Denying and suppressing your emotions can contribute to a number of health problems.

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The importance of managing emotions

As a youth or young adult, we may be experiencing some changes or transitions in our life, such as advancing studies, searching for job opportunities, stepping into the workforce, or forming new relationships.

Navigating these experiences is not easy, especially if we are dealing with them for the first time, and we might encounter some stress and anxiety along the way. However, we have the power to manage our emotions and take steps to look after our well-being, to emerge in a stronger and more resilient position to face life’s challenges and opportunities.

What are emotions and why do we feel them?

We all experience emotions as a normal and important part of our lives.

Emotions are
information

They help us know how to respond appropriately to circumstances we’re in and frame what we make of the situation.

It’s normal to feel
all kinds of emotions

All emotions have their functions. Experiencing the full range of emotions adds meaning to our lives by helping us understand what is important to us, what our values are, and how to handle challenges.

6 basic emotions

There is a wide spectrum of emotions. However, there are generally 6 basic emotions, which are universally experienced:

Anger

An emotional state
leading to feelings of
hostility and frustration

Disgust

A strong emotion that
results in the feeling of
being repulsed

Fear

A primal emotion that is
important to survival and triggers
a fight or flight response

Happiness

A pleasant emotional
state that elicits feelings
of joy, contentment, and satisfaction

Sadness

An emotional state
characterised by feelings
of disappointment, grief
or hopelessness

Surprise

A brief emotional state,
either positive or
negative, following
something unexpected

Why is it important to understand and manage our emotions?

Although emotions are an instinctive and natural thing, it can sometimes be intense and overwhelming.
That’s why we can all benefit from understanding and managing our emotions healthily.

Managing our emotions helps us make better decisions, big or small.

Understanding our emotions allows us to become aware of triggers, so we can gain insights on how to respond in constructive ways.

Accepting our emotions allows us to view our thoughts and perspectives objectively, instead of automatically making negative judgements about ourselves and others.

Watch this video to see why it’s important to acknowledge and manage our emotions as they arise.

How do we manage our emotions?

• Practise noticing and identifying our emotions by using the feelings tracker to identify how we are feeling. With this understanding, we will be empowered to manage our emotions.
• Avoid brushing away or pretending not to have certain emotions as we might get overwhelmed and become less effective at managing them. It is important to be self-aware as our feelings are there to help us make sense of what’s going on!
• It’s okay to have more than one emotion about something. If we are facing a challenge, it’s possible to feel nervous about the future but also hopeful that we will succeed. Our emotions can be as complex as the situation itself.
• Check in with our body too. We may also feel some body sensations with certain emotions – perhaps our face gets hot and muscles tense up.

• Accept all our emotions as natural and not something to avoid. Labelling some emotions as “negative” and disregarding them could cause these emotions to linger even longer making us feel even more depressed or anxious over time. Seek to understand and figure out what happened that got us feeling this way.
• Avoid adopting a mindset of toxic positivity. Rejecting the emotions that feel “unpleasant” and accepting only emotions that feel “positive” can make it harder to know why we feel the way we do.
• Our emotions can arise from many things. It could be from events, situations, or even our own thoughts or memories.
• Avoid judging ourselves in the process. Knowing what brought about that feeling and why we felt that way would also make it easier for us to have a better grip and assess how best to manage our feelings.

• Consider whether things are really as bad as they seem. Question the assumptions and / or beliefs behind our thoughts. Sometimes, unhelpful thinking patterns may magnify the negativity of the situation. For example, we may overgeneralise and think, “I have failed once, I will fail again for sure”.
• When we have such negative thoughts, we can use My Positivity Guide to reframe such thoughts by focusing on the good things around us.
• We can use a journal to pen down how we are feeling. We can also use the time to note down our thoughts and problems. This serves as a tool to track our thoughts. It could also help us see things from another perspective and perhaps recognise the experience as an opportunity, e.g. “I am sad but this experience will give me the chance to grow.”
• Observing our thoughts over a period of time may become a form of encouragement where we observe fewer occurrences of certain thoughts.
• Use the Emotions Explorer to spot unhelpful thinking patterns that we might be prone to and “shred them”.
• Think about the best way to express our emotions or regulate them, so we can feel better. For example, would it feel more conducive to gently confront someone, or work off the feeling by going for a run?

• Consider doing more of the things we enjoy, such as spending time in nature, listening to music or even sleeping. We can also try exercising as it has mood-boosting effects and relieves stress.
• Learn relaxation skills such as:
  • Pick up deep breathing exercises as a method of relaxation.
  • Practise progressive muscle relaxation where we tense a group of muscles as we breathe in and relax them as we breathe out.
  • Use guided imagery where, for example, we imagine ourselves at the beach feeling the warm breeze on our skin.
  • Consider mindfulness which helps to foster acceptance of the present moment as we slow down our racing thoughts and be aware of our body and mind.
• During tough times, taking note of all the positive things in our lives could also give us a more balanced, grateful view of the world.
• We can also choose to reach out to seek support from trusted peers or family members.

Be mindful to avoid toxic positivity

When managing our emotions, we might unknowingly fall into the mindset of toxic positivity, which refers to an
obsession with positive thinking. This is the belief that people should put a positive spin on all experiences, neglecting
and brushing away emotions like sadness and anger, in a bid to feel “positive and happy” all the time.
We might feel compelled by our environment into doing so.

Signs of toxic positivity

Toxic positivity can often be subtle, but learning to recognise the
signs can help us better identify this type of behaviour. Some signs include:

Brushing off problems rather than facing them.

Feeling guilty about being sad, angry, or disappointed.

Hiding true feelings behind feel-good quotes that seem more socially acceptable.

Hiding/Disguising how we really feel or trying to 'get over' painful emotions.

Shaming other people when they don’t have a positive attitude.

Minimising other people’s feelings because they make us uncomfortable.

Risks of toxic positivity

Risks of toxic positivity

There are also risks such as:

• Increased isolation and stigma which discourage us from seeking support.
• Increased communication issues as we don’t see a need to solve our relationship problems because we only focus on the positive.
• Low self-esteem due to the inability to feel positive. We may feel as though we are failing.

How do I talk about my emotions?

Talking to others about our emotions can also help us explore new perspectives and understand our thinking patterns.

That someone can be our partner, a friend, colleague, or workplace mentor. For a start, we can reach out to the person we trust and say, “Can we talk for a minute? I have something to share.” We can then share how we feel and why. We may just find ourselves surprised that someone can help us feel better and assure us that we are not alone.

We don’t have to wait for our problems to be big or have a special time to talk about them. It’s good to practise talking about them earlier as it allows us to notice them.

We don’t have to talk about every feeling we have but noticing our feelings and saying how we feel and why, is good practice and a healthy way to express them. It is also okay to not know why we are feeling certain emotions. We can still say something like “I feel angry but I don’t know why.”

The more we talk about it, the easier it gets. It doesn’t just help us understand ourselves, but also increases the connection that we have with people who matter to us.

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