Emotional Distress And How To Deal With It

Many experiences in life are difficult to describe. Love, joy, pain – you may know when you feel them, but you have difficulty expressing them. And the words you use to describe them may be very different from the words another person might use. Likewise, the definition of emotional distress can vary, depending on who you ask. Do you want to know more about emotional distress and how to deal with it? Let’s discover together proven strategies and tips to recognize it and take steps to minimize its impact on our daily life.

You might, for example, call “emotional distress” any uncomfortable or unwanted emotion that arises when you are faced with challenges or difficulties. Many people also use this term as a catch-all for any unwanted mood experience, including mental health symptoms like depression and anxiety, as well as emotions like anger and grief.

Although emotional distress is not a mental health diagnosis, it can still feel overwhelming — so overwhelming, in fact, that you might have difficulty managing your daily routine.

Exploring emotional distress in depth below can help you better understand it, spot it early, and take steps to minimize its impact.

Signs of emotional distress

Emotional distress almost always leads to changes in your personality and daily functioning, although how it is experienced varies from person to person.

Maybe you’re facing a lot of uncertainty in your life, and your usual optimistic outlook is taking a more pessimistic turn. Suddenly you feel helpless, you have trouble concentrating, and you start missing important deadlines at work.

However, you have just moved to the other side of the country for your partner’s job. Leaving friends and family triggered a wave of sadness and anxiety. And your favorite activities – gardening, walking and reading – have lost their luster. Here are some of the symptoms to watch out for, according to experts:

• feelings of depression, anxiety, or emotional numbness,
• decreased performance at work or school,
• withdrawal from loved ones or withdrawal into oneself more than usual,
• feelings of guilt or hopelessness,
• difficulty making decisions or processing information,
• unusual irritability or aggression,
• changes in sleep, including sleeping too much, difficulty falling asleep, or waking up early or in the middle of the night,
• eating more or less than usual,
• experience physical symptoms, such as generalized fatigue, headaches, or stomach pain.

What’s the difference between pain and suffering?

For you, pain and suffering are strangely similar? You are undoubtedly right as the two are associated even if a
little differentiated.

Pain needs anatomical pathways to be transported while to suffer is to tolerate the voice of pain more or less well. Moreover, the latter is easier to overcome if, in childhood, there was a secure attachment.

Suffering is more a phenomenon of memory, as evidenced by the phantom limbs of amputees that continue to cause them pain even absent…

If pain pathways can be modified by electrical circuits, by stimulating other parts of the body or by drugs, suffering will have effective antidotes in action and speech.

Possible causes of emotional distress

Just as the symptoms of emotional distress can vary widely, so can its potential triggers.

Many experiences can cause emotional distress, whether an event triggers an intense emotional response may depend on how capable your nervous system is at the time of triggering.

Some people are naturally more sensitive than others. If you are a very sensitive person, for example, you may be startled easily, confused when there is too much going on, and unsettled by change. The things that upset your balance may be very different from those that tend to upset someone who prefers to work in a busy, fast-paced environment:

• witnessing or experiencing traumatic events,
• navigating a neurotypical culture as a neurodivergent person,
• navigating daily disability when living with a disability,
• going through financial difficulties,
• lose your job, a loved one or a familiar routine,
• facing increasing demands at work or toxic behavior from coworkers,
• experiencing racism, discrimination, oppression or microaggressions…

Some research, including a large-scale 2021 study of Finnish workers, also found that women reported more emotional distress than men. The main risk factors? Loneliness, job dissatisfaction and family-work conflict.

Can mental health symptoms cause emotional distress? Or is emotional distress harming your mental well-being?

In fact, it could be both. Mental health symptoms and chronic mental illnesses can cause emotional distress, and emotional distress is also a natural reaction to life overwhelm or a circumstantial trigger that anyone can experience.

How can emotional distress affect you?

Emotional distress can have a significant impact on many aspects of your life. Ongoing emotional distress can:

• prevent you from getting enough sleep
• lead to changes in your eating habits
• affect your mood
• play a role in relationship conflicts
• lead to lower performance at school or work
• make it more difficult to concentrate and complete daily tasks

Additionally, each of these outcomes in itself could have a ripple effect that leads to other consequences.

If you lie awake night after night, thinking about the source of your distress, you may not get the 7 or 8 hours of sleep you need.

Lack of sleep can in turn affect your concentration and memory, not to mention your temperament. You may lose patience more easily with the people around you, forget important commitments with family and friends, or make a number of mistakes at work.

Psychological distress can also contribute to health problems over time. A 2018 British study including data from 16,485 adults explored the relationship between symptoms of anxiety and depression, called “psychological distress” in the study, and health problems.

The results suggest that even low or moderate levels of distress can increase the risks of developing:

• arthritis
• heart disease
• chronic lung disease

emotional distress and how to deal with it

Emotional distress can happen to anyone, but it is not inevitable. Even if you can’t completely prevent distress and overwhelm, take heart: Helpful habits and daily practices can often lessen its severity and impact.

