Skills to Deal with Difficult Emotions
Learn a simple yet powerful approach to managing difficult emotions. Drawing from a Buddhist parable, you'll discover how thoughts and feelings only become overwhelming when we resist them. By noticing and labeling emotions without judgment, you'll strengthen your emotional resilience. You will get practical tools to stay grounded and present, even in challenging emotional moments.
Transcript
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there is a famous Buddhist tale buddha
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was walking with his disciples they came
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across a giant rock buddha asked one of
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his disciples "What is it?" The disciple
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answered "It is a giant
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rock." Buddha replied "It is a giant
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rock only if you try to push it if you
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do not push it it is just a
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rock the moral of the story is our
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thoughts emotions and feelings are like
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giant rocks they become giant rocks only
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if you try to push or wrestle with them
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instead of pushing them we can improve
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our emotional regulation by cultivating
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the negative capability to notice them
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just as rocks not giant rocks we learn
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to stay with our negative emotions when
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we notice our feelings just as rocks not
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giant ones instead of suppressing our
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emotions and thoughts when we think of
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our shortcomings or our cringe-worthy
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moments we learn to stay with them the
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Buddhist notion of impermanence will
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help us to understand the changing
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nature of emotions thoughts and feelings
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we are not going to be happy forever we
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are also not going to be sad
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forever just noticing the rock instead
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of wrestling with our emotions will
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improve our emotional regulation by
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noticing the emotions and labeling them
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just as emotions just the rock not the
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giant one we enhance our capacity to
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stay with our emotions not in our
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emotions we stay with our emotions like
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a fellow traveler when you're upset or
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feeling overwhelmed you can take a
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moment to label your emotions and
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feelings in a notebook just noticing and
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labeling these emotions will improve
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your ability to stay with them over time
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that's one way to cultivate negative
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capability