NEWS

Advice for millennials on coping with strong emotions

Patti Singer
@PattiSingerRoc
Coping with strong emotions

Peaks and valleys are found not just in mountain ranges.

Highs and lows are part of emotional ranges.

“People need to learn to manage both those spikes,” said Austin Quinlan, a 21-year-old junior at Rochester Institute of Technology who is part of its Student Wellness Ambassador Team. “A lot of times they have the same outcome.”

Austin Quinlan, 21, a junior at RIT and part of the Student Wellness Ambassador Team.

A test is a test, until you ace it or flunk it.

A team is a group of people doing the same thing – until you get cut.

Schools, jobs, friends – all get assigned a meaning, a value that can change along with our relationship to that seemingly neutral object.

“Everybody takes from it what they want from it,” said Michael Johnson, a 20-year-old sophomore at The College at Brockport. “If you think exams are stressful or a breakup is the end of the world, that’s what you’ll make of it. You’ll assign your own response to it. If you see something as a change in your life or a challenge, that’s what you’ll view that as and make the best of it.”

Michael Johnson, 20, a student at The College at Brockport.

It’s an understatement that over the past few months, the community has been emotionally tested. The killings at the Boys & Girls Club in August, the abduction of the two University of Rochester football players in December, the quadruple homicides earlier this month on Leighton Avenue and the double homicide-suicide just a week ago at the State University College at Geneseo have brought out intense feelings.

Those were the public events. We’ll never know about individuals who’ve been faced with a range of feelings from private crises.

But for young adults in their late teens to mid-20s just starting to find their way in the world, managing strong emotions can have their own degrees of difficulty.

Darlene Schmitt, associate director of the Counseling Center at The College at Brockport.

“We’re not born knowing how to do this,” said Darlene Schmitt, associate director of the counseling center at The College at Brockport. “I think sometimes your feeling is your entire world in that moment. But you’ve got to trust that the rest of your life isn’t going to feel that way.”

In separate conversations, students and mental health professionals talked about how strong emotions affect everyone at some point and how to gain the experience to know the feelings will pass.

Since strong emotions are part of life, what do we need to know to handle them?

It takes experience to know the emotions will pass, said Schmitt. “I think that’s one thing that life teaches us. No matter how bad you feel, a year from now you’re going to realize you got through it and you’re OK, so every really strong emotion isn’t the be all and end all. I think there’s this catastrophic thinking that young people get like this is end of everything because (they) feel so strong about ‘fill in the blank.’ They don’t think they’re ever going to feel better. Life experience will teach them that yes, you will feel better, but also just tolerating, yeah, this is crappy and it feels crappy.”

Is handling emotions just an experience thing, or is there something about how young adults are wired?

While 18- to 25-year-olds are physically mature, their brains still are under construction, said David Putney, director of the Monroe County Office of Mental Health. After the first couple of years of life, the teen years into the 20s is the time of most development in emotional response to events and organizing thoughts. “One of the best things we can do is educate ourselves and educate young adults about what’s happening with their development so they understand what can be helpful to them in regulating strong emotions and the decisions that they make as a consequence.”

If the brain is still developing, does that make young adults impulsive when it comes to emotions?

David Putney, director of the Monroe County Office of Mental Health.

Putney said that young people often are labeled as risk-takers, but he sees them as eager for new experiences, “which could translate to risk. You have a significant loss in your life. Moving forward in trying to replace that loss quickly, even though older adults wouldn’t advise that, is kind of in the normal array of experience because people are engaging in new experiences more readily than they do when they have more lived, guided, informed experience at life.”

Meanwhile, as their brains catch up to their bodies, young adults are expected to have their lives all figured out. “It’s a chaotic time of our life,” said Johnson, a Hilton native attending The College at Brockport. “We need to find out who we are socially, what we’re going to do. There are lots of demands put on people in this age bracket. It doesn’t make it easier to process things.”

So if I’m young and having a hard time with emotions, does that mean I’m crazy?

“The first thing is to disconnect the term 'crazy' from mental health or mental illness,” said Putney, who described crazy as driving 80 mph in a 45 mph zone for the thrill of it. “That’s crazy behavior, right? Feelings are what they are. Everybody has them. Because you may be feeling strongly, intensely, or worried that what you’re feeling is different than anyone around you doesn’t make it abnormal.”

Let’s back up. What makes us feel so strongly in the first place?

Libby Caruso, director of the Hazen Center for Integrated Care at The College at Brockport.

It’s not just what happened or is happening, said Libby Caruso, director of Hazen Center for Integrated Care at The College at Brockport. The reaction depends on the meaning we give the event and how the event aligns (or not) with our values and other pressures in our lives. It also depends on the frequency of that or other events.

“How many times have they had to deal with significant problems is something we talk about,” she said. “So many students come to college either having jumped incredible hurdles or almost no hurdles because they’ve been ushered through life.”

If young adults have been protected growing up, how does that affect their ability to deal with their emotions?

“Having failures in life we know is (a) good thing to a degree,” Caruso said. “Having failed and figuring your way out of or around those failures is a good thing because most of us of a certain age have had those things happen. It’s fairly recently where parents have been so involved.”

Schmitt thinks the protection is more than helicopter parents. “I think society as a whole has bubble-wrapped our kids.”

