Psychological Terms and Principles I Use to Understand and Process My Emotions

Why learn these hard-sounding words? (Spoiler: The actual concepts are very simple.)

I really wanted to write a series of blog posts on how I process my emotions. The problem is writing such a series is really hard given there are so many concepts.

I am no psychologist and if you are suffering from a mental illness you should really approach one.

At the same time, I believe you should learn the psychological concepts well cuz they give a deeper understanding of how you work and also how others work.

I have observed people attending therapy but not learning these concepts continue to face the same issues.

What you’ll gain by learning these concepts is that you can choose your own adventure in exploring and understanding your own self and healing better. It’s like you didn’t know how to read and suddenly you have the tools and language to read, understand and implement.

A common complaint is this is too hard. Life is simple. Why make it complicated by knowing these hard-sounding words?

In practice, I have found.

Learning these is easy! The concepts are pretty simple and especially interesting if you are trying to understand yourself. Plus, it’s a one-time thing. Once you know the gist of these you may dive deeper into particular topics.
We often suffer because we don’t understand. Once we start understanding things become easier.

Below I describe a few concepts and provide a few resources. You can learn this concept in detail from a video or blog by psychologists. A lot of these concepts were introduced to me by my therapist.

It’s possible to learn these skills and learn to be a more stable-minded and free person. Think of this blog post as a gateway to some of these concepts that you can put into your mental toolkit. As time goes on, adapt and develop some of your own.

Also, note the things I describe aren’t exhaustive, there are still things I discover, learn from YouTube/Blogs, or sometimes even connect with my therapist if I am not able to process myself. I am always trying to fill gaps and process deeper emotions which requires more study.

How to Read this Blogpost: Read this index and then jump around

This blogpost includes a lot of details so jump around and watch the recommended videos you find interesting. Also, this includes some terms to search and learn more from. This is marked as this. For example, cognitive distortion. You can search YouTube or Google for these phrases.

If you wanna start with one watch the video in the journal or “How I process my emotions” section.

Useful Psychology Concepts

1.1 Cognitive Distortion: Splitting facts from emotions
1.2 Defense Mechanisms: Brain/Ego trying to protect itself.
1.3 Cognitive Dissonance: State where the brain cannot make sense of two countertruths
1.4 Coping Mechanisms: Your toolbox for processing emotions
1.5 Nervous System and Regulation: Fight Flight Freeze Fawn
1.6 Trauma: Body/Mind acts like it’s under stress based on something that happened a long time ago which isn’t present now

Useful Psychology Tools

2.1 Most Important: Learning to Feel Your Emotions
2.2 Emotion Wheel
2.3 RAIN method for Radical Acceptance
2.4 Journaling
2.5 EFT

Schools of Psychology

3.1 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
3.2 Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

How I process my Emotions
My progress with emotional processing
Ending: What to do next

1. Useful Psychology Concepts

1.1 Cognitive Distortion

Splitting facts from emotions

Cognitive Distortions are biases of our brain where your brain feels your emotions are valid and say something about the real world when in reality you don’t have evidence.
If you have lots of cognitive distortions in a fixed period, or have a high intensity of it, you are likely to get depressed.
Cognitive distortions can be broken by asking counter questions and answering them which can lead to deeper realizations of reality.
Some types of Cognitive Distortions are:
- Mind Reading:
  - Assuming you know what is going on in someone’s mind
  - For Eg: Your significant other looks angry. You know you didn’t do anything such that they are angry. But you assume that they are angry because of you.
- Discounting the Positive
  - If 100 things go good, and 1 things go bad. You believe everything was bad.
- Catastrophizing
  - You jump to worst-case scenarios.
  - For Eg: You made a small mistake at work and felt that you’d be fired.
- Labeling
There are about 9-10 other cognitive distortions. Watch this 5-minute video to know them and how to counter them.

1.2 Defense Mechanisms

Brain/Ego trying to protect itself

Defense Mechanisms are the brain’s way of trying to protect itself in an unhealthy way.
Some types of Defense Mechanisms are:
- Sublimation
  - Eg: Consciously or unconsciously
- Projection
  - Eg: You make others panic when you are in panic.
A part of healing emotionally is to learn to come across a similar situation and now have your defense mechanisms fired up.
It can be helpful to know these as they can help you identify behaviors in yourself.

1.3 `Cognitive Dissonance`

State where the brain cannot make sense of two countertruths

The brain has a nature of making sense of things around us. But sometimes if the evidence presented by the brain is too counter to its belief it can cause a kind of split in the brain which can be a really painful experience.
If you have enough splits (i.e. your brain is fractured into multiple parts), you won’t be able to think thoughts clearly, and this would likely have led to some kind of trauma. For example, assume you had a 10-year friendship but your friend suddenly turned #toxic.
- The picture you had in your mind was of a really good friendship and a deep vulnerable connection. But now they say they have always hated you and everything you do. And they say 2 or three more mean things.
- This can make you start questioning not just one moment but the entire last 10 years.
- This will be too hard for you to think about so, your brain activates a defense mechanism and makes you not think about it.
The way to get over cognitive distortions is to synchronize the truths by creating a sort of sentence something that balances both sides and connects in some way.

