It sounds like a BS answer, but it's true. My personal experience is that the older I've gotten, the less I'm affected by the world around me. My best guess is the experience of time can lend coping mechanisms, under the proper circumstances I'm sure.
That's a fair take. But I will say that we just grew a little older together, and I'll take your point to heart when dealing with others.
I get the sentiment, but what is it rooted in? Extreme experiences giving you a new perspective making old anxieties feel like nothing. That's just statistics. That's saying that the longer you live, the more likely you are to experience those kinds of things.
It is something you will do though. So you can rest easy on that part. Sometimes the best course of action is to do nothing.
Acknowledge them. Allow yourself to feel them, knowing they are only temporary. The more you try to suppress them, the longer it will take to work through them.
It’s less about the intensity of your emotions and more about how you deal with them.
Let’s say you got really angry in public. It’s fine to get angry, sometimes there are good reasons for that. But there are multiple ways to deal with that anger. An unhealthy way would be to run amok and harm innocent people in order to vent. A healthy way would be to calm down, reflect on what makes you angry, and then either make an effort to improve your situation or remove yourself from it.
You can’t help feeling a certain way, but you can choose how you react to your emotions. Try to pick the option that is the least destructive to yourself and those around you. If emotional regulation is hard for you, you can learn coping skills from a therapist.
I used to be very empathic, I cared so much about the world and everyone in it. Making sure people were taken care of, and hoping for the best for everything. I would get depressed when bad things happened and I couldn't do anything about it. But as I've gotten older and the world has gotten so much worse and it keeps getting worse and worse. I find I've adopted an "It is what it is" attitude about nearly everything. I have zero faith in humanity and it's ability to over come the downward spiral we are in, and doubt we will still be here in 100 years, and frankly have gotten to the point were I feel that might be for the best. Time for the universe to hit reset and start again.
We're not special. Some of us tried, but after a few decades on this earth I am not sure we collectively deserve it.
The box method of breathing for several minutes helps me in immediate situations. And I’ve found doing this on a regular basis helps it become a habit which in general helps me deal with emotions better.
As someone else posted, medication. If your psychiatrist thinks it is warranted.
Therapy can be a godsend. Don’t be afraid to hop therapists at the beginning either—find a good match.
And something that helps me immensely: I use this as a mantra: “I will not always feel like this. Tomorrow I will not feel like this. This will pass.” Treat these strong emotions as a wave you need to ride. But that wave will eventually subside and you cam comfort yourself with that fact.
I find when I have a balanced life nothing in particular tends to make much of an impact. And when it does, those emotions are important and you shouldn't try to douse them. For example if your mother dies, it's normal and healthy to feel devastated.
What I mean by a balanced life is a meaningful job, fulfilling social relationships both romantic and non-romantic, hobbies and interests- intellectual and physical.
Stay far away from drugs.
Then you pair it with a soundtrack that features songs providing an emotional counterbalance. If you're feeling depressed, play aggressive music. If you're feeling stressed, play happy music. If you're feeling manic, play desperate music, like hopeless love songs. If you're feeling angry, play something wistful and dreamy. If you're bored, play dance music. If you're restless, also play dance music, but push back the furniture and dance to it.
Mindfulness meditation, not the catchy popular kind your work teaches but the actual Buddhist mindfulness. It's whole purpose is to be able to see the arising and passing away of thoughts/feelings without getting involved.
Med. I. Cation. Specifically Prozac. It works great for me, but we're all different. Since I've been on it, it's changed my life. So many things were attached to my mental health that I never knew.
Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say “Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?”
and if you can't change it, why worry? especially after you've done your best
and also antidepressants and or maybe lithium. ask your psychiatrist about it
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy https://a.co/d/7hSGeJF
This is where I started. I didn’t even end up finishing the book, but the concept changed my life.
Non serious answer: Birth control. More specifically, depo, or the off-brand variant. (In my experience, I had that affect. For that and many other reasons, I wouldn't advocate this drug as a true suggestion for anyone)
Forgiving myself for feeling them.
Realizing that my emotional reaction is 1) human and 2) understandable and 3) a reaction, not an inevitability, can allow me to mentally (and physically, if necessary) step back. A sharp emotion is not yet a sharp word, and my initial reaction to a situation can be both normal and wrong, but I’m not locked in to that initial feeling. I can interpret and interrogate and change my mind.
It’s hardly easy to do that in high stress situations, but as a general rule it doesn’t help to fight high emotion with another high emotion like shame. Awareness of what causes them, knowing yourself and how you react and nurturing the patience to give yourself time and space to process can go a long way to making you feel less volatile.