You will want to start with Part 1.
How is everyone doing? If you have started working through steps 1 to 3 already you might be feeling a bit emotionally vulnerable, bruised, or drained. That’s ok. It’s part of the healing process. But make sure you take care of yourself. If you push yourself too fast and don’t let your emotions settle again before tackling steps 4 to 6, you will be too overwhelmed to use your analytical skills and too vulnerable to be as honest with yourself as you need to be.
In case you missed it before, here is a blank chart you can use as a guideline to fill in as you work through the steps.
Now, let’s continue on to steps 4 through 6.
4. IDENTIFY THE SOURCE OR TRIGGER FOR EACH EMOTION
This is the hardest part in terms of thinking and detective work. The goal is to answer the question “Why do I feel this way?” for each negative emotion that you listed in step 3. Some examples of sources or triggers for emotions are:
- Beliefs held by others close to you or society as a whole
- Formative experiences
- Influences of people who had an impact on you
- Physiological factors
- Dysphoria
- Your own actions
- Personal values or priorities
- Personal beliefs or attitudes
Sometimes you need to work backwards a few steps. For example:
- Area of stress – feeling like I’m not a good parent
- Aspect of control – belief;
- Emotion – inadequate;
- Why? Because I can’t lift my kid due to pain (physiological factor). Why does not being able to lift my child due to pain make me feel inadequate? Because I have an expectation that in order to be a good parent I need to be able to lift my child when they ask to be picked up (personal belief). Why do I feel like being a good parent requires lifting my child? Because that is the model of parenting I am exposed to by society (belief of society – ableism).
Result: I am affected by the belief that I am not a good parent which makes me feel inadequate because society tells me I should be able to lift my kid when they ask to be lifted and I can’t always do that because of pain.
This process takes time. You have to sit with each answer to the why question for a little while to see if your mind is still searching or if that resonates with you as being the root cause. I have found that talking to a trusted friend or family member is very helpful at this stage. They often have similar experiences or insight into my own beliefs, thoughts, experiences, feelings, and actions.
During this process you may uncover a new influential or formative experience from your past that is the root cause of the area of stress you originally listed in step one. You can either work through this area of stress again by starting with the newly discovered cause or you can list this experience as a separate area of stress and work through it at another time.
Sometimes the root cause of an emotion is something that is within our control (matches something we wrote in step two) and sometimes it’s not. When it is, we can be reluctant to accept that this is true because it would mean we are responsible for some of the emotional distress we have been feeling. But be honest with yourself and fear not! The next step will help you use this hard-won accountability to your advantage.
5. TAKE ACTION
By now you have separated out your different areas of stress, identified what aspects you have control over, experienced the emotions that are triggered, and discovered the root cause of those emotions. Now you are going to decide what actions to take.
The purpose of taking action is to interrupt the link between the root cause (step 4) and the negative emotion (step 3). We can only act on things that are within our control (step 2) so for each emotion that you want to disrupt, you have to identify which link closest to the root cause is in your control and choose an action that will address that. Using the example from step 4, the root cause (societal ableism) is not within my control so I would back up to the link before (personal belief) and target that with an action plan.
Some examples of actions are:
- Reframe the experience or adjust your beliefs through journaling, art, or a list of affirmations
- Change your behaviour or adopt a new habit
- Re-evaluate your priorities and values
- Seek out community, connection, or support
- Channel your personal experiences and strong emotions into advocacy
- Talk about your experience or struggle and embrace the vulnerability
- Confront negative influences
- Set or re-set personal, emotional, or relationship boundaries
Be creative. Take actions that resonate with you and will help support you. Avoid actions that will drain you further or take more time, money, or willpower than you can give. You may be able to find an action that will break more than one cause-emotion chain.
Take small steps. No action is too small but most actions that you come up with initially will be too big.
Set short term goals (hour, day, week at most). Our brains are constantly measuring the distance to our goal, how much progress we are making, and how much effort it is taking to achieve that progress. If progress slows down too much or takes too much effort, our brain automatically shifts into stress mode (which we are clearly trying to avoid) or flight mode (I don’t actually care about this goal anyway, I’m fine). This is such a common occurrence for us that we are pretty terrible at noticing when it is happening. Thus, the reason for step six.
6. REVIEW YOUR PROGRESS
Don’t leave this step for too long! When you are working through hard stuff to get out of a stressful emotional loop, a month can feel like eternity unless you can tell you’re making progress. At the same time, this process can be so emotionally intense that you need to dedicate a week to working out the root cause of each emotion for one area of stress.
So pick a timeline that works for you – two weeks, a month, three months. I would say six months is too long no matter how slowly you have to work through your areas of stress.
You can start your timer from when you initiate your action plan or from when you started with step one. It depends if you are reviewing your progress with one specific area of stress or the whole process for all areas of your life. You can set different review periods for both of these if you’d like.
When the time to review comes up, look back through your notes from step one through to step five. Do they all still resonate with you? Have the emotions that you experience when you replay the event or delve into that area of your life changed? Do you have new insights into the root causes or triggers for those emotions? How have you done with following through on your action plan? Did the actions you took help the way you wanted them to or do you want to try something else?
If a lot of the stress from an area has resolved, try working through the steps again as though it is the first time. If there are aspects you still need to work on, this will make those clear. If you’re happy with how well it has resolved, consider that area of stress complete!
WHAT IF THE CAUSE OF THE STRESS IS ONGOING OR OUT OF MY CONTROL?
Not all areas of stress can be resolved by processing them. Sometimes we process the parts we have control over (challenging our negative beliefs, adjusting our priorities, finding community and support) and it is still a moderately high source of stress.
I have a different system for managing stress that I share in another two part series: How to Manage Stress and Prevent Burnout Part 1 and Part 2. It is visual, practical, and straightforward. There are lots of ways you can adapt it to create something that will work for you.
As always, reach out if you need to.
RELATED POSTS AND RESOURCES
- Sample Emotions Wheel
- How to Work Through Areas of Emotional Stress Part 1
- How to Manage Stress and Prevent Burnout Part 1
- How to Manage Stress and Prevent Burnout Part 2
- Finding Support
- Getting Through the Dark Months
- Dealing with Frustration
- Trans Affirmations
- How Dysphoria Contributes to Burnout and What You Can Do About It
- Staying Positive