People constantly talk about how to manage your emotions. But sometimes this phrase means “to remain silent” or “not to talk about the problem.” It is not right.

The nature of emotions

An emotion is a person's reaction to a situation. To manage emotions, you need to understand their nature. Emotions can be moderate or violent, but they all arise as a reaction to an external or internal stimulus.

Emotions exist in a person at the level of reflexes. It is inherent in nature that, thanks to emotions, we react to the world around us. But thinking, making arguments, evaluating - this is a skill that we develop throughout life.

Both the ability to react emotionally and the ability to reflect are extremely important. Sometimes emotions help us make quick decisions when we really need it. But not in every situation emotions should prevail over common sense.

The question arises, how to manage emotions and behavior?

How important is the ability to manage your emotions?

Managing emotions is a person’s ability to feel their emotions, characterize them, experience them and then let them go.

Do not confuse managing emotions with suppressing them. In the first case, we gain control over ourselves, and in the second we only drown out our feelings and do not solve the problem.

You shouldn't hate your enemies. Emotions interfere with thinking.

Godfather

The ability to manage emotions helps to build healthy relationships with the outside world and with people. This is especially true in conflict situations. In a fit of anger or resentment, we say unpleasant things to people who do not deserve it. This leads to deterioration in relationships.

Also, showing inappropriate emotions in an unfamiliar company or crowded place can create the wrong opinion about you. In the future, this may affect not only personal, but also work relationships.

Negative emotions lead a person astray. But we always have a choice: to succumb to negativity and exhaust ourselves with worries, or to admit a mistake and work to correct it.

Self-esteem also depends on our emotions. The more we repeat that “everything is very bad” and “not the way we wanted,” the less satisfaction we have from life. We begin to consider ourselves good-for-nothing losers. This leads to depression.

It’s not for nothing that they say that all diseases are caused by nerves. Too many negative emotions or constant suppression of them leads to nervous breakdown, deterioration of sleep, appetite and other problems.

How to learn to manage your emotions? Start

The first step is to acknowledge the presence of emotions. We cannot deceive ourselves and say that we are not angry when we are angry!It's time to learn to call a spade a spade.

Psychologists identify 4 main emotions: joy, fear, anger, sadness.

Try to name the emotions you experience. Remember, there are no emotions that you should be ashamed of. You cannot divide emotions into right or wrong. We cannot give up emotions or choose how we feel.

Any emotion is a message that cannot be ignored. Analyze it. Take a conscious approach to studying your condition. Ask yourself: what are these emotions? What is their reason? Give yourself honest answers to these questions.

When we break emotions down into their components and understand their nature, the power of emotions is lost and our thinking begins to dominate.

For example, the aggression we feel towards a situation or person is often completely unrelated to it. It is our past experience that breaks out, manifesting itself as negative emotions. If you “cut from the shoulder” in such a situation, you can seriously ruin your relationships with people.

The secret to staying young is to avoid ugly emotions.

Oscar Wilde

Therefore, we need the skill of mindfulness. You need to use reason and not let your feelings overwhelm you.

Stephen Covey, in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” identifies the ability to not give in to emotions as the main ability leading to success in life. He calls it proactivity. The idea is that there is a distance between the stimulus (the situation) and the reaction (the expression of emotion). The more conscious we are, the greater this distance is, and accordingly we have more time to analyze the situation.

Read Stephen Covey!

Analysis of emotions and feelings

We can sort out our emotions and feelings if two conditions are met. The first rule is to be honest with yourself. Secondly, constant questions.

Examples:

• You are annoyed.

Find the reason. This could be a stranger, a situation that does not depend on you, or you yourself.

If it's a person, think about it: did he specifically want to offend you? Are you really the cause of the irritation? It is possible that he expressed his opinion based on his own standards, maybe he had a difficult day or other difficulties arose that were not related to you. Don't rush to take personally all the unpleasant things you hear. Before responding to him with rudeness, think about solutions.