Life-changing experiences are just that: they are life-changing. It is important to remember that emotional distress is not a sign of weakness. Dealing with one stress after another can leave you stuck in fight, flight, and freeze mode, making it difficult to take restful breaks and quell internal turmoil.

However, it is possible to draw strength and resilience from within yourself. These five strategies can help you tap into your inner reserves.

–Accept your emotional experience

In times of stress, it’s often easy to spend a lot of time resisting the reality of the situation. You may find yourself asking questions like:

• “Why does this have to happen to me?”
• “It is not fair”
• “What if I had made another choice?”
• “What if this never happened?”

Although these reactions are logical, they can also make your distress worse. But accepting your reality, or the way things turned out, can help reduce the strength and intensity of your emotions.

Accepting your reality doesn’t mean you pretend to like what’s happening. When you resist or don’t understand what your emotions are trying to communicate, it can be felt as a threat by your nervous system. Naming these emotions, however, can help your nervous system make sense of the experience and help your brain get out of fight-flight-freeze mode.

Not sure how you feel? This list of emotions can help you determine what is going on.

–Keep an emotional toolkit on hand

In a moment of distress, you may feel so overwhelmed that you temporarily forget the coping strategies you usually turn to. This is why it is essential to know in advance which coping methods are best for you. In other words, creating a list or tangible box of coping tools is another great way to minimize emotional distress.

You can fill your toolbox in advance by writing down a variety of calming techniques and activities, including:

• deep breathing exercises
• restorative yoga poses
• keeping a diary
• simple joys
• nature-based practices

In a real toolbox, you could put calming items, such as:

• a pleasant smell
• photos of pets or people you love
• a favorite book that helps you feel calm or happy
• affirmations on index cards or decorated stationery

This way, when you feel stressed and overloaded, you won’t need to reach for things to relieve yourself.

–Add gentle self-talk

Emotional overload can activate your inner critic and trigger a litany of negative self-talk:

• “You’re ridiculous”
• “Control yourself”
• “Deal with it”
• “Do better!”
• “What’s wrong with you?”

Of course, all this self-criticism usually only amplifies your emotional response and makes you feel worse. Even if you already know that kindness and self-compassion can help you feel better, you may find it difficult to instantly change the way you talk to yourself — and that’s completely natural.

Not ready for a full dose of self-compassion yet? Instead, try making gentler statements that acknowledge the struggles you’re going through as well as the efforts you’re making.

Introduce kindness with affirmations such as:

• “What if I did my best?”
• “What if I was more resilient than I think?”
• “I can try to be kind to myself in this situation.”

–Embrace your values

Values can be a great guide when life seems bleak. They can inspire you to take helpful and productive action in times when you feel like you have no control.

To determine your values, try to think about what is most important to you. From there, you can make a list of your main values, as well as some actions to take when you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed.

How could this translate in practice?

Let’s say you value:

• Family.
• Spirituality. Honoring this value might mean starting to read your religious book, finding new ways to connect with nature, or starting a morning meditation practice.
• Compassion. Honoring this value might involve reaching out to close friends to offer support in times of need, making a habit of volunteering on weekends, or reminding yourself to avoid passing judgment on others .

Tips for overcoming emotional distress

• Train yourself to tolerate pain!
• Prepare for what will improve your well-being, not what will degrade it!
• Never face pain alone.

Here is a challenge of the week you can practice:

• Take a sheet of paper and a pencil and write yourself a self-compassion letter with words of understanding, friendship, acceptance, and encouragement.
• Share your impressions and, if you wish, your letter with the other participants!
• Never face pain alone.

Seek support

Healing often doesn’t happen in isolation, and many people need a sense of connection and community to begin moving forward. Social and emotional support can come from all kinds of places.

For example, you might find it helpful to share your struggles with a loved one who is a particularly good listener and who can support you in your healing process.

That said, you may not always feel ready to share your feelings of distress with other people, and that’s okay. You may find that other techniques, like journaling and other emotion-focused coping strategies, also make a difference.

Another option to consider? A therapist

You don’t have to have a diagnosed mental disorder for therapy to be helpful. Mental health professionals can help you better understand:

• your underlying emotions
• things that trigger emotional distress
• unhelpful thoughts and actions that increase your distress

Therapists can also help you explore strategies to:

• cope more effectively with difficult emotions
• address deeply ingrained thoughts and behaviors that fuel distress
• practice more useful behaviors in the moment
• cultivating resilience to manage distress in the future

Learn more about online therapy options available to you.

Finally, emotional distress doesn’t look the same for everyone, and some people find it easier to deal with than others. Persistent distress, however, can have far-reaching effects on daily life, from disrupting your sleep to worsening your health over time.

Whatever the source of your pain, you can take steps to address it and minimize its impact. These steps may include acknowledging your emotional experience, using calming tools that work for you, and seeking support from loved ones and professionals.

For more mindfulness tips, click here.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post about emotional distress and how to deal with it and found it useful. Comment down below what you think of these techniques. Have you ever been in emotional distress? if so how do you deal with ? Please share with us your experience if you feel it could help.

Looking forward to reading your comments, sending you love and positive energy!!!