I and my friend had a good connection till now. But it seems they are not enjoying it anymore and want space. They do say they didn’t enjoy the connection till now but that is something I’ll have to contemplate on. For now, I can let them be.

1.4 Coping Mechanisms

Your toolbox for processing emotions

Coping mechanisms are ways to deal with emotional troubles.
They can be categorized into 5 parts
- Emotional
  - Trying to work on the emotions.
  - Eg:
    - Crying
    - Journalling
    - etc
- Problem solving: (Outcome needs to be under control)
  - Finding an alternative solution is a healthy problem-based coping mechanism.
  - This does not work when the problem is not under your control. Using this if the problem is not under your control will backfire.
- Meaning based (Depends on your beliefs and values. Useful when things are outside your control)
  - You try to find a value-based meaning behind what happened.
  - This is useful when the problem is not under your control.
- Social
  - Seeking out to others to help process.
  - Eg: Talking to a friend
- Avoidance
  - Avoiding the problem.
  - Eg:
    - Exercise Alchohol
They can be categorized
- Adaptive (helpful)
  - Example: Exercise.
- Maladaptive (not helpful)
  - Eg: Alchohol. Or even Excessive Exercise.
- All 5 types of coping mechanisms can be adaptive or maladaptive.
Recommendations
- You need to discover coping mechanisms that work for you.
- Read about different adaptive (helpful) and nonadaptive (not helpful) coping mechanisms here.
  - Healthy Coping: 24 Mechanisms & Skills For Positive Coping
- Read this list of coping mechanisms choose a few and practice. See what works.
  - 10+ Coping Skills Worksheets for Adults and Youth (+ PDFs)

1.5 Nervous System Regulation and Stress Responses

The Nervous system is a brain system that either makes you relaxed or has a heightened awareness.

We have two types of nervous system responses:

Parasympatethic: relaxed.
Sympathetic: stressed.

The sympathetic response could be one of the following.

Apart from Defense Mechanisms, there are common responses when we are threatened.

When our brain assumes we are around a physical danger, we respond with one of these:

Fight:
- Blood supply shifts from the brain and digestion to the legs and heart making heart rate increase.
- Body is ready to fight.
Flight
- Same physical sensation as fight by body is ready to run away physically.
Freeze
- Brain and body freeze. You don’t know what to do next.
Fawn
- When dealing with a person who makes us treated, the brain people pleases/agrees to whatever the other person says because it feels it’s a real threat.
- This can cause someone to stay in a toxic relationship.
Recommended video: 11 min.

In nature, the sympathetic nervous system is activated for small bursts. (for example: when you see a Tiger and need to run.). But in our modern world, small problems that are not life-threatening can be interpreted by the body as a strength. This can cause Nervous System Dysregulation i.e. even if no treatment exists the body feels like it’s under stress.

What we need to learn to do is learn to regulate our nervous system better. And if we have a dysregulated nervous system, focus on healing our nervous system.

1.6 Trauma: Most Important Topic

Body/Mind acts like it’s under stress based on something that happened a long time ago which isn’t present now

Trauma can be harder to identify. It’s the great chameleon of mental illness because it can manifest as many things.

Chronic Depression: Someone depressed their whole life.
Impulsivity or Lack of unifying direction.
Vulnerability to repeated mistakes. Making the same damn mistake over and over again.
In-ability to take risks.
Being a people pleaser. I don’t know how to stop.
Paralysis of initiation. We can’t bring ourselves to start stuff.
Can’t moderate relationships. Can’t engage in moderate relationships.
Sematic Problems: Problems with your body that aren’t medically diagnostical.

We all have some trauma big or small.
There are many many methods to deal with trauma. I recommend watching the video first.

MUST WATCH: 39 minutes will save you multiple weeks and months

After watching read my notes for revision.

There is also something called Generational Trauma which is something passed on from family members to younger children. For this, I would recommend watching Dr. Ramini’s channel.

An aspect of trauma that doesn’t get talked about often is experiencing malevolence in the world. I believe Jordan Peterson does explain it much better

2. Useful Psychology Tools

2.1 Most Important: Learning to Feel Your Emotions

How to feel emotions is probably the most important skill you need to learn. This can help you understand how emotions are affecting you, choose appropriate responses rather than react, and also feel safe.

Try to feel about how you are feeling right now and try to get deeper into it. It’s easier if you can verbalize how you are feeling.

