It is important to learn to control your emotions so that they are not the ones that control you. Perhaps at some point in your life you have had a more intense emotional reaction than you expected, but you were not able to control it. It is possible that that reaction affected what you wanted to achieve at a certain moment. This is why it is so important to manage your emotions and not allow them to control you.
Emotions can stop you or take over, you need to choose between several strategies to reduce the impact on you, so you can better understand both your interior and what is happening around you.
Do your emotions control you?
We want to start connect point with a couple of fairly explanatory sentences:
- You can be the owner of what you do, but never of what you feel. - Gustave Flaubert
- Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. - Charles R. Swindoll
You cannot control your feelings, but you can learn to regulate them. You can think of all the activity that happens in your brain as if it were in one of four cognitive states:
- A state of fear that results in fight, flight, freeze, or overreaction behaviors. True fear creates an unthinking reaction that takes over our brain. The physiological reaction is elevated heart rate and blood pressure, adrenaline release, and rapid breathing. You may experience tunnel vision, temperature changes, and tremors. Your thinking will be interrupted.
- The emotional state is not as serious as fear, but it is still strongly felt. You may appear calm, not in fearful behavior, but you still feel strong emotions such as love, hate, revulsion, shame, joy, futility, or negativity. The emotional state can be overcome by the raw fear state. An emotional state of flight takes over the rational state.
- The rational state it is achieved when the intense thought appears without much emotional restlessness.
- The state of being wise is achieved when we are able to think rationally, informed, but not assumed by our emotions and fears. Mindfulness, that ability to observe many simultaneous thoughts and feelings, provides the ability to observe and allows our higher brain to determine the best response.
The state of being wise is the desired state, as it allows us to feel strongly without sacrificing our rationality. As with any advice, your situation is unique and you should experiment and adapt the methods to suit your needs.
Timeline of emotional regulation
Your emotional response goes through multiple stages. If your emotions escape you or if you have a wise response, it depends on your preparation. As much as possible, you want to prepare for the response before the situation, as strong emotions are more likely to get out of control the later you intervene.
Before an emotional situation, do all of the following:
- Build your emotional stamina.
- Practice physical and mental recovery skills.
- Strengthen your mindfulness and cognitive distancing.
- Reduce the frequency or avoid specific emotional situations altogether.
- Identify the most common and difficult situations that cannot be avoided and for each, develop and practice wise responses.
And then you should keep in mind the following tips:
- The situation begins: an emotional situation begins, triggered by a real, remembered or imagined situation. Your body can begin to respond without your awareness. Mindfulness improves awareness earlier and helps reduce physical response. Reducing vulnerabilities and / or a positively charged emotional state will lessen or prevent the reaction.
- Attention: your attention is focused on the situation. Your emotions can get out of control faster than you can respond with your wise mind. You can modify existing emotional reactions to respond more productively through practice, including getting your attention faster. Physical recovery techniques will help reduce adrenaline or other physical responses.
- Valuation: assesses and interprets the emotional situation. The pre-planning scenario allows you to classify your emotional situation. Once classified, a pre-planned solution is implemented more quickly.
- Answer: you respond with the emotional mind or the wise mind, depending on the preparation. The emotional mind does not regulate the response systems (mental, behavioral, physiological, emotional). Leave the situation and practice physical recovery. Mindfulness creates awareness and emotional distance as an observer rather than a participant, allowing your wise mind to observe emotions and think rationally.
Develop your emotional stamina
Vulnerabilities make you less emotionally resilient. The vulnerabilities and strategies to reduce them are listed below:
- Emotionally neglected. Build up positive emotions. Have positive thoughts, affirmations, and experiences that help balance any harsh experiences. Avoid situations that cause anger and learn to recognize anger as an unproductive emotion.
- Lack of trust. Build dominance. Participate in activities that help you feel competent and effective. This combats helplessness and hopelessness and cultivates self-efficacy.
- Physical well-being. Keep your mind and body healthy through regular doctor visits, diet, and exercise. Low immunity and vulnerable to disease. Make regular visits to the appropriate health professionals.
- Anger or stress. Don't go into a new situation with intense emotions. Avoid or delay, if possible. Practice other interventions, including relaxation or meditation.
- Loneliness. Surround yourself with friends and be kind and helpful to others as much as possible.
- Tired or fatigued. Plan ahead to get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. Exercise regularly to have the emotional effects of physical activity.
It is important in the same way that you name your emotions, that you label them, that you know what happens to you and why it happens to you. In this way you can anticipate those emotions before they happen and it will be much easier to control them as best as possible.. Feel each emotion to be able to recognize it and in that way you will become more expert in your own emotions and how they affect you internally and externally.