Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Emotions as signals
When somebody says they just get on with it, take the getting on with it seriously. That is the door, and arguing with the nothing is a wall.
This happens a lot, I just roll with it, I forget about it: there is a whole strategy in that sentence and it is visible, unlike the feeling underneath. So say it back with respect. You have got quite good at rolling with it. Then wonder aloud what it is for, and let them answer or not. Told they must be feeling something, most people close; told their coping makes sense, most people look at it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
give good news to those who are steadfast (Quran 2:155). Enduring is honoured rather than dismissed there, which is the tone this asks for.
وَلَنَبۡلُوَنَّكُم بِشَيۡءࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡخَوۡفِ وَٱلۡجُوعِ وَنَقۡصࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡأَمۡوَٰلِ وَٱلۡأَنفُسِ وَٱلثَّمَرَٰتِۗ وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops. But [Prophet], give good news to those who are steadfast
Qur’an 2:155read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A scale development study showed that beliefs about emotion, such as whether feelings can hijack your self-control and whether they can be managed at all, form a measurable structure that predicted clinically relevant outcomes beyond existing measures. What someone believes about feeling shapes what they do with it. This is questionnaire work, so it maps the beliefs rather than showing that changing them changes outcomes.
Veilleux JC, Salomaa AC, Shaver JA, Zielinski MJ, Pollert GA. (2015). Multidimensional assessment of beliefs about emotion: development and validation of the emotion and regulation beliefs scale.. Assessment doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Coping is the part that can be seen and admitted, so it is the safest place to start looking.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Go back to the second before you reacted. Not the argument, not the history, just that one second and what crossed you in it.
If someone is saying so much that you have lost the thread, stop them kindly and check. Sorry, that is a lot and it matters, can I say back what I have got so far.
When all you can say is that something happened and you went off, take it apart in five pieces: what set it off, how you read it, what your body did, what you made it mean, and what you wanted to do next.