Hi
I'm 22 years old highly sensitive person and an empath. Sometimes it becomes really tough to manage my emotions because it can change all of a sudden so quickly based on what's happening around me. When I experience happiness I can feel it at a really deep level, even the most tiniest thing or a situation can bring me immense happiness. And when I'm around negative situation it happens just the same way, it consumes me totally and sometimes it leads to some very serious effects which once stumbled upon takes a lot of time to come out of, things becomes very serious sometimes. This year I tried to keep me protected a lot from a lot of such situations that's why it was okay, but It still makes me afraid that something like that can happen anytime, and i would be at a bad place again which feels like hell. It becomes tough sometimes to be a highly sensitive. Can you all help me with how you manage your emotions, that will be really helpful :)
Not an expert here, but I have a similar issue and can share what I do. Everybody is very different, so I hope that they can potentially help you.
One thing is seeing the situation in a more abstract way, I zoom out and try to e.g. see situations like a researcher would see hard facts and numbers. So I try to distance myself from my emotional side. Sometimes it also helps to remind myself of how many people, probably ever since there are humans, went through hard situations that led to similar negative emotions. And this right now is just one of billions of situations! All of them made it through it, so the people around you will as well!
Then sometimes I distract myself by daydreaming the situation in my head but in a more positive way, or try to imagine the future and how everything will be a little more positive.
Thank you for the advice. I'll try to implement this the next time :)