Sue Knowles - My Intense Emotions Handbook

My Intense
Emotions Handbook

Manage Your Emotions and
Connect Better with Others

Sue Knowles, Bridie Gallagher
and Hannah Bromley

Foreword by Kim S. Golding

Illustrated by Emmeline Pidgen

Kim S. Golding

He would come to her at the most inconvenient of times, whispering in her ear, telling her to be careful of this, to look out for that, to worry about the other. He got into her head and then she would be flooded with anxiety, fear and worries. This made her feel very sad. She didnt want these feelings anymore. She called him Bottle, Bottle, Bang because this is what he did. He encouraged her to bottle up all of her feelings; keep a tight lid on them and then bang they would flood out of her. Sometimes she wanted him to leave her alone, but she was afraid. If he wasnt around, how would she cope? For good or bad Bottle, Bottle Bang was a part of her.

I wonder if you have a Bottle, Bottle, Bang who whispers in your ear. Perhaps you have a different name for him. Maybe you havent thought of it in this way. Do you experience a pressure to manage lots of feelings by trying to make them go away, dreading the moment you cant do this anymore and they burst from you, startling people around you? Or maybe, for you, these pesky feelings are always there running your life. Many people struggle to understand and cope with lots of strong feelings, and sometimes it can feel as if the feelings control them. If you recognize any of this, then I think this book is for you.

Emotions are an important part of us; they add colour to what would otherwise be a black and white world. They make exciting things enjoyable; they warn us when we might be in danger; they let us know when we are having a hard time and need to take care of ourselves. We are all born experiencing these emotions but we must learn how to handle them. Just like learning to handle words when we learn to read and write or numbers when we learn maths, we have to learn to recognize and control the feelings that are always with us. Right from when we are born, our parents, or those caring closely for us, are helping us to understand what we are feeling and are helping us to regulate these feelings. They soothe our negative emotions and share and enjoy our positive ones. As we grow up, we learn to put words to these experiences, and we get better at regulating them for ourselves. For some of us, this is more difficult. We might have parents who are not very good at helping their children with this; perhaps because they didnt get good help when they were little. We might have been born with some super strong emotional responses that are hard to manage without a lot of extra support. We might have had a lot more stress than we can cope with because of things that have happened to us. There are lots of reasons why our feelings can be tricky to live with. We all need extra support sometimes, and some of us need to look hard to find out what works for us.

Sue, Bridie and Hannah have written a book that is full of ideas for understanding and managing when our emotions are difficult to cope with. Not all of these will be helpful. You need to find out what works for you. In this book, you will get loads of ideas that you can try out to see what fits. You will find ideas about what emotions are and why we need them. You will learn to recognize how you manage them when they become tricky, and how this can cause even more problems for you. There are lots of ways to help us live with our emotions, to soothe them, to ride the storm when they will not be soothed and to generally take care of ourselves so that our feelings become easier on us. Sometimes, our emotions can cause problems for us with other people. This book also gives ideas for this, including how we recognize what others are feeling, learn to let them know we get it, and how we can be assertive about what we need. Looking after relationships that are important to us, repairing these relationships when we meet sticky patches and getting out of relationships that are not good for us all involve understanding and managing emotions.

You have picked this book up, so you are already working hard to figure out this emotional stuff. Sometimes this means letting other people help us as well as finding ways to take better care of ourselves. I think that as you do this you will learn a lot about your feelings and how to be kind and caring to yourself. Emotions are there to help us in all sorts of ways, but they can get a bit carried away sometimes. In this book, I hope you find help to work with your emotions so that you can get the best from them, learning to be compassionate and caring for yourself along the way.

Bottle, Bottle Bang wanted to help her. He knew he had an important job to do to help her to survive. He wanted to carry out this job as best he could. Sometimes she was angry with him and this made him sad and worried. Bottle, Bottle, Bang wasnt sure what to do. He tried even harder to point out all the things that might cause her trouble, until she was so full of anxiety, fear and worries she didnt know what to do with herself. They needed help. She found a book that explained all about emotions, and she began to understand how Bottle, Bottle, Bang was a part of her brain that was trying to help her. She felt grateful for his efforts and glad that he was there looking out for her. She also became better at letting him know when he could step down, and that she was doing OK. They learned to take good care of her, and the emotional storms got easier. She didnt call him Bottle, Bottle, Bang anymore. She was no longer trying to bottle these emotions until she went bang. They had figured out how to work as a team, managing feelings so that they didnt overwhelm her, and seeking help when this got a bit much. She didnt need to make feelings go away anymore.

Part 1

In is all about self-exploration and getting to know ourselves a bit better.

Chapter 1

We wrote this book because we know, and work with, many young people who are struggling to cope with overwhelming emotions that can lead to some risky behaviours. Psychologists, teachers and doctors sometimes call this emotional dysregulation (finding it hard to calm emotions and feel OK again). We know that intense emotions can be associated with lots of different problems like self-harm, angry outbursts, traumatic stress and relationship issues. We also know that if you have neurodevelopmental differences, like difficulties with social communication, impulse control, attention or concentration, then this can make experiencing and managing emotions trickier. There might be more frustration due to living in a world designed for neurotypical people, and the way that emotions and relationships work can just be more uncomfortable or challenging. We hope that having a guide with lots of ideas about how to feel more in control of feelings and relationships will be helpful.