So are young people these days less prepared to deal with emotions?

Lee Ann Cocco, mental health counselor at the St. John Fisher College Health and Wellness Center

Lee Ann Cocco, mental health counselor at the St. John Fisher College Health and Wellness Center, acknowledged the potential effect of parents who habitually swooped in to rescue their children from a difficult situation, or of kids having grown up in the “trophy generation."

But she said she isn’t convinced that the perception is the reality.

“I’m in their camp. I don’t want to dis them for who they are. As long as we’re giving them what they need to be able to figure out their lives as they want to live them. I don’t want to give more power to the narrative that they’re deficient in some way. I think they’re different, perhaps.”

She said factors such as economic pressures and the potential for substance abuse could affect how young adults face their strong emotions.

Emotions can be like a wave. How do you not get knocked over?

“A lot of times people move quickly and just don’t take the time to really identify and connect with what it is, not just what they’re feeling but what physical manifestation they have of it,” Putney said. “First thing is to identify the emotion and how severe it is. The next thing is to make some choices about what to do with that emotion.”

Universally, the people in this article suggested exercise, meditation, taking a deep breath, counting to 10 or finding a way to distract yourself as ways to avoid an impulsive action as the emotion breaks over you.

Johnson said there is no shame in crying about what has upset you. "If you talk to any 20-year-old, they're probably in the same boat as you. ... If you reach out and talk to somebody, it's not going to make you look like an alien."

Do you think people allow themselves to feel?

Taylor Wroblewski, a senior resident assistant at Nazareth College.

“I don’t think they do,” said Taylor Wroblewski, a 20-year-old senior resident assistant at Nazareth College. “If one of my peers feels sad about a test for example, it’s not OK to feel sad about it. Because we have to be happy 100 percent of time.”

She said there’s an unwritten rule of perfection for high achievers, and the pressure doesn’t leave room for emotions. “I think I’ve noticed that pattern with some of my friends as well. … Having expectations that are set way too high and then you don’t give yourself a chance to feel those emotions when you don’t reach those extremely high expectations.”

She said that throughout the school years, more emphasis is placed on academic development than emotional development. “Our idea of success should be about how well you have taken care of yourself. … I think there should be more attention on self-care, especially living on your own.”

A long time ago, someone told me that emotions aren’t right or wrong, they just are. It sounds like a bumper sticker, but is it true?

One of Schmitt’s favorite sayings is, “Your fears are not facts. Neither are feelings.” She’s said it so many times, one of her students now wears it as a tattoo. Feelings “are a response, everybody has them. It’s how you manage it and tolerate it and move through it that defines your coping skills, resiliency and grit. … No matter how bad things are in moment, trust you’re going to get through it.”

Explain resiliency.

“Resiliency is about the ability to trust that even though things are really crappy right now, something good can come of it and I don’t have to let this define me my whole entire life,” Schmitt said. “They build on it. And they say I can get through this. I can get to the other side. It’s a belief that there’s a hope.  Only experience teaches you that, and watching role models around (you).”

What’s the role of family in helping you deal with your emotions?

Johnson said he comes from a line of worriers, and he has learned that “freaking out over things and not handling things in a mature way will not solve anything. You have to face emotions, face feelings, even if you don’t want to.”

Do people want to talk about their feelings?

Johnson said dealing with emotions isn’t part of the health curriculum, but it should be. “Everyone assumes they can do it their own way. Nobody really teaches anybody a strategy of how to handle something that’s really bothering them or how to talk to somebody about something that’s really bothering them or how to ask somebody if they’re doing OK with something.”

Quinlan said people his age seem to be embarrassed about certain emotions, and that reaction to emotions goes along lines of gender bias.

“I have male friends that do not open up at all,” he said. “I know a lot of female friends, if they get angry in class if their opinion is discredited, they’re afraid to show it because of stereotypes that woman are always emotional or it’s that time of the month.”

Does social media help or hurt when dealing with emotions?

“They’re almost directly linked to one another,” Wroblewski said. She gave an example of a couple of friends who argue about where to go out for dinner, and then one tweets or makes a Facebook post about true friendship. “You make assumptions that those posts are about you because of the situation you were just in.” Those assumptions can lead to struggling with bad feelings, she said.

PSINGER@Gannett.com

A friend in need

If you have a friend who seems to be struggling with an emotion, ask what’s going on. “You’re not going to cause them to want to harm themselves,” said David Putney, director of the Monroe County Office of Mental Health.

He suggests going about daily activities with the person – grabbing coffee, shooting hoops, whatever you’d do together.

“Let them know you care. Using those exact words, but demonstrating it through what you do and you’re not going to forget about them. Being there for them says a lot more than anything else.”

For more 

The community offers resources to help people in emotional distress. 

211 Life Line is a 24-hour phone service that offers help and referrals for physical and mental health needs, crisis counseling and emergency food, clothing and shelter.

The Monroe County Office of Mental Health has a list of behavioral health services and providers. Go to http://www2.monroecounty.gov/mh-index.php. Outside of Monroe County, contact your local mental health office or the New York state Office of Mental Health at www.omh.ny.gov.

About the author

Patti Singer is the Clean Living reporter. She holds a master's degree in health education and has been writing about health since 2009.