How interesting this should come up. I've been looking at emotional regulation (and yes - I have a hard time defining my feelings and staying with them - T has suggested that I just allow myself to be depressed or angry or hurt etc.).

Some interesting things I just got out of a book that I'm ruminating on:

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1-Your emotions serve important purposes.
2-Emotions, in order to serve the important survival and humanistic functions for which they were designed, must be experienced and acknowledged.
3-The more you avoid emotions, the more powerful and urgent they become.
4-Feelings are always right. It is what you do with them and how you react to them that can be hurtful or maladaptive.
5-Feelings are not values. They are a form of sense, a way of experiencing the world. They are holistic, residing in the body, mind, and spirit and not just the head.

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The book also has all these steps for how to experience emotions and cope with them. The main points seem to be to identify the emotion and experience it first before working towards diminishing it's impact on you. That's pretty hard. Both parts - identify and experience.