Dealing with difficult emotions

When faced with difficult emotions, our natural instinct might be to shut them down or block them out. This often happens because the fear of feeling these emotions can be overwhelming. You might worry that you’ll become overwhelmed by anger, or that once you turn towards your distress, you won’t ever find a way out.

In reality, allowing yourself to experience those emotions is a crucial first step toward learning to manage and respond to difficult emotions. You don’t have to face this challenge alone. Opening up to a friend about how you’re feeling or reaching out to a support service can help you develop the skills necessary to feel and regulate your emotions. For information on how to access private counselling and psychotherapy, including free and low-cost counselling options funded by the HSE, take a look at our factsheet on counselling and psychotherapy.

Whether or not you feel ready to seek professional help, you can use these steps to handle difficult emotions: feel and identify the emotion(s), accept your emotion(s), and recognise the emotion as a possible signal that can guide you toward a self-compassionate response.

How to deal with difficult emotions

Turn towards the emotion

Instead of suppressing (i.e., pushing down), ignoring, or distracting yourself from your feelings, try to sit with and reflect on them with an attitude of open curiosity. Over time, developing the habit of turning towards your emotions rather than avoiding them can lead to greater resilience and long-term well-being.

Although we might not be fully aware of it, many of us habitually turn away from difficult emotions like anger, sadness, guilt, and fear. When these emotions reach their peak intensity, we may feel driven to use food, alcohol and/or drugs, self-harm and a variety of other coping mechanisms to quickly relieve the intensity. Turning towards the emotion becomes easier when we recognise that all emotions are temporary and come and go in their own time. Sitting with difficult emotions during periods of high distress can help you to discover that the intensity of emotions fluctuates and eventually lessens, rather than remaining at a constant level. Choosing to turn towards your emotional pain can be easier when you have support, such as being with a loved one, pet or an empathetic mental health professional, like a counsellor or psychotherapist.

It can be helpful to try to put off using a harmful coping mechanism or action for a short period, like five minutes. By then, your experience of the distress is likely to have changed, even if just a little, showing that intense feelings are temporary.

Identify the emotion

Naming or identifying the emotion you’re feeling is an important next step. Research suggests that being able to recognise and describe your emotions can help with understanding and managing these emotions, as well as responding to the emotions of others. However, some people, including some neurodivergent individuals, may find it difficult to identify and describe their emotions in words.

Expanding your emotional vocabulary can help you regulate your emotions more effectively. People with a wide emotional vocabulary tend to describe their feelings as more than just “good” or “bad.” They often understand the subtle differences between feelings like guilt, sadness, or anxiety—emotions that we might otherwise be tempted to group together as “feeling low.” Equally, they may be able to distinguish between “good” feelings like joy, excitement, and awe.

Use a feelings wheel

This isn’t easy for everyone, and you may never have been able to identify your emotions well. If you struggle to identify and understand your emotions, you might find it helpful to use a feelings wheel. You can find an example of an emotion wheel at this website devoted to positive psychology. Psychologists and other mental health professionals use a variety of different types of feeling wheels, but the basic principle remains the same. A feelings wheel breaks human emotions into categories, including primary and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are the basic, instinctive feelings that we experience first in response to a situation, such as sadness, fear, or anger. There are eight primary emotions, which include joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and anticipation.

Secondary emotions are more complex feelings that develop from primary emotions, such as hope, shame, envy, shock, and guilt. Some psychologists view secondary emotions as mixtures of primary emotions.

Using the wheel in daily life can help you better name what you’re feeling, especially when emotions seem overwhelming or confusing. Regardless of what you’re feeling at any given moment, looking at the wheel can help you figure out exactly what you’re experiencing. This in turn can make it easier to manage difficult or unwanted emotions in less harmful ways. When using the emotion wheel, remember that while emotions are shown as separate feelings, it’s normal for a person to experience multiple or even conflicting emotions at the same time.

Accept the emotion for what it is

After identifying an emotion, acknowledge its presence with self-compassion and acceptance. It can be challenging to accept certain emotions, like shame, anger, or envy, because they may have negative associations. We might think that feeling angry or envious is “bad,” and therefore, we are “bad” for having these feelings. However, these emotions are a natural part of being human. Everyone experiences them from time to time.