Tell him directly what is important to you, set boundaries beyond which he should not go. If a person does not understand, reduce communication with him to a minimum or eliminate it altogether.

• You feel a sense of fear.

Fear is the expectation of something bad. You can sit and beat yourself up, or you can try to figure out the situation. Ask yourself, what specifically scares you? What's the worst thing that could happen in this situation? Be honest, don't suppress your thoughts.

Think about real actions that will eliminate fear. Take action and you will see that everything is not so bad.

Read also (attention, article only for women):

• You are offended.

When a situation is not fully resolved, people often become resentful. They are sure that they were treated unfairly and begin to replay the situation in their heads over and over again. Resentment eats people away from the inside.

Your task is to let go of the feeling of resentment. Look at the situation through the eyes of the person who offended you. Did he have another option? Did he know about your feelings? What exactly were you offended by?

If possible, talk to him, calmly tell him about the problem. Often people hold grudges because they are not expressed. Stop chewing snot! Managing negative emotions will give you great freedom.

Ways to manage emotions

Once you have dealt with the causes of emotions, you can move on to working on them. You can choose any of the proposed methods.

1. Breathing exercises or meditation

Often, in order to cope with an emotion, it is enough to restore your breathing. Yoga, meditation, and listening to soothing music will help.

If you are experiencing feelings of anger, use the following exercise: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale halfway, hold your breath for 10-15 seconds, exhale completely.

To reduce anxiety or fear, just take a few deep breaths and exhales. Try to focus on inner balance and abstract from the outside world. This will make breathing easier and faster. If you consider yourself an impulsive person, then use this method on a regular basis.

2. Watch your facial expressions

The technique of controlling facial expressions began to be used by the ancient Indians. This method helps in difficult negotiations, in stressful situations, and in conflicts with loved ones.

Find out more about body language:

If you realize that you are starting to get angry, smile. Even a slight smile will help you relax, and your inner state will “mirror” this.

If you find it difficult to squeeze out a smile, remember a funny story or imagine that your interlocutor is in a clown costume.

If you don't control your anger, your anger will control you.

Stephen King

If you can’t, then just look at yourself in the mirror, look at your angry face. At this moment, you will begin to objectively evaluate yourself from the outside, and your emotions will subside.

3. Make jokes and smile

Laugh with those around you. If you are alone, watching your favorite funny videos or a funny movie will help. This method is also suitable for times when you are depressed.

If you don’t want to do anything, then it’s best to go for a walk, exercise, or jog.

4. Praise yourself

Make it a rule to praise yourself every evening for the things you have accomplished. We washed the dishes, took the kids to school, turned in the report on time, made the cake - everything is worthy of praise.

5. Set a timer for stress

For example, today at 19.00 you will worry about the whole day or get angry at all these scoundrels.

Recent studies show that by a set time, the intensity of emotions subsides. As a result, the need to splash them out disappears.

6. Be alone

If emotions are strong, then doing extraneous things can only aggravate the situation. Be alone with yourself. Look around.

7. Take responsibility for your actions

Think about this when your emotions overflow. For example, you yell at your child for spilling soup. But what will the child take from this situation? Bad mood and fear of doing something wrong next time.

You will speak out, but then you will feel shame. Maybe just tell your child to be careful, spilled soup be damned.

8. Don't judge yourself for your emotions.

Observe your thoughts and desires. Follow their progress, do not swear if you see your imperfections. The less you judge yourself for negative emotions, the weaker their intensity will be next time.

Positive emotions are emotions that arise when you put everything into perspective.

9. If possible, eliminate the cause of emotions.

Sometimes it is easier to eliminate the cause of an emotion than to work on it. Don't get hung up on emotions, but think about options for solving them. If you don't like doing any housework or shopping, ask another family member to do it. Or, if you are bombarded by the fact that you have nothing to wear, go and buy it.

Then the question is: “is it possible to control emotions?” — it simply won’t arise.

