In part one and part two of this blog series, we talked about difficult emotions—first how to control your reaction to a situation that causes you stress or anxiety, and then how to recognize that difficult emotions actually have a good purpose. These tips are aimed at seniors but really, they can be helpful to anyone with feelings—namely, all of us!
Please take a moment to read those two previous posts if you haven’t already, then continue with this week’s focus on embracing and validating emotions in order to deal with them in a healthy, productive manner. Once again, we’re sharing expertise from our Director of Care, Bethel Lascano, who is a certified therapist as well as a registered nurse (RN). Please contact us if you have any questions or feedback!
Validating emotions
“Validating emotions is when someone tries to learn about, understand, and express acceptance of another person’s emotional experience,” Bethel explains. “Validating someone’s emotions doesn’t necessarily mean that you are agreeing with the other person, but you are acknowledging their feelings.”
When emotions are invalidated by others, it results in one feeling rejected, ignored or judged. This can lead to more negative feelings or even conflict. It’s not ideal and is often unproductive in relationships.
Validating emotions is an important part of empathy and communication, but it’s not a complete solution. In most cases, it’s only a starting point. “Validating emotions may help diffuse a situation where emotions are high, but it does not necessarily solve the problem,” Bethel notes. “Your friend might feel better when you understand how much the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream meant to her when you accidentally knocked it on the ground, but she’s still going to need a new ice cream cone.”
When we face a problem, we have to make choices. Every situation is unique, but there are some common categories each response fits into:
- Attempt to fix the problem
- Recognize that we can’t fix it, but can change how we feel about it
- Understand that we can’t fix it or change how we feel, but we can learn to tolerate it
Here’s how the first two responses may look in action. We’ll address the third option in our final post!
Fixing it
There are many factors that can make solving a problem difficult.
- You don’t know what you want
- Emotions are out of control
- Your forget your short-term and long-term goals
- Other people are in your way
- Your own thoughts/beliefs are in your way
- You haven’t developed problem solving skills yet
It can help to understand our priorities, what do we want to accomplish with our fix? Let’s look at three of our top priorities in any problem and some strategies to see them through.
Changing How You Feel
We’ve only got one post left in this series—please make sure you’re following us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay in the loop! Our final discussion centres on radical acceptance and how to make peace with the problems that are out of our control. Thanks for reading and as always, please share this post with anyone who may find it useful! You’re also welcome to contact us to learn more about homecare services for seniors in the Toronto area.