We Need To Specifically Label Our Emotions: A Psychologist Shares How

We're likely not the first to tell you: Stress management is incredibly important for your health (both physically and mentally). But "stress" has become a nebulous term, so to speak. So much so, that it can be hard to discern whether you truly feel stressed versus exhausted, worried, or disappointed. 

Yes, all of those emotions are different, albeit they are on a similar plane. According to Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David, Ph.D., we tend to mislabel our emotions—and especially stress. More often than not, she tells me on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast, we file all the uncomfortable emotions we face under a giant umbrella of "stress," without actually understanding what they truly mean. And if we can't understand our difficult emotions, how in the world can we begin to handle them? 

According to David, showing up to your emotions is only the first part of actually dealing with them. It's an essential part—you can't expect to effectively deal with your emotions without accepting them—but the work doesn't end there. Once you acknowledge your emotions (without a positive or negative connotation surrounding them), the next phase is to try to make sense of them. "One way to do this is by putting language around our experiences," she notes. 

Let's take a deeper dive into stress, for example: "There is a world of difference between stress and disappointment, between stress and exhaustion," David says. "When you label your emotions with such a big label, it doesn't help you." What does help you, however, is identifying what is actually underlying that "stress."

Whenever you start to feel a difficult emotion creeping on, David offers a two-step practice in order to effectively process and deal with them.

First, try to figure out at least two other emotions you can identify with. If your initial thought is "I'm stressed," what are two other options that emulate how you're feeling in that moment? Remember to be specific and granular; that way, you'll be able to get to the root of what you're feeling rather than slapping on a giant "stress" label with no actionable ways to handle it.

Once you identify those underlying emotions, "No longer are you stuck in, 'I am stressed,'" says David. "You are 'I am exhausted, so I need greater levels of self-care.' It's very different from just 'stressed.'"

The next step for dealing with those emotions, is to discover what values the emotion is pointing to: "We tend not to have strong emotions about things we don't care about," says David, and your difficult feelings can shed light on what's important to you. For example, if you are lonely, do you yearn for social connection? Are you missing deep conversations with your partner?

Yes, accepting your emotions for what they are is crucial to learning how to deal with them. But David suggests a deeper dive in order to process them effectively: It's the combination of showing up to difficult emotions, understanding them completely, and moving toward active ways of seeking our values that makes you truly emotionally resilient.