Why anxiety, anger, shame, and tension trigger the urge for quick relief, and how this can reinforce avoidance and impulsive reactions.
Sometimes anxiety, anger, shame, or inner tension are experienced not simply as unpleasant states, but as something that must be stopped immediately.
There is an urge to distract yourself, seek reassurance from another person, leave the situation, buy something, start an argument, open your phone, place a bet — anything to avoid staying with what you are feeling right now.
In my work, I pay attention not only to the feeling itself, but also to what a person does in the first few minutes after it appears. This is often where a habitual pattern of emotional regulation begins to form.
Why Is It So Hard to Simply Stay with an Unpleasant Feeling?
A strong emotion can easily be interpreted as a signal: “Something bad is happening to me. I need to fix this immediately.”
At that point, the goal is no longer to understand the feeling, but to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
The problem is that many quick strategies really do work — but only for a short time. Avoidance reduces anxiety. Checking gives a few minutes of certainty. An argument can create a sense of release. Gambling or another intense activity can temporarily shift attention.
The brain remembers the connection: I felt bad — I did a certain thing — I felt better. So the next time, the impulse to act appears even faster.
Gradually, a person learns not to tolerate the feeling, but to suppress it immediately.
When Relief Reinforces the Problem
If a person avoids a situation every time they feel anxious, they get very little experience of: “I was anxious, but I stayed and saw what happened next.”
If shame immediately leads to excuses or disappearing, there is no opportunity to calmly consider whether anything actually happened that requires taking responsibility.
If tension is habitually relieved through gambling, the brain increasingly connects discomfort with the need for a quick and powerful stimulus.
An important distinction appears: reducing a feeling right now is not the same as learning how to handle it.
The more often a person relies only on rapid relief, the more dangerous the emotion itself may begin to seem. It is no longer only the situation that causes anxiety — the thought appears: “I won’t be able to cope if I become anxious.” Shame is not only painful — there is now a need to avoid feeling it at any cost.
In this way, the range of emotional states a person can tolerate gradually becomes narrower.
Tolerating a Feeling Does Not Mean Enduring Everything
Sometimes the advice “stay with your feelings” sounds as though a person should passively endure any emotional state. That is not what I mean.
Emotions carry information, but they do not always require immediate action.
Anger may indicate that an important boundary has been crossed, but that does not mean you need to enter into conflict immediately. Anxiety may warn of a possible risk, but not every anxious thought means there is real danger. Shame may encourage reflection on your behavior, but it does not have to turn into the conclusion: “There is something wrong with me.”
A small pause between the feeling and the action makes it possible to first understand: What is actually happening to me? What triggered this reaction? Is there a real problem that needs to be solved right now, or am I mainly trying to change my internal state as quickly as possible?
The goal is to avoid giving the emotion automatic control over what you do next.
What Can Be Useful to Start Noticing
You can begin not by fighting emotions, but by observing the sequence.
Which feeling is especially difficult for me to tolerate? What do I usually do immediately after it appears? How quickly does that bring relief? What happens an hour later or the next day? Did my action actually solve the original problem, or did it only change how I felt for a short time?
It is also useful to notice the moment when the thought appears: “I have to get rid of this right now.”
Sometimes that thought itself intensifies the experience. An unpleasant feeling turns into an emergency, even though it might have changed gradually on its own.
Emotional regulation does not mean living without anxiety, anger, shame, or tension. These states remain part of life.
What matters more is whether a person has more ways to deal with them than immediate avoidance, discharge, or the search for quick relief.
When even a small pause appears between the feeling and the habitual reaction, choice appears as well: Do I really need to act right now? What action actually fits the situation? And what happens if I do not immediately try to make the unpleasant feeling disappear?
About the author
Author: Hrachya Badalyan
Hrachya Badalyan is a psychologist specializing in addictions. I work with gambling addiction, codependency, and anxiety-related conditions. I help people struggling with addiction and their loved ones build a more stable life, restore personal responsibility, and break out of familiar destructive patterns.
Specialist’s page: Hrachya Badalyan
