Coaching practices for How to Deal with Overwhelming Emotions

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Deal with Overwhelming Emotions, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • When a big feeling crashes over me it’s like I become it
  • Every time I try to face the hard stuff I go straight at the worst of it to just get it over with, and it floods me
  • I’m stuck at one of two extremes with hard feelings
  • When a wave of anger or panic hits, it feels like it’ll swallow me whole if I don’t do something right now
  • I spend so much energy trying to push down or get rid of what I feel, and it just comes back stronger

Practices that may help

  1. Mindfulness of the current emotion
    Observe the emotion as a wave passing through — without judging it, feeding it, or running from it.
    DBT Emotion Regulation Skills, Made Practical
  2. Titration (work in tiny, tolerable doses)
    Approach a hard sensation or memory in small sips, not all at once, so you stay regulated.
    Somatic Experiencing, Honestly Explained
  3. Mindful awareness of suffering
    Hold painful feelings in balanced awareness — neither suppressing them nor being swept away by them.
    Self-Compassion, Made Practical
  4. Riding the emotion wave with anicca awareness
    When a strong emotion hits, track it through its full arc — notice it peak and fall without fleeing or amplifying.
    Anicca: Working Practically with Impermanence
  5. Acceptance (willingness)
    Make room for unwanted feelings instead of struggling against them, so they stop running the show.
    Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Made Practical
  6. A — Allow the experience to be as it is
    Let what is present be here, without pushing it away, numbing it, or elaborating it.
    RAIN Meditation: Tara Brach’s Four-Step Practice
  7. TIPP: Rapid Physiological De-escalation for Intense Distress
    Use Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, and Paired muscle relaxation to bring crisis-level emotion down quickly.
    The STOP Skill: A DBT Technique for Crisis Moments
  8. ACCEPTS — structured distraction from crisis
    Use Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Pushing away, Thoughts, and Sensations to redirect attention during a crisis.
    Distress Tolerance Skills, Made Practical
  9. N — Nurture with self-compassion
    Offer the part that is suffering what it most needs — care, acknowledgment, reassurance — as you would a dear friend.
    RAIN Meditation: Tara Brach’s Four-Step Practice
  10. Give yourself permission to feel
    Drop the judgment about whether you should or shouldn’t feel a certain way — the emotion is already there.
    Radical Honesty About Emotions, Made Practical

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