How to Cope With Emotional Growing Pains

Growing up presents a wide range of situations where the emotional toll it takes on a person becomes an overwhelming experience. The emotions can overload the senses and cause someone to develop maladjusted coping skills to deal with the trauma instead of facing it head-on. In many cases, they can try to completely ignore the emotional pain and move on with their life without ever addressing the underlying cause.

When dealing with this type of trauma, avoiding confrontation can feel like the safest or easiest option to deal with it. However, learning how to cope constructively with emotional growing pains can help set you up for future success and build better coping mechanisms. Here are some of Clearview Treatment’s favorite tips.

Embrace Journaling

Sometimes verbalizing emotional pain proves too raw or triggering for you. The emotions associated with the experience are too charged and become something you don’t want to deal with, and trying to talk about it is too hurtful. For many, writing things down can help them better express themselves through written words. They can process the pain at their own pace, in a safe space, and learn how to cope with their growing emotional needs.

Utilize Creativity

Positive coping mechanisms can come in all different shapes and sizes. For many people, finding a creative outlet to express themselves can help them find a better outlet for these difficult emotions. Channeling our creativity allows us to exercise different parts of our brains and personalities, giving us a chance to embrace fun, freedom, and self-expression in the face of difficult emotional growing pains.

Build a Healthy Support System

No matter your age, the people you surround yourself with directly impact how you respond to emotional growing pains. Your support system should help you when you need it, be a proper role model for how to process difficult emotions, and be a sounding board for your thoughts and feelings. If the people around you are ill-equipped to provide that support for you, your emotional growth may become stunted.

A constructive support system that allows you a space to vent is beneficial for your continued growth. However, if it leans too far into being a space where you only vent or complain about your issues instead of dealing with them, it could become detrimental to your progress.

Use Self-Reflection

Sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is to examine your role in it. We can become blind to our influence on these situations and place the blame solely on outside factors. Instead of trying to pass the blame onto someone else, taking a moment to breathe, look inward, and figure out how you impacted this particular situation can help you identify ways you could have handled that situation differently and learn from your mistakes.

Identify Unhealthy Thought Patterns

Many people’s biggest obstacle to positive emotional growth is their own negative thought patterns. Growing up, you can pick various unhealthy thought patterns through popular culture, family, friends, and social networks without realizing it. These harmful mechanisms can stunt your personal growth and leave you stuck in a detrimental feedback loop.

By examining your thought patterns in specific situations, you can identify thoughts and emotions that do you more harm than good. Once you recognize these issues, you can consciously ignore them and try something new and constructive instead.

Let Clearview Treatment Help You Develop Better Coping Mechanisms

Finding a mental health treatment program in Venice, CA, that can help you better process your emotional growing pains and learn how to cope with them can help you process them better. We have helped countless patients learn how to express themselves and deal with emotional trauma productively.

If you or someone you love wants to learn more about our mental health treatment therapies, please don’t hesitate to reach out by calling 866-249-1701. Our team is ready to help.