First, don’t tell me that the answer is just to “not bottle things up”, because that’s objectively incorrect too. Society doesn’t want you to have any negative emotions. I need to know how to not express negative emotions at all whatsoever unless I’m alone. I know it can be done because it is done in many other people on the planet.
Edit: Ok so I think one of the things I want to try doing next is ask for a med change from my psych provider.
It’s not just about mindfulness or not being negative. It’s addressing your concerns / whatever is upsetting you early. It’s ok to be negative, what’s not ok is letting resentment build till you pop because you never address anything that’s bothering you
Journaling has helped me in the past.
Don’t take advice from neutrotypicals.
Don’t bottle things up.
There’s a lot of really good advice here, I’ll just pitch in one thing I’ve been working on myself lately: mindfulness. Awareness of yourself, your surroundings, and how you feel (both emotionally and physically).
I’ve struggled a lot with the same problem of bottling emotions up, but I often do it because I don’t even register all of the little emotional paper cuts that feed into it. It’s helped me to make it a habit of stopping and assessing myself and asking “hows does this make me feel and why?”
Start doing that for even the little things and you’ll find it gets progressively easier to stop and assess even the bigger things. Won’t always make you feel better, but oftentimes all we need to avoid blowing up is that second of “stop and think” to make us cool off just a bit.
Coping skills. It’s fine to get pissed and you may have a strong sense of justice and need to keep things even and explosions bring things back into equilibrium. A lot of “not exploding” on people can be addressed by what you do ahead of time, giving yourself escape routes, and learning new behaviors to replace explosive ones. These can be alternative activities that are incompatible or functionally just better ways to address situations.
-Identify what happens before you explode. How do you feel, what are you thinking, is it the location, people, etc?
-Time out from that moment until you come down from wanting to take people’s heads off.
-Use strategies that you find to calm you down. Some people go for walks, use stress balls, fidgets, chew gum, color, play a game. I know this will vary wildly depending on your location and what’s acceptable. The point is to find some alternative for a few minutes or even during higher stress that you can do.
-Increase activities that bring you joy. Again these don’t have to cost money and may vary depending on your interests.
Society doesn’t want you to have any negative emotions. I need to know how to not express negative emotions at all whatsoever unless I’m alone.
What about your friends or family? Particularly in some countries, it’s true that public displays of unhappiness are taboo. Less-than-totally-public displays are kind of a huge part of people’s social lives everywhere.
Friends and family will either listen to a point before saying they can’t handle it, or some of them I wouldn’t bring these problems to in the first place. When I do talk, I get tired of my response being the thing they focus on instead of the source causing my frustration. I’ve attempted therapy for years with varying success; after some bad experiences I can’t trust therapists anymore. All anyone cares about is if my emotions are impacting them in a negative way, nobody actually gives a shit about how I am doing as long as they aren’t directly inconvenienced.
One of the most healthy practices you can do is to fully experience negative emotion, let it wash over you and fully occupy you, then breathe deeply and let that emotion go. Holding on to negative emotion has long term health consequences. Remember that you have no control over the world, just your own reactions to the world. I have a lot of anger that I try to let go of this way. Life has become a long series of just being shit on by everyone and everything. But what can I really do about it? Keep working and moving up the ladder to where the shit sandwiches have more bread I guess. In the meantime, I try to practice mindfulness with my emotions and breathe through them. You can use the Dune Litany Against Fear with pretty much any negative emotion.
The people commenting on here are unhinged. Clearly a lot of “I was treated poorly by my boss so you should deal with it too” energy.
I saw someone imply it couldn’t be bad unless you were being physically threatened with a knife at work. Ive seen people say you should just say how you feel when you feel it, but that won’t change the main problem here which is that its not okay for a supervisor to treat people poorly.
Nothing you change about yourself will change your supervisor. People quit managers not jobs, in most cases. It wouldnt be unreasonable to look for other work or to request a change in supervisor/team.
Nice people tend to let things go, they will eventually catch up and you will blow. Instead when something happens or something is said you need to stand up right in that moment. This way it was dealt with and there is nothing to bottle up.
Some dark humor helps.
Take a lesson from welding class: You release what you’ve got bottled up just right with a little spark and you get an intense yet precise flame. It’s amazing what you can get done with skillful application of said flame.
Bottling things up is totally fine if it works for you. The people telling you not to do that are just projecting because they can’t do it.
Bottling things up is very unhealthy.
Ah, one the people showed up. How surprising.
All bottling means is that you are choosing when to deal with something. I agree it isn’t negative on its own.
Would you argue for bottling things up indefinitely in some situations?
Would you argue for bottling things up indefinitely in some situations?
I guess. That sometimes happens by accident when you bottle something up … and then just forget about it.
So you harbor resentment.
Clear the air, don’t take things personally, realize other people’s emotions are out of your control and move on with life.
Easier said than done, though.
You are not your thoughts, nor are you your emotions. You are the observer of those things. Somebody presses your buttons, but it is your choice whether or not those buttons fire. For example if a child said some hurtful things to you, would it have the same impact as an adult? I should hope not. What is stopping you from viewing somebody as a child, especially if they are acting like one?
In addition to cardio, try breathing and cold water. Always breathe through your nose, even when running. Try to breathe through your nose as a cold shower takes your breath away. Or go for the full ice bath. An ice bath tells your body (the producer of anger emotions and chemicals), “hey, I’m in control here, you are not good at assessing threats”. The mind follows the breath, or the breath follows the mind.
But if I’m being honest I’ve always had a hot temper, and what is really helping me is Lithium. It allows me to observe anger without being overwhelmed by it.
