Controlling Your Emotions
Suppression of Emotions.
You may not want to feel or talk about your emotions or you may not have the right outlets to get out your feelings. You may even feel like you want to cry but feel stuck like you just can't get it out.
General feeling of heaviness.
Ever feel like you're walking around with emotions weighting you down? Have you noticed that sometimes it's hard to get out of bed and face the responsibilities of your day? Or maybe you have been invited to go out with friends and you just don't want to go, or you feel like you are forcing yourself to have a good time. Do you have an internal list of things you want to or should be doing for yourself but you struggle to get started?
Unprocessed emotion.
Stressful situations, pain or trauma has happened and the feelings just keep on surfacing and you can't seem to resolve it. Maybe it is showing up in your relationships and holding you back from have a full, happy or intimate partnership with a loved one. It could also feel like you are in an unsolvable conflict and notice that the emotional distress seems to continue and reappear at various points in your life. Let's look at these areas to help you achieve that resolution once and for all.
Lack of understanding Emotions.
You may have a big blank in your feelings or maybe you struggle identifying if what you feel is an emotion or illness. You may even feel the sensation but are unclear how to describe or name the emotion.
Avoidance of emotional situations.
Perhaps you have tried hard not to talk about or look at anything that might stir up your feelings. Or maybe you narrate traumatic experiences without any feeling or emotion at all. This is called emotional numbing and it is very common. Usually the fear is if your begin to open that door of feeling or emotion it will be too hard to close and you will lose your ability to “hold it all together."
Difficulty controlling emotions.
Have you felt overwhelmed by your feelings and find yourself "losing control”? Perhaps this is showing up in the form of anger, uncontrollable crying, irritability or isolation. Some people struggle in this area because they wrestle with seeing themselves as “strong and in control” yet find it difficult to understand and manage the flood of various emotions hitting them all of a sudden and sometimes all at once.
How I Can Help.
Once we have achieve these goals, our next steps in therapy include:
Identifying emotions as helpful or unhelpful
Showing you how to use your emotions to guide your actions
Understanding where unhelpful emotions come from and changing them
Developing healthy coping strategies
Establishing an internal monologue that helps you overcome negative thoughts
In your sessions, we will work together to help you:
Gain awareness of your emotions
Be open to welcoming your emotions, no matter what they are
Allow your emotions to flow freely without restriction
Regulate your emotions so they don’t overwhelm you (“Slicing it thinner”)
Describe how you're feeling in detail
Understand the “why” behind your emotions.
Benefits for you include:
Establishing better connections with others
Better depth of experiencing in everyday life
Making sense of emotions and expanding your emotional range so you
understand and are comfortable handling your feelings.
My Qualifications.
Over 25 years of mental health experience working with adults.
Graduate of USC School of Social Work with Concentration in Mental Health (MSW)
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
Certificates of Completion:
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy Levels 1 and 2
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy Specific to Trauma
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy For Grief & Loss
