Z+ (content subject to subscription); Emotion Regulation: How Do I Manage My Feelings?

Something you've probably never heard: Almost every mental illness, whether it's depression, an anxiety disorder, or an addiction, revolves around one and the same thing – how we manage our emotions. Psychologist Matthias Berking sums it up: “You can describe all mental illnesses as desperate attempts to cope with distressing emotions.”What does that mean? The traditional view was that each illness has its own causes, its own dynamics. However, the latest research shows that there is often a common core behind them – the way we try to cope with difficult emotions. The real problem is not that we get sad, anxious, or angry. The mistake lies in how we try to manage these emotions – or, indeed, avoid them. Berking explains: For example, patients with anxiety avoid certain situations simply because they don't know how else to cope with their fear. People with alcohol addiction reach for the bottle, and people with eating disorders eat to dampen feelings such as anger or stress. And with depression, the problem is almost the opposite: negative feelings become so intense that they overwhelm everything – so the problem is not avoidance, but excess. Imagine a person who, every time they feel anxious, immediately steers clear of the source of their anxiety – that feels better in the short term, but in the long run, the anxiety keeps getting worse. Or think of someone who comforts themselves with food or alcohol after a bad day, without even realizing that the real problem is the emotion, not the event itself. Studies show that, no matter what the final diagnosis is, the common denominator remains the difficulty in regulating emotions. Here's a sentence you can keep in mind: Mental health problems are often not illnesses in the traditional sense, but rather makeshift solutions to a buildup of emotions. Here's the perspective that hardly anyone talks about: If we learned to truly feel and endure our emotions—without immediately fighting them, suppressing them, or shutting them out—perhaps that would help more than any diagnosis or symptom management. Perhaps, in the end, mental health is much less a question of “What's wrong with me?” and much more the art of coping with what we feel. Regulating emotions doesn't mean pushing them away—it means giving them a place so that they don't control our entire lives. If this idea surprised you, you can use I'm In on Lara Notes to show that this idea is now part of your life. And the next time you have a conversation about psychology or emotions and share this perspective, mark the experience with Shared Offline—this way, a conversation becomes a lasting moment. What you just heard is from DIE ZEIT and saves you four minutes of research.