I do not believe it is the emotions which trap us but our thinking about our experiences and the emotions that went with those, past, experiences that allow us to trap ourselves.

Emotions are information, telling us about ourselves and the world around us. If we have a house, job, loved one taken from us we may feel anger, anxiety, and grief. It is recognizing those feelings, understanding and working with them and the information they give us about ourselves and our particular world that makes us resilient.

Much depression is caused by having a problem(s) and not dealing with it. As we all know, depression is not a feeling, an emotion, but is an illness.

I don't think any of us are surprised when we don't take physical care of ourselves and then find we have caught a cold. Cold germs are in our bodies all the time but we don't have a cold all the time because, if we are taking care of ourselves, the good "germs" outweigh the bad and we stay healthy. I think many people do not understand that eating healthily and getting enough physical exercise for one's body and having good sleep habits, in other words, taking physical care of one's self, can help keep depression at bay just as well as it does colds!

If one does the best one can in the moment, feels one's feelings and registers what they are offering us as information and act on that information in our best interest, I believe one can gain emotional resilience just as one can gain physical health by physically listening to one's body and responding in ways that benefit the body and the job it is designed to do.