All emotions are valid. All emotions are ok. All emotions are allowed space, and necessary. All emotions just want to be heard. All emotions are a message / alert from your nervous system. The meaning doesn't matter in first noticing emotions. You are not your emotions, you are not your thoughts. You are the entity that observes them both.

Your thoughts and emotions are not in any way connected parts of your brain. Any time your thoughts try and tell you they know what your emotions are about, those thoughts are guessing. So acknowledging or validating emotions doesn't need to be a thinking process. Validating or acknowledging emotions is just the opposite of suppressing or bottling emotions. Emotions don't need to come outward of your body. (Although completing the stress cycle after feelings large enough to activate your fight or flight, can be useful and that does involve moving your body)

They just want to be noticed. It's an alarm system, even if it's not about an alert, that emotional response system still wants to know you heard it. Or it gets louder.

So, if you can, stop and turn your attention inwards and notice how you're feeling. The more often you do this, the more you start to feel and differentiate your emotions. Because when you're in the practice of suppressing emotions, which we can be socially taught to do, they can be hard to notice, it just all feels like noise.

Emotions sit in your body. They are a tightening of muscles and structures, etc here and there. That all together form a signal, for each emotion, in the range of emotions.

When noticing how you feel, it can be helpful to scan your body to notice where those emotions sit.

After noticing emotions, thank your emotional system for the message (which will cause an emotional reaction of thanks) to help move past the emotion, and let it dissolve naturally. Completing the cycle.

The more you practise the better you get at it. I am absolutely learning all this stuff myself because I had an inability to connect with my emotions. I notice it can be really hard to remember to do all that stuff, when big feelings hit, it's so tempting to get caught up in a spiral and just constantly reactivate those emotions. But I suppose practise makes perfect, I'll get there.

Can be helpful to learn some breathing techniques that send signals to your body (and emotional system) that it's safe right now, no dinosaurs chasing you, or monsters under the bed, you checked.

I absolutely object to that train of thought, in my opinion depression needs a tool belt, a very individualised tool belt. You throw everything at it, every tool you can find, until you find the combination that fits you. In Australia our medications are $7 a pack, and it's illegal for doctors to get kickbacks from companies (had to look that last one up because my dad fell down that hole, ugh). I am so sorry your health system has become so hard to access, in which case, find all the tools available to you and do the best with what you have.

Big Pharma loses billions on antidepressants each year to people who breathe, shift their focus, and go for walks.

I might have agreed with you if the solutions they gave cost money, but they don't. They are simple acts anyone can do that might help some people. They aren't saying go buy this peptide for clarity and that machine with a subscription to help with sleep.

It's just a coping mech for individuals.

To be in crisis sucks.

Turning on the logical brain so the emotional brain calms tf out is effective. We cannot defeat the status quo while in a state of emotional wreckage.

Whether one is so depressed they go from ideation to planning, whether one is overstimulated and heading toward meltdown, whether one is so anxietal if feels like their head is going to spin so fast it falls off... the advice to turn on the logical brain so it overrides the emotional, is vauge enough advice anyone can tailor it to their needs.

get grounded, and fight the good fight.