Everyday Opportunities To Learn To Accept Emotions
There are emotions that are not easy to manage, but there are also many others that are not easy to accept (love for someone who has hurt us, resentment towards those who take care of us, a certain aftertaste of sadness that may remain after reaching a goal). In fact, learning to accept emotions is one of the goals pursued in many therapies.
It can be such a difficult task that a study from the universities of Virginia and Harvard found that between one-third and one-half of the participants, who had been asked to spend twenty minutes alone with their own thoughts, had done cheating picking up the mobile or listening to music.
From psychology, in frameworks such as Hayes’ acceptance and commitment therapy, the acceptance of emotions takes on greater importance. The experiential avoidance , as has been called from this perspective implies full experience negative feelings, thoughts or emotions that are unpleasant.
If we think about our day to day, we may notice that we dedicate a good amount of resources to avoiding the annoying, boring or irritating. In the old days, for example, if we took a photograph, we had to wait days to develop it and be able to see it. We had to manage the uncertainty of whether we had been portrayed more or less handsome or if the photo had come out sharp. This was so and we did not even consider anything else.
Today, we take the photo and we have the possibility to see it and analyze it from the second. Without waiting, without uncertainties: now. If we don’t like it, we delete it and make another one. All based on our well-being. And this, obviously, is just one example of the many that we could find in our lives based on immediacy and non-conformism.
Perhaps you think that the example is oversized, that life puts us face to face with more heartbreaking issues. Of course, you are not without reason. But perhaps, before going through the latter, it would be convenient to practice flexibility and tolerance in everyday situations that will arise as learning opportunities. We tell you some of them.
A whole day without a mobile phone
Would you accept the challenge? Do you see yourself capable of overcoming it? If your answer is no, it is likely that you already have a certain degree of dependence on mobile. Human beings value comfort so much and have such a low tolerance for boredom that we need constant stimulation to avoid falling into these networks.
To begin to train ourselves in this sense, a good opportunity to learn to accept emotions could be to turn off the mobile for a whole day and dedicate those waiting times to other tasks. You may be surprised and that feeling of wasting time that you can have sometimes disappears.
Don’t cross the red light
It is another of the daily opportunities to learn to accept emotions. You get so bored on the sidewalk waiting for the light to turn green that you turn your head to see if no car is coming so you can get by quickly.
If it happens that we cannot cross, we begin to say to ourselves: What a long traffic light! I always get all the red lights! Well, while I wait, I’ll take out my cell phone! Consider waiting until the end, crossing calmly, slowly and feeling yourself there, standing, alive, contemplating the city.
Get in the longest queue
Another example that can help you is forcing yourself to opt for the longest queue at the supermarket or bank checkout. It is a good way to accept boredom or discomfort.
You can observe your internal dialogue : how long does the cashier take? Whenever I get in a queue, there is a problem! .
Have breakfast while you have breakfast
Also applicable to showering while showering or talking while chatting. What I mean is, when you do something, try to do only that something.
It is not healthy on an emotional level -not on an intellectual or productivity level- to be doing several activities at the same time. On the other hand, multitasking is a great practice to increase stress.
Delay your answers a little
For example, try not to reply to WhatsApp immediately , delay a bit and hold on. It’s a good way to train for when you have to manage stronger impulses.
You can count 15 or 20 minutes and then answer, feel the discomfort of not being immediate and accept it.
A day without television
Like the mobile, television is also a thick veil for our emotions. Another proposal is not to fill the moments of emptiness by turning on the television.
Wait a bit for the next drink
Alcohol is in many cases a resource that in the short term relieves daily stress, alleviates boredom and helps to remain in a context of well-being. But we have to know that it is something momentary, a trap.
Alcohol can gain ground and become our worst enemy. Therefore, watch out for him! It would not be bad to start delaying the next drink, holding the urge to drink, feeling the urge as another emotion. This is applicable to other drugs, such as tobacco, anxiolytics, etc.
Enjoy the traffic jam
If you find yourself in traffic, enjoy it! Instead of cursing left and right, why not take advantage of the moment to listen to music, see the sky or observe the drivers around you?
As we see, learning to accept emotions means not living anchored to the culture of immediacy. Technological advances, of course, have a lot to say in all this, as we have already seen with photography or social networks.
Today we want everything in a matter of seconds or minutes and we believe that we cannot bear anything else. But it is just a belief. The human being is capable of being much more flexible and tolerant if he proposes it, because he already was in the past.
Like this one, we could cite a multitude of examples. But the culture of the now-already in many cases only trains our intolerance. It would be good to ask ourselves if we want to be part of it and what we could start to do to remedy it. In this article I have given some examples, but there are many more to learn to accept emotions. Find yours, set it up as a challenge, and start being more flexible.
