Overcoming emotional overwhelm: Your guide to emotional freedom

Do you feel like any negative emotions you have are a threat to your well-being? It’s a strong question, yet sometimes those of us who do can go into a complete panic and state of overwhelm if we feel that we are in an emotional situation that we believe we cannot handle - because we have no idea how to deliver the response that wells up inside of us. We know it feels strong, and not very good but are they correct? Do we have the right to feel them? Perish the thought of being able to deftly deliver them without feeling like we might combust.

Understanding emotional overwhelm

Is that you? Do you struggle with strong emotions?

This is a tricky one, mostly because those who are affected by this kind of overwhelm are not sure what is going on when they are in this place, but they feel overwhelmed and overcome by something almost unidentifiable to them. The box of navigational tools was never theirs to choose from because the things needed in early developmental stages never took place.

Alongside this, there are also intense feelings of sadness that feel almost ancient, their source or origin also unnamed and unknown. Let me give you an example of what l mean by this. 

Let’s say someone has said something to you or treated you in a way that feels 'bad', and you feel lost as to how to deal with the whole situation. You may know what you would like to say, but the delivery of this fills you with terror.

You might always ask friends about what to say or do because you need to make sure that you aren’t wrong. And so, the confirmation always comes from outside, not inside where your feelings are swirling around causing you fear, inner havoc and turmoil.

Now this sounds very dramatic because, internally, it is felt that way. However, if you come from a trauma-imbued family of origin, your negative emotions are seen as a threat and inconvenience.

The impact of childhood trauma

If you had a narcissistic parent or early care giver, you probably had to act as if you were OK. Your emotions were hidden, so that you and how you were didn’t "get in the way".

There was no 'mirroring' or enquiry about how you felt. So it became internalised as bad or unacceptable and, later on in life, as mentioned above, unidentifiable. Being in this stage is the hardest to bear - like there is a whole part of who and how you are that feels utterly disenfranchised.

So, when you feel bad now, as an adult, you have no idea how to respond, know what is called for, how to behave or what is your responsibility. It’s terrifying.

Because you were taught that negative emotion is bad, you think you’re bad. As a child, you cannot separate something that is outside of you from who you are.

As a child, l was never allowed to have negative emotions, they were denied and tidied away like my dolls and toys at the end of the day. Their place was either being put aside in a tidy corner or put in a box. I had no name for them or vocabulary, only the remembered panic that made me feel largely helpless and then, subsequently, adult me who knew quite a lot was somehow still lost at sea.

Still. Years on. How could this internal impasse ever be anything different if l had no map, no words to put around the feelings; no awareness? Just the squashing and denying of how bad l felt always feeling that l was wrong. Largely this is due to constant gas lighting and invalidation.

I had no words for my feelings. Since, as children, we live in a feeling world, if we 'feel' bad, we are bad. It is a nameless internal city wherein we cannot theorise. We cannot separate ourselves from what is perceived to be identified as the way we feel. Quite apart from anything our reasoning and rational brain has not formed yet. We are bereft of our executive functioning when we are children.

Therefore, we are exempt of validation. Worse still, we are known to ourselves as invalidated. That becomes our internal identity.

In a way, it is like being 'nationless'. And so, wherever and to whomever we can yoke ourselves to or belong to, we can dare to challenge. And if and when we do, it feels like a risk that is unbearable to experience because the belonging (either real or imagined) is so at risk.

So we enquire a lot, because we don’t trust how we feel, and because being wrong feels dangerous.

This plays complete havoc with our relational skills in our adult lives. We are unable to draw healthy boundaries because boundaries either feel like a threat or we draw so many of them around us to keep us out of reach, whilst always inwardly doubting our right to feel hurt, put upon, unfairly treated, and sometimes yes, even abused.

The challenge of self-care

Self-care becomes largely nonexistent because it is threatened at source, and the failed attempts of "saying how we feel" and feeling justified without any doubt, are so difficult, unless we are outraged, that we rarely go there.

We have no problem, however, defending, fixing or helping others - just ourselves. And when we do, we can feel panicked inside and genuinely scared, like we don’t have any rights.

This is not intellectual, it is visceral, where our intellect lives we can feel the anger and we can 'know'. It is just that in order to do so, we have to jump over the visceral fence to get the words out. To say, no, l’m not having that.

What we have to learn

Any emotion we have is valid.

Emotions are not governed by logic, and they do not exist by permission. We do not need to get permission to have an emotion about anything. An emotion is the way we feel. It is our response to a person, situation or dynamic.

No guilt nor shame are necessary but, nevertheless, they are our jailors until we become aware.

No pressure to disallow, or disbelieve is remotely relevant.

Your strong emotions or strong negative emotions, try to feel them, without judgement. Either from someone else or yourself. This is hard but possible. I know because l have done it.

It doesn’t come naturally at first, but the more you do it, the easier and more natural it becomes.

Please along the way of emergence, do not gaslight yourself because you were gaslit in your childhood about your feelings, perceptions and emotions. Or, look to be validated by the person or people who invalidate you. This is an old pattern if a parent was the invalidator, and you seek their approval and validation.

Go to "self" not to the people or person that caused the problem for a whole raft of their own issues, that belong to them and not you.

Draw a line between who you are and how you feel and your right to be, act and feel. You are the person who draws it. This will fill the hollow that has lived so long inside of you, and it feels good.

We must learn gently to step up for ourselves. For some, this is easy but for those of us who struggle with complex PTSD, it really isn’t and it absolutely does not come naturally. It has to be taught through a therapist and learnt.

Good news though - it can change far quicker than you thought coming out of the shadows. The more you do it and the dread abates, the easier it becomes. And when it does, it is a quiet, peaceful feeling that is completely known by you, and it belongs to you, and you alone. And the years of not knowing or being scared, they fade.

Observe things but don’t absorb them - make this your mantra. Say it over and over again to yourself. This will steer you clear of all the self-doubt that rears its head; say it like a fact, say it like a prayer.

This practice makes a huge difference that ignites the beginning of felt change. If someone has an issue with you that is their problem, not yours - unless you allow it. 

Invalidators? Remember, those that took it or those that take it, are never going to give it to you. It all comes down to you to give yourself tools to navigate the seas of your own strong emotions through your own emotional literacy. Then your inner world becomes home. And you become free.