Painful Feelings

Painful feelings like fear, anger, and loneliness are a normal part of life, but sometimes managing these emotions may cause you to adopt harmful coping strategies. The following resources will provide you with tools to increase healthy coping mechanisms.

If the resources and tools provided do not help you, or if you feel you need a medical evaluation, please reach out to Student Counseling Services to get the support that you need.

On This Page:

Return to the Self-Help Library

Feeling Hopeless

Feeling Shame & Guilt

Guided Meditations

Insight Timer Meditations

Metta Meditations

Feeling Anger

Relaxation/Mindfulness

Feeling Distress

Distress is any emotional, social, spiritual, or physical pain or suffering that may cause a person to feel sad, afraid, depressed, anxious, or lonely.

Hardship/Adversity
SAMHSA: Warning Signs & Risk Factors for Emotional Distress

Hardship and/or adversity impacts mental health in various ways, as this tends to involve a lack of access to necessities such as food, shelter, transportation, etc. Financial instability would also be included here, as money is required to be able to access the above mentioned basic necessities.

Malnutrition from lack of access to food and or of access to nutritional foods have negative physical and psychological effects. Nutrients are needed for the brain and other bodily organs to function properly. This can lead to mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, irritability, sleep issues, apathy, and concentration difficulties.

Housing insecurity negatively impacts mental and physical health via the levels of stress consistently experienced by those individuals struggling with this. These circumstances can exacerbate chronic conditions, as well as contribute to the emergence of new conditions (both physical and psychological). Additionally, these individuals may be increasingly exposed to traumatic experiences. The stress of unstable housing can interfere with consistencies in employment, social support systems, education, and access to services. Mental health symptoms that can arise in relation to this hardship include depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, trauma, and substance misuse.

Financial Instability: The Inevitable Mental Drain of Financial Insecurity

Transportation Access: The Link Between Mental Health and Transportation Barriers

Hardships and/or adversity can be barriers to mental health treatment.

Feeling Lonely

Loneliness

Barriers of Shyness and/or Social Anxiety:

Improving Your Relationship with Yourself:

Relationships:

Feeling "Weird" or "Off"

If you are feeling “weird” or “off”, and the resources provided are not helpful, please consider seeking a medical evaluation.

Feeling "Weird" or "Off"
Why do I feel “weird” or “off”?

How to Cope When You're Feeling "Weird" or "Off"

When You Don't Feel Like Yourself

Feeling Weird

Brain Fog
What is Brain Fog?

Understanding Brain Fog & How to Fix It (Video)

What Everyone Should Understand About Brain Fog

Interventions
Body Scan/Emotional Awareness

Science Bulletins: Mapping Emotions in the Body (YouTube)

The Body Scan: Developing Emotional Awareness

Resilience: Identifying & Managing Emotion

A Guide to Emotions

5 Minute Body Scan Meditation (YouTube)

10 Minute Body Scan Meditation (YouTube)

Journaling

The Benefits of Journaling

Self-Care
How to Know and Own Your Needs

Taking Good Care of Yourself

12 Ways to Take Better Care of Yourself

Self-Care Practices for Every Area of Your Life

Feeling Apathy

Screening Tools

Not sure what you are feeling? Need assistance determining where to start? Try these screening tools.

MindWise Innovations Wide Range Screening Tool

Additional Self-Help Resources

Relaxation & Mindfulness

Urge Surfing Exercise (YouTube)
Eye of the Hurricane Meditation (YouTube)
Guided Meditation for Healing (YouTube)
Declutter the Mind: Guided Meditation Library
Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT) Mindfulness Resources: Exercises M1 through M10 are often interconnected. While they can been done separately, it may be beneficial to try various exercises outside of the ones explicitly recommended here:
Headspace: Mini Meditation - Breathe
Psych Central: Journal Prompts
Breathing Exercises (YouTube)
The Mindful Movement: 15 Minute Guided Meditation to Release Suppressed Emotions
Brief Seated Progressive Muscle Relaxation (YouTube)
Mindfulness of Current Emotions (YouTube)

Books

Healing the Shame That Binds You
by John Bradshaw
Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.
Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness
by Shasta Nelson
Shasta explores the most common complaints and conflicts facing female friendships today, and lays out strategies for overcoming these pitfalls to create deeper, supportive relationships that last for the long-term. Shasta is the founder of girlfriendcircles.com, a community of women seeking stronger, more fulfilling friendships, and the author of Friendships Don’t Just Happen. In Frientimacy, she teaches readers to reject the impulse to pull away from friendships that aren’t instantly and constantly gratifying.
The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People
by Rachel Wilkerson Miller
If you’re having trouble connecting with those around you, know that you’re not the only one. Adult friendships are tricky! Part manifesto, part guide, The Art of Showing Up is soul medicine for our modern, tech-mediated age. Rachel Wilkerson Miller charts a course to kinder, more thoughtful, and more fulfilling relationships—and, crucially, she reminds us that “you can’t show up for others if you aren’t showing up for yourself first.”