Dr. Linda J. Solie - Take Charge of Your Emotions: Seven Steps to Overcoming Depression, Anxiety, and Anger

M any people believe their genetics or brain chemistry doom them to a life of emotional pain. Moods descend on them like a dark cloud, and they are stuck with the miserable feelings until a wind stirs up to blow the gloom away. Thinking they are helpless, they passively suffer and simply live with the misery or look solely to medication for relief.

In Take Charge of Your Emotions , I will demonstrate another way.

Medication is a popular remedy for soothing emotional pain; antidepressants are some of the most commonly prescribed drugs in America. Yet taking medication as the only response to distress does not help sufferers develop competence in overcoming uncomfortable moods. And its true that all people, at timeswhether or not on antidepressantsface emotional challenges. Everyone can benefit from discovering or improving on how to take charge of their emotions. I aim to show how to do just this by capitalizing on three types of relationships:

• relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
• relationship with Jesus Christ
• relationships with people

As we focus on managing emotions, I will use the terms emotional health and mental health interchangeably to refer to a state of emotional well-being involving relief from painful moods like depression, anxiety, and anger. Further, although this book teaches skills to overcome painful feelings, it does not argue against antidepressant or anti-anxiety medications. Nor does it endorse ignoring your physicians advice if such treatment has been prescribed for you.

Take Charge of Your Emotions is divided into four parts that build on one another. Parts I, II, and III examine how to capitalize on a particular type of relationship in order to find relief. Part IV puts the first three together.

Part I: Empowered Through Thoughts and Behaviors

Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are physiologically connected. For instance, how we interpret life strongly affects how we feel, and our actions also regulate our emotions. Though many people fear having a faulty brain that consigns them to a life of depression or anxiety, scientists have discovered that our thoughts and behaviors influence brain chemistry and genetic expression, even impacting whether new cells develop and others die. Taking charge of thoughts and actions changes brain functioning, empowering us to improve our mental health.

For nearly thirty years I have been helping clients take control of their thoughts and behaviors. The method I developed enables people to identify the problem-thinking that creates painful feelings and undesirable conduct, and then turn it around. You can apply the Seven Steps to Changing Feelings and Behavior toward overcoming a single distressing mood, or you can practice this skill daily for a month or more to relieve intense and long-standing emotional pain.

The Seven Steps involve writing, requiring time and effort. Effort itself is essential to rewiring our brains, according to the internationally renowned neuropsychologist John Arden. Over time, new thoughts and behaviors become automatic.