Here’s a sample of how I would feel my emotion and verbalize it. Assume I am facing a difficult emotion. Mostly I would close my eyes and think.

I am feeling panic. I am feeling uncomfortable somewhere in my head. Near my forehead. It’s like a tangled thread ball. It hurts. Also, I feel a slight pressure in breathing near my mouth.

In my experience, most smaller emotions will get auto-processed when you just allow yourself to feel. Also, there is no alternative to not feeling your emotions long-term.

The other techniques work to extend this core skill of feeling your feelings.

2.2 Labeling emotions

Labeling your emotions like Anger, Sadness, etc can help you understand the nature of how you feeling and process them better. The more detailed you can be the better it is.

Eventually, you’ll be able to understand your emotional state in an instant.

This will allow you to seek help easily. When you can describe how you feel better, it’s easier to ask a therapist for the exact help you need or search with the right terms on YouTube/Google.

Some emotions require a special form of processing, which means the techniques would change a little. In my case I recognized,

Trauma: Requires more feeling in the moment and thinking things through.
Anxiety: Requires trauma processing paired with a long-term mindset change.
Anger: Requires more looking behind the anger for core feelings and then processing it and letting go in some cases.
Fears: Requires gradual exposure therapy.

When I was starting out, I relied most on the How we feel app for this. But you could also use an emotion wheel.

2.3 RAIN method for Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance is acceptance of emotions and allowing ourselves to feel the emotion without judgment.
This can teach our body to be okay with emotions and that feeling bad is okay.

To know why the importance of acceptance watch:

This I believe is the first step to processing emotions.
I don’t use the acronyms mentally but it can be useful to understand.
- Recognize
- Allow it to be as it is
- Investigate with care
- Nurture with self-compassion

Here’s the technique:

The most important thing in RAIN is learning to feel. I’ll explain this further in the next section.

2.4 EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique

EFT/Tapping is tapping at a specific part of your body like your forehead.
Recently, EFT has been my most used technique to process emotions.
When we are stressed, the mind tends to jump on defense mechanisms. Part of healing is to allow the mind to stay with the thought/emotion without defense mechanisms being activated.
In EFT, because we are physically tapping parts of our body, the brain gives more importance to this physical aspect and so, when we think in such a state, we can think things through without the defense mechanism being activated. This causes the brain to become desensitized i.e. the next time we happen to think about the same thing, it won’t trigger the same emotions.
Recommended video

2.5 Journaling your emotions

Typing or writing down how you are feeling can help you get over your cognitive dissonance and emotional troubles much faster.

I learned the details of how to journal here.

I used journalling the most to process my emotions.

2.5 Cognitive Reframing

Cognitive Reframing is a top-level coping mechanism. I use it all the time.

For me, the first step is always RAIN (radical acceptance) of my emotion followed by a combination of Journaling or Cognitive Reframe.

2.5 Downward Arrow and Socratic Questioning

Until we make our subconscious conscious, it’ll continue to run out of lives.

~ Carl Jung.

Core beliefs are a person’s deeply held beliefs that are under the surface and can reveal a lot about the person.

Understanding and changing core beliefs that cause problems can be helpful here.

I don’t strictly use these techniques in the book. But there are some elements of it that I use.

Downward Arrow

In the downward arrow, you start with something that stresses and then ask, If this were true then what? And continue answering it. Until you arrive at a core belief referred to as self.

Link to Practice PDF

Assume this frictional example.

I don’t want to tell my mother that I want to leave engineering and do medical.
- If I did tell her, then what?
  - Then she would be angry with me.
    - If she were angry with me, then what?
      - Then I would be very sad.
        
        Why would you be sad?
        
        Cuz I believe my mother is the only one who understands me.

Read this PDF for some examples: Downward Arrow

Once a core belief is understood, other techniques can be used.

Socratic Questioning

In Socratic Question, you don’t have a specific aim. They are open-ended questions to come to the truth. So there is no agenda as such.

Questions can be of the following types:

Clarifying Thought: What do you mean by this?
Challenging Assumptions: How do you know?
Examining Evidence/Rationale: Can you give me an example?
Considering Alternative Perspective: What is the counterargument?
Considering Implications and Consequences: What are the consequences of that?
Meta Questions

Read details about it in the following post: Socratic Questioning. More on types here: 6 types of Socratic Questions

I believe I use Socratic questioning much more unconsciously now.

3. Schools/Modules of Psychology

Psychology is mostly divided into modules. And it can be interesting to look at different models to increase your knowledge further.

The truth is I haven’t looked deep enough. I know things on the surface of these modules. And it has been so long that I have forgotten most of it. I’ll visit them if and when the need arises. What I would recommend is just search about these concepts on YouTube and gain a general understanding of them.

