balance: A Final Reflection

Emotional processing is one of the most important things to master for your mental health. We all feel emotions deeply — it’s what we do with those emotions that defines the way we approach our lives. 

You deserve to give yourself the time and space to appropriately process your emotions. If you feel like your emotional processing habits have become damaging, you deserve to seek help.

Hero Journey Club can be a helpful tool for people seeking a safe and nurturing emotional processing environment. Join the club, receive support, and have fun. 

Sources:

The relationship between physical and mental health: A mediation analysis

SAMHSA’s National Helpline

Emotional processing and panic | ScienceDirect

What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? | American Psychological Association