Removing the negative judgement (i.e., thinking “feeling this way is bad” or “makes me a bad person”) helps prevent increasing your own distress or wasting energy trying to reject or deny the emotion. One helpful way of doing this is changing the language you use when acknowledging your emotions. Rather than thinking “I shouldn’t feel angry”, try thinking “I notice I am feeling angry right now. That’s okay. Maybe it might be helpful to explore why I am feeling angry?” This opens up mental space for you to explore the feeling more, including where it came from and why, without being judgmental and critical towards yourself.

Identifying the emotion doesn’t mean you have to define yourself by it. For instance, just because you’re feeling envy or anger doesn’t mean that’s who you are. Recognise that you are more than the temporary feeling by naming, accepting, and being curious about the emotion without letting it define you. This approach can make difficult emotions easier to handle.

Sometimes, beliefs, values, or expectations from your culture, family, or community may influence how you judge your feelings. Part of accepting your emotions may involve questioning these internalised values or beliefs to allow space for your own curiosity and openness.

Recognise when the emotion is a signal

Research shows a connection between “emotional granularity” (the ability to name and identify emotions accurately) and emotional well-being. This skill is thought to be a key part of “emotional regulation,” which is the ability to manage and respond to your emotions in a flexible, helpful way. Emotional granularity is linked to emotional regulation: people who have the ability to name their emotions accurately and specifically tend to be better able to manage and respond thoughtfully to their emotions, including the more difficult ones.

Feelings can serve as information or signals about problems in our environment, conflicts in our relationships, lack of boundaries, or other unresolved issues. Being able to accurately identify an unpleasant emotion and distinguish it from other similar emotions, like telling guilt apart from shame, gives you a clearer understanding of why you’re feeling that way. When you understand the cause of the emotion, you’re more likely to respond to it in a way that fits the situation and helps you gain a better understanding of yourself.

Choose an appropriate response

When you turn towards, identify and accept the emotion for what it is, you are more likely to understand why you are experiencing it. You may discover that you’re responding appropriately to a difficult situation or you may realise that your feelings are disproportionate (i.e., too strong for the situation), causing you to behave in ways that may not be appropriate for the situation or social context.

For example, you might feel a surge of anger when a coworker cuts you off during a meeting. By turning towards and identifying your anger, you might discover that it is either appropriate or less appropriate for the situation. Taking this situation as an example, below you’ll find guidance on how to recognise whether your reaction might be appropriate or not, and what  steps you can take next. It’s important to remember that nobody gets it right all the time. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s about being open to reflection and growth.

Appropriate for the situation

Your anger may stem from a pattern of being repeatedly overlooked by your coworker. With this information, you might choose to calmly discuss your feelings with your coworker or supervisor, aiming to improve communication and respect in future interactions. Since this response fits the context of the situation—a coworker who is deliberately and repeatedly ignoring what you have to say—it might lead to positive change.

Less appropriate for the situation

Alternatively, you might realise that your anger doesn’t quite fit the current situation, where a coworker may not have heard you. This coworker doesn’t usually act in this way and you don’t have a history of conflict or negative interactions with them. If you tend to feel intense anger even when the other person hasn’t meant any harm, you might decide to handle the situation differently this time. For example, you could take a deep breath and wait until you’re calmer before addressing the issue. Stopping to identify the emotion and reflect on it in the current context helps you break the habit of reacting impulsively and ensures your response is more appropriate for the situation.

By developing the habit of turning towards, identifying and acknowledging your emotions for what they are, you can create space between the emotion itself, which you can’t control, and your response, which is within your control. This space allows for reflection and choosing your response more thoughtfully. It helps you avoid reacting impulsively or following old patterns that might provide short-term relief but could be harmful in the long run.

Reach out for emotional support

While it’s possible to turn towards, identify, and learn to respond to difficult emotions on your own, talking to others about what you’re feeling can make a big difference. No one should have to cope with distress alone, and receiving support can help you process and understand your emotions. For guidance on starting these conversations, check out our factsheet on how to open up about your mental health. If you’re not ready to talk to a friend or need more structured support, consider speaking to a professional. You can talk to your GP about your mental health and ask about counselling services nearby.

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