Your emotions exist in relationship with you. This relationship needs attention, care, and understanding to thrive—just like any important connection in your life. When clients first hear this framing in my Woodbury office or during our online sessions, something shifts. Their shoulders drop. They breathe deeper.
How you relate to your emotions shapes everything: your closest connections, your daily choices, even how you move through your morning routine. This relationship forms the bedrock of your life experience.
Identifying Your Current Relationship Status With Emotions
You already know which emotions feel like difficult companions. Maybe you’ve lived this:
Your jaw clenches when anger rises. You immediately try to cheer up anyone expressing sadness—including yourself. Anxiety rides shotgun through your day. Certain emotions trigger an avalanche of shame or self-criticism.
These patterns reveal your emotional biography. Your physical responses to emotions developed through specific experiences. Your nervous system learned which emotions spelled danger and which offered safety.
“I just want this feeling to go away forever.” I hear this wish often in therapy. You’re not alone in this desire, yet trying to banish emotions creates deeper struggle. Every emotion—even the uncomfortable ones—serves a purpose in your life.
Your relationship with emotions directly impacts your external world. That recurring fight with your partner about spending habits? It’s rarely about the credit card statement—it’s about what money triggers in both of you. The sharp words you regret using with your child? Often they emerge from your own overwhelm rather than their behavior.
Breaking Unhealthy Patterns With Emotions
For many parents and couples I work with, their challenging relationships with emotions began forming in childhood. As described in “It Didn’t Start With You,” these patterns travel through generations. If you grew up never seeing healthy anger expressed, you might swing between silence and explosion with your own anger now. If big emotions were met with dismissal in your family, you likely struggle to validate them in yourself or your children today.
Cultural background profoundly influences these patterns too. In my bilingual practice, I notice how Spanish-speaking clients navigate different cultural expectations around emotional expression. Perhaps your family culture taught you that certain emotions belonged hidden away, while others were acceptable to display.
Your closest relationships can either cement these patterns or help transform them. With awareness and practice, your relationships can become spaces where healthier patterns emerge.
The DBT and CBT approaches I use provide clear pathways to reshape your relationship with emotions. We start by understanding your unique emotional history without judgment. My clients often hear me ask, “How did we get here?” This question opens the door to compassionate exploration.
Four Practices for a Healthier Relationship With Your Emotions
1. Attunement
Attunement means developing awareness of your emotions as they emerge. This practice resembles checking in with a friend: What are you feeling right now? Where do you notice this in your body? What just happened before this feeling arose?
Try setting three attunement moments throughout your day. A one-minute pause to scan your internal landscape builds crucial awareness. You cannot transform a relationship with something you cannot recognize.
2. Boundaries
Healthy relationships with emotions require boundaries—space between feeling and action. When intense emotions surge, a deliberate pause creates choice. This boundary allows thoughtful response rather than reaction you might later regret.
This principle applies especially in relationships. These same approaches help you navigate your own internal emotional landscape with more skill.
3. Communication
Your emotions communicate important information. Anger often signals a boundary crossed. Sadness connects you to what matters deeply. Anxiety alerts you to situations needing attention or preparation.
Develop genuine curiosity about what your emotions are telling you. In our sessions, we practice this listening together, developing vocabulary for experiences that previously felt overwhelming. Words themselves become tools for transformation.
4. Care
How you respond when difficult emotions arise determines whether they become trusted messengers or dreaded visitors. Self-compassion creates safety for all emotions to be expressed rather than pushed away.
For parents juggling a thousand responsibilities, this practice often proves challenging. Caring for your own emotions models healthy patterns for your children. They learn to treat their feelings with respect by watching how you treat yours.
Maintaining Long-Term Health in Your Relationship With Emotions
Building a healthier relationship with emotions requires consistent attention through simple daily practices:
- A brief morning check-in while brushing your teeth
- Three deep breaths before responding to that triggering email
- Evening reflection on patterns you noticed during your day
Support systems strengthen these practices significantly. Find at least one person who understands your journey and provides feedback without judgment. Share your insights and challenges within trusted circles.
Professional support helps when patterns feel too entrenched to shift alone. Therapy provides structured space to explore with guidance. Whether online or in my Woodbury, MN office, we work together to understand your unique emotional landscape and create personalized pathways for change.
The evidence-based approaches I use have helped hundreds of clients transform their relationship with emotions. CBT helps identify and challenge unhelpful thought patterns. DBT builds concrete skills for regulation. These approaches continue working long after our sessions end.
The Path Forward
Your relationship with emotions evolves throughout your life stages. Becoming a parent, changing careers, losing loved ones—each transition brings new emotional terrain to navigate. This ongoing work yields profound rewards: greater resilience during challenges, deeper connections with others, and expanded capacity for joy in ordinary moments.
I invite you to begin or continue this journey, whether through personal practice or with therapeutic support. Your emotions contain wisdom when approached with curiosity and care. This wisdom awaits your attention.
To schedule a therapy session online or in-person in Woodbury, MN, please visit the contact page or call the number below.
Jennifer Marks is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker providing therapy services in English and Spanish, both online and in-person in Woodbury, MN. She specializes in emotion regulation, couples therapy, and trauma recovery.
