How to Process Your Emotions: Course Introduction/30 Depression and Anxiety Skills Course

Get the course: How to Process Your Emotions

This is the introduction to the course How to Process Your Emotions: Essential Skills to Resolve Depression, Anxiety, and Other Intense Emotions.

When I talk about processing emotions, I mean we literally need to go through a process to regulate and resolve our emotions. In this video, you’re going to learn what emotion processing is, what gets in the way of it, and how you can work through your emotions so they don’t build up in a harmful way in your life.

Over the next 30 videos I’m going to teach you skills that help you process through not only feelings of anxiety and depression, but emotions in general. This is how to work through big, painful emotions. You could call this emotional intelligence or controlling or coping with your emotions, but it’s better than that. It’s actually resolving your emotions. Knowing how to process emotions is essential to living a happy life, to having healthy relationships, to being a good boss or friend or lover. Research shows over and over that these are the skills that help people live a good life, but most people have never even heard of them.

Don’t skip over these if you want the full benefits.

Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC, and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. Although Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the views expressed on this site or any related content should not be taken for medical or psychiatric advice. Always consult your physician before making any decisions related to your physical or mental health.

About Me:
I’m Emma McAdam. I’m a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and I have worked in various settings of change and growth since 2004. My experience includes juvenile corrections, adventure therapy programs, wilderness therapy programs, an eating disorder treatment center, a residential treatment center, and I currently work in an outpatient therapy clinic.

In therapy I use a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Systems Theory, positive psychology, and a bio-psycho-social approach to treating mental illness and other challenges we all face in life. The ideas from my videos are frequently adapted from multiple sources. Many of them come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, especially the work of Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Russ Harris. The sections on stress and the mind-body connection derive from the work of Stephen Porges (the Polyvagal theory), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) Francine Shapiro (EMDR), and Bessel Van Der Kolk. I also rely heavily on the work of the Arbinger institute for my overall understanding of our ability to choose our life's direction.

Copyright Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC
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[cstockton]

By making these accessible videos you are not only throwing out a life line to the many of us struggling to keep our head above water but also you teach us how to build our own boat, and have some directions for how to steer it toward a place we want to go. What a gift, it has to come from an extraordinarily compassionate heart. Thank you for your huge gift - It is a comfort to know there are caring and impactful people like you. God bless you

[ShalomSarahJoy]

Emotional regulation is a process:
1) identify: what emotion it is. Notice them, check them in, name them. Feel into them.
2) pause: calm body and mind instead of jumping to solutions to make the emotions go away.
3) explore: what is the function and purpose of this emotion. What is this emotion trying to tell you. Check cognitive distortions, distorted ways of thinking that make it hard to see our emotions
4) choose: what to do with these emotions. Take action, practice acceptance, etc

Emotional processing is a skill that can be learned

Emotions are deeper than thoughts or behaviors

[emmahattesohl]

It's things like this that change the world for the better. Thank you so much for making this accessible. I refer you to everyone!! lol

[kreiter]

I've been asking my different therapists over the years what "processing" your emotions means (they kept telling me I wasn't doing it and needed to) but none of them could give me an explanation that made sense. Your analogy actually makes sense to me, and I feel like such a weight lifted off of me just being able to understand this one thing that has eluded me for so long. Thank

[eldasarid]

The fact that you're making these videos is literally saving lives. You are an amazing human being, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[mariamnader]

"In that moment that little girl learned that her emotion is dangerous, u r not suuposed to have them, u need to  supress them or u will get into trouble,
so many of us have been taught that emotions r dangerous, that u r not supposed to have tham, u need to push them down or u will get into trouble",
.. thank u for that realization 🙏💛

[martanaranjofernandez]

I just wanted to say how grateful I am for your work and videos. Over the last year I have been dealing with depression and anxiety, and your channel has given me a lot of tools to manage my emotions and understand my feelings better. Please keep helping others the way you do! Greetings from Spain!

[LilLouLou]

Life skills like these should be part of the school curriculum from early on. xx

[AbigailMilamProductions]

Processing shame, guilt, anxiety, and depression currently. It’s rough. Thank you for sharing this video. Helped a lot!

[kiracrowley]

Man I was never allowed to have emotions growing up. Trying to convince my brain it's safe to do so is certainly a challenge. Thankfully I love challenges 😁

[rhythms]

This is 15 minutes that surpasses what I’ve learned in therapy sessions in 3 years. Bless you!!

[nicoleonfeels]

Eating something is my go to reaction too. I feel ya, lol

[JohannaVeerenhuis]

I watched all 30 over the past weeks, and then I found this intro. 😂
I’ll watch all 30 again and again until I get ‘there’. From the bottom of my heart and traumatized emotion processing system, I want to thank you for the help you offer. 💝

[richardsharples]

Thankyou, I do remember being told that if I didn’t stop crying, that I would be given something to cry about. It would be easy to blame my parents but they had their own issues to deal with, as their own parents were flawed humans too. Thankyou for the inciteful video.

[boutiqueexplorations]

Your really great!! My girlfriend and I watch you everyday!! for the last few days. Your saving our relationship and our family! 🙂👍🙂👍

[johns]

That little girl you talked about was me. :(
I am just now learning to process my emotions in a healthy way. I have a feeling that COVID was the last straw that broke an unleashed anxiety on me. Years worth of unprocessed emotions that I buried or ignored. I hope that this time of isolation will be helpful for me and for anyone going through anxiety.

[kellymurphy]

Just wanted to say thanks so much for your generosity offering this course for free given how the content is so complex and I imagine breaking it all down to explain would have taken so much effort.

[Fembynature]

Im so thankful that you created this course! There was a point where I didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford to receive therapy. Truly a blessing!

[trailblazera]

Omg I’ve been feeling so anxious and depressed. Tried other programs, books etc and nothing was working. You’re the first person who is saying things differently and it works. Thank God for this, thank you so much.

[oliviag]

Wow! This is what I needed. I do not know how to deal with emotions. God gives us what we need exactly when we need it. God bless you!