Individual Counseling

Life can be tough and overwhelming! In our modern society we experience more stress, anxiety, depression, self-judgment, emptiness, and burden than ever. In order to cope, now, more than ever we need to find effective ways to handle our emotions.

Unfortunately, our culture and educational system fail to provide us with the education, resources, and skills to understand and work with our emotions. Noted psychologist and author Hilary Jacobs Hendel said that most of us don’t know how to deal with emotions effectively. We avoid them. We talk ourselves out of having emotions, and we distract ourselves away from them and try not to feel them. Or, we feel our emotions all the time and struggle balancing them, and, in fact, we become easily overwhelmed by them. These very coping strategies lead to depression and anxiety.

While working with me, my goal is to equip you with the understanding and strategies that can help you with your emotions. What we do know about emotions is that they are powerful, biologically wired in force that can make us do things and say things that we often regret. Hoping that emotions won’t affect us is like hoping that it will never rain again.

We are always going to feel something (whether or not we are aware of that). However, emotions often don’t feel good inside of our bodies. Let’s be honest, emotions are often uncomfortable! Sometimes, even excitement and joy can be difficult to feel even though these are the pleasant emotions.

What some of us have learned to do is to push through life and disconnect from how we feel (those of us who learned to use that coping strategy usually look calm, cool, and collected even at the most stressful times). Those who cannot, simply disconnect from how they feel and have learned to use that intense, anxious energy as an engine to multitask or strive for perfection, for example. Neither of these ways is bad, if you think about it. Staying calm and collected is absolutely needed. Being able to work hard, achieve, and get things done is also necessary.

However, science now shows that blocking your emotions (or letting them overwhelm you) leads to depression, anxiety, and many other psychological symptoms.

Cortisol is a stress hormone that our bodies release as a consequence of chronic stress. If we have too much cortisol release, and if that hormone is released constantly, it will eventually cause heart disease, headaches, insomnia, stomach pain, autoimmune disorders, and more.

So why not invest your time in learning about your emotions and finding a new way of coping with them? Why not create a balance between how you feel and what you think so that you can access emotions when needed, and you can calm them down when they are flooding you? If you are interested in learning more, please call, text at (303) 898-6140 or email me at: marta.kem@vibrantcouplescounseling.com