Each module introduces a variety of techniques.

I have touched upon two schools during my therapy sessions.

3.1 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is based on the premise that emotions are connected to behavior and thoughts and influencing one of those can impact the other.

Image Source

For me, knowing that thoughts, behavior, and emotions are interconnected helps.

Sometimes trying to process emotion doesn’t work because the underlying belief is the cause of the problem. At that time, cognitive reframing helped me.
Similarly, especially with anxiety, changing behaviors such as deciding not to make a decision late at night or when I am sleepy has really helped.

3.2 Dialectic Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

The Radical Acceptance tool that I have talked about earlier comes from the distress chapter of DBT.

DBT has a whole module called Distress Tolerance that can help in managing emotions.

4. How I typically process emotions (mainly trauma)

The place I have learned to mainly “Process my Emotions” is the following video:

I combine a lot of tools and techniques mentioned above. When I was learning the techniques I used to do it consciously. Now it’s much more automatic.

I always observe my mind and body to how it’s feeling.

At first, I didn’t know what I was feeling so, I would look at the emotion wheel or use the How We Feel app.
Sometimes I would also assume I am not doing okay
- For example, if I wasn’t able to focus for a few hours or I had tears in my eyes, I would ask myself if I am doing okay.

If I think I have a cognitive distortion cuz as catastrophizing I’ll ask myself counter questions.
If I think I am having some kind of dissonance, I’ll try to think through and cover the range of thought.
If I have a lot of older sadder memories or trauma. If I observe myself skipping time. Or suddenly crying.

I’ll assume it’s some trauma or sadness. I try to feel my body (i.e. a form of RAIN method)
If needed I’ll follow it up with journaling.
I’ll try to get everything out on the journal page.
I use a digital journal and I take a pause and write in that moment.
Typically in a day or two I’ll be fully fine not even recalling what was making me sad. Or if I do recall, that even will be desensitized.
Initially, I only journaled about my feelings and events. Now, I mostly combine with cognitive reframe at the end. (cognitive reframing is a kind of thought-based coping mechanism.)

In case I am not able to think through the sadness,

I’ll use EFT which can help me think clearly.

If I am not able to be in control which used to happen when I was in deep depression,
I’ll try to consciously distract myself for a little bit a few hours (i.e. avoidance-based) but in a day or two automatically revisit and try to process with one of the ways

5. My progress

Initially, when I had depression I used to do these for multiple hours a day. I would even reach out to friends.
Once all the major things were resolved, I found there was nothing to process. So, I happened to take a few months break.
Then a few medium things appeared. Which I processed.
Later some really tiny things.
And now almost negligible/nano things.
- I am still do the process. I don’t want backlog to grow and I would like to always have my mental clarity.
- Though mostly I don’t need to do journal or EFT. But when required I do use them.
- I am in touch with my body and mind all the time and can detect any disturbance ASAP and do a quick RAIN or cognitive reframe.

6. Ending: What to do next?

Above I have described different concepts that I believe people should know and I have provided the resources I used.

As a next step, I suggest,

#1. Be curious

Whatever you are struggling with search YouTube for it. My only suggestion would be to listen to psychologists.

Also, a good mental model is: If you know about a problem and solution for multiple years but haven’t fixed the problem, then you likely don’t know the problem or the solution. You need to seek to understand the problem from a completely new POV that you don’t know and try out a solution that you don’t know.

In the past, I have searched for

How to deal with Trauma
How to process emotions
How to empathize with others
Having trouble sleeping psychology.
etc

Some of my recommended resources are:

Alok Kanojia, MD.
Dr Ramini: Mainly focused on narcisistic relationship.
Julia Kristina
Theraphy in a Nutshell
Kati Morton
Andrew Huberman

#2. Start processing your emotions anyway. Just aim towards inbox zero

It’s possible. I am on the path of it. Deal with every psychological problem you have fully.

And have no new backlog. It’s one thing to have problems from the past. But it’s really unproductive to not process new things as they come because they’ll fill up your backlog.

I hope this blog post served you and gave you my perspective on the insights I have learned. I am grateful for many of my friends, my therapist, and many many internet resources especially Dr. Kanoj and Dr. Ramini who supported me during my difficult times. No amount of thanks is going to cut it. 🙂

This blog post doesn’t cover the topic of thinking rational thoughts cognitive reframing and spirituality. Cognitive reframing can cement your emotional healing and make it complete. Seeking and understanding spiritual concepts from Shreemad Bhagwad Gita has been my main gateway for a lot of cognitive reframing.

From whatever you are going through. May you find the strength and techniques that can help you navigate this mental terrain! Wishing you all the best!

Question: What are your adaptive (helpful) and maladaptive (not-helpful) coping mechanisms? Do let me know!