10. Think about the worst that could happen?

This method was used by samurai. In difficult situations they thought about death.

If something makes you angry or upset, think that something worse could have happened. This will somewhat relieve the intensity of passions and allow you to think soberly.

11. Visualize your emotions

Aggression can become fire, fear can become crumbling debris. Put out the fire in your imagination or sweep away all the trash to hell.

12. Add more positive emotions

It sounds banal, but the more we surround ourselves with kind people and beautiful things, the less often negative thoughts visit us. Try to avoid communicating with eternally dissatisfied people or those who constantly have some kind of drama going on in their lives.

If these are your colleagues, keep communication with them to a minimum and then only on business matters. If your loved one is like this, try to look for positive aspects in life together.

If you constantly focus on the negative, it will be more difficult to manage your emotions.

13. Find time to relax

We cannot control our emotions when we are tired. Make a schedule. Make time for work, for household chores, for your favorite activities. Add walks in the park, relaxing in the bathroom, reading books, playing sports or dancing, meeting with friends to your day.

It’s better to give your body a little rest every day than to accumulate fatigue and try to unload once every 2 weeks.

This is similar to split personality, but you will do it consciously. This method is suitable if you are in a difficult situation and cannot cope with your emotions on your own. Abstract from your personality and see how your own experiences affect you.

You might even give yourself advice on what to do. But you shouldn’t resort to this method all the time.

15. The most important. Constantly develop

Engage in both physical and spiritual development. Only a mature person who knows and accepts himself completely can manage his own emotions.

Look for reasons for positive emotions. Show love and care to other people. Do it sincerely.

“Sincerity does not consist in saying everything you think, but in thinking exactly what you say.”

Hippolyte de Livry

Be confident and decisive, like little children. People with such qualities will experience success in any endeavor.

Whatever methods you choose, use them on an ongoing basis. You shouldn’t jump from one method to another in an attempt to calm yourself down; develop your own algorithm for managing emotions. Choose 2-3 exercises and work through them, introduce them into your daily life.

Conclusion

Managing emotions and feelings is a skill. It cannot be mastered in one week. Only constant work on yourself will make you a truly happy person. Remember that positive emotions and good spirits not only prolong life, but also significantly improve its quality.

A person who has learned to manage his emotions is a free person!

How to manage your thoughts and emotions: video

managing emotions - psychology 3000

From a psychological point of view, an emotional person is regarded by others as unreliable, unstable, and unhappy. This behavior is interpreted for various reasons, but such an image is unlikely to have a positive impact on personal development in society. Therefore, it is extremely important to understand how to manage emotions and achieve goals, control your emotional impulses and cool down your ardor. This will help not only avoid conflicts, problems or frustrations, but also earn trust/respect among friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.

Signs of emotionality

• Impulsiveness or indecisiveness in decisions and actions
• Pathological hyperactivity and fear of showing weakness
• Doubt in all aspects of life
• Mood instability and constant aggression towards others
• Touchiness or constant rudeness
• and self-isolation
• or domination and submission of others
• Vengeance and the desire to punish the offender at any cost
• Severe sexual promiscuity and craving for alcohol or drugs

Reasons for emotionality

• Improper upbringing or excessive severity towards a child
• Psychological atmosphere (energy) in the family
• Psychological trauma and fear
• Subconscious fears
• Depression and stress
• Feeling dissatisfied
• Lack of self-confidence (lack of confidence)
• Low self-esteem
• Split personality
• Taking medications

Delving into the essence of the problem, it becomes clear that the main causes of psychological emotionality are illiteracy (negligence) and psychological trauma received at different ages. They are the ones who cultivate the future worldview in the child and create a new one. If a child is emotionally unstable, this is immediately obvious: he stops obeying, is constantly capricious, becomes aggressive and disrespectful towards others. Carrying a heavy psychological burden, a person begins to feel fear, guilt, internal dissatisfaction leading to constant internal conflicts, scandals, strong emotionality, anger and aggression.