Two Psychological Tricks That Can Help You Survive When Life Gets Hard

Some feelings are just so … uncomfortable and painful. They feel bad and can be overwhelming to the point that we can’t feel or focus on anything else. We get stuck in them.

How do you manage overwhelming feelings?

You can’t just make them go away or decide not to feel them. Feelings don’t work like that.

The trick is to make room for them.

Your instinct is to do the opposite — you want to squash painful feelings, but when you try, they tend to get more intense.

If you make room for them, you can get distance from them so they’re not so in your face.

What does it mean to "make room" for a feeling? How do you actually do that?

Here are 2 important tools that can help you manage overwhelming feelings.

1. Become An Impartial Observer

Start by identifying the feeling (e.g., sadness, grief, anxiety, fear, anger, etc.). Identify where in your body you feel the feeling (e.g., chest, throat, head, neck, whole body).

Close your eyes and imagine yourself as a microscopic explorer. Imagine that your microscopic self enters your body and stands in front of the identified feeling.

Imagine that this thing you’re standing in front of is something you’ve never seen before. You know nothing about it and are here simply to observe it.

As you look at this thing in front of you, notice:

How big it is. Does it take up all the space in that area of your body or is there some room around it?

Whether it’s 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional.

Its shape. Does it have any edges? Are they rounded or sharp?

Its colors. Does it have any shading?

If it moves or is static.

Its texture. What would it feel like to touch it?

Now walk all around the thing, to see if it looks the same from the sides and back or if there’s anything different.

When you return to the front, leave the microscopic you for a minute and center yourself in your mind. Take five slow, deep breaths.

Each time you exhale, imagine directing the breath to the feeling in your body, the thing you were observing. Imagine the breath flowing around the feeling, almost massaging it.

After five slow breaths, return to your microscopic self. As you stand in front of the feeling, go through all of the same observations you went through earlier. See if anything has changed.

Walk around the feeling and see if anything looks different from a different angle.

When you return to the front, take a moment to see if there is anything you want to do to the feeling before this exercise ends. You might want to kick it or push it over a cliff. You might want to hug it.

You might want to tell it something. There’s no wrong answer.

When you're ready, open your eyes. Gently notice how the feeling feels. Notice if the overwhelm has softened.

How it works

This is an acceptance exercise used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It reminds you that they're "just" feelings. They're not you and they're not bigger than you. You're always bigger than they are, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

When you identify a feeling, you automatically take away some of its power. Naming the feeling is always helpful. When you locate it in your body, you're getting yourself out of your analytical brains — important for working with feelings.

When you stand in front of the feeling and observe it, you automatically have some separation from it. You've put some room between you so can see its edges. You've found a way to have a perspective about it.

When you ask yourself those six observational questions, you're putting your focus on something besides the discomfort. You're moving away from experiencing the feeling as a problem and learning a different way of engaging with it — just noticing.

When you pause and breathe, you're pairing relaxation with the feeling, which reduces some of its intensity. When you imagine massaging the feeling with your breath, you're creating some compassion for the feeling.

It's no longer an unseen, unknown, enormous, all bad, overwhelming force.

2. Remember That Size Matters

Start by identifying the feeling (e.g., sadness, grief, anxiety, fear, anger, etc.). Close your eyes and imagine the feeling of "standing" in front of you. You may see it as a shape or color.

Imagine that you and the feeling are in a small broom closet. It’s tight in there. There’s just enough room for you and it, so it’s almost impossible to concentrate on anything else. It’s literally in your face and all around you.

Now change that broom closet to a huge warehouse. Suddenly there’s tons of space all around you.

Imagine moving away from the feeling, walking to the furthest end of the warehouse. Though the feeling doesn’t change in size, the feel of it changes. From this perspective, the feeling looks smaller. You have distance. It’s not so in your face.

Look around and see what else is in the warehouse. Perhaps, it’s got pallets and pallets of pink stuffed elephants in it. Perhaps, you see people in the distance, working. Or, perhaps, it’s empty.