How To Handle Strong Emotions As An Empath

The holidays can be the most wonderful time of the year, but they can also be a time when tensions run high. Being around family, the social and financial pressures of the holidays, combined with the fact that it’s supposed to be the “happiest time of the year” can often make our negative emotions feel amplified.

So how can we keep our cool and come back home to ourselves when we feel our emotions spiraling out of control? That’s exactly what I’m covering in today’s post! Read on to learn the seven steps to handling your anger and emotions as an empath 👇🏼

Step 1: Get By Yourself

The very first step to bringing yourself back to a place of alignment is to go to a quiet place by yourself. Escape the crowd and find some peace and solitude. If you stay present in that energy of chaos, disruption, or anger, it can be very challenging to follow the steps needed to regain calm. 

Step 2: Breathe through Your Feet

The next step is to breathe through your feet. Stay with me - I know it sounds a bit odd, but it definitely works. What you want to do is this:

First, you want to take a couple of deep breaths in, and try to calm your heart rate if you're anxious, angry or frustrated. Allow yourself to center as much as you can.

Next, bring those thoughts and emotions that are spiraling in your head, and allow them to go all the way down to your feet, out into Mother Earth. 

Take deep breaths and visualize those thoughts and emotions traveling down from your head, through the body, and to the bottom of the soles of your feet. Once you can feel a tingling feeling in your feet, that’s when you know those circuits are open and you’re doing it right!

When we breathe through our feet, we're engaged, we're connected and we're grounded. We have the ability to just relax for a moment and take in the goodness Mother Earth has in store for us. And if we can bring ourselves into a state of relaxation in the midst of chaos, anxiety disruption, anger, frustration or hurt - we’re able to win our battles.

Step 3: Remember that this is about YOU - not other people.

Step three is to remember: this is about you, and nobody else. In the process of feeling our feelings, we may have screamed, cried, or lashed out. That happens and is a normal process of being a human being.

But once you’ve committed yourself to this process of releasing your emotions and centering yourself, it is extremely important that you’re now focused 100% on yourself.

Once you’ve stepped away and are starting your process of release, there should be no more blaming, no more playing arguments or what the other person said on a loop in your mind, and no complaining about the other person. Commit to making yourself feel better rather than having the last word or ‘winning’ an argument. This process is entirely for YOU!

Step #4: Acknowledge What You Feel

Step four is deciding that this feeling, thought process or experience is one that you don’t want to have anymore. In order to do that however, you must first acknowledge what you feel. 

Acknowledge that you feel angry, frustrated, or hurt. Acknowledge your feelings towards the other person - maybe you’re feeling like terminating the relationship, yelling at them, or saying things you might later regret. 

Whatever it is, acknowledge how you feel. 

You can do this on your own, in a healthy and safe way. Maybe it’s screaming into a pillow. Maybe it’s journaling your feelings. Maybe it’s writing a letter to that person that you don’t actually send. 

The key here is that rather than pushing our feelings down or ignoring them, we acknowledge and accept them without judgement. We must do this in order to release them. 

When you have acknowledged how you feel, accepted it, and decided that you no longer wish to feel this way, that’s when it’s time for the next step. 

Step #5: Understand Where The Hurt is Coming From

Step five is actually to dig deeper and understand where the hurt is coming from. Once you can recognize your triggers, and understand why certain experiences create emotional reactions for you, you can begin to release those patterns.

You can say to yourself “I understand why I’m feeling hurt, because of betrayals in the past, because of the ways I didn’t stand up for myself. Because of my past experiences, I didn’t stand up for myself in this current one. It made me angry, and it triggered this reaction. But I don't want to feel this way anymore.”

You can call in your anger and wounding and acknowledge its existence. You can thank the old you for its service, for trying to keep you safe and protected up until this point. And after you thank your anger, your hurt, you can finally release it. 

This can be an incredibly powerful process. 

Step #6: Decide you MEANT it. 

Step six is to commit to the process of releasing and really MEAN it. Just because you’ve released something doesn’t mean it will never show up for you again.  Those thoughts and emotions will keep trying to push their way into your experience, and it’s up to you to say, “No, I’ve already released that. I’m not that type of person anymore. I’m not going to go down that path.” 

Remind yourself that those feelings coming up is simply a habit, a pattern. You’ve got to keep breaking the habit, again and again, until it no longer comes up for you. And the way you break it is by reminding yourself you’ve already released that part of yourself, and to refuse to engage with those thought patterns.

This takes discipline and commitment, but it’s oh so worth it!

Step #7: Offer Yourself Love

Step number seven is  to offer yourself love. 

Because here’s the thing - this process of being upset, anxious, chaotic, wounded and learning, acknowledging and releasing is what we’re all here to do. It’s a fundamental part of being a human on this planet. So don’t let yourself get caught up in shoulda, could, woulda. Don’t judge yourself for being imperfect or get down on yourself for still getting triggered or caught up in your emotions.

Instead, continue to practice and be gentle with yourself. Changing yourself is hard work, and it’s important you give yourself a little extra love and encouragement as you work through these things. 

If you want even MORE support with learning how to increase your vibration and live a life of integrity, I highly encourage you to join us in The Your Empowerment Posse. We have monthly group coaching sessions, channeled trainings and more to help you live your most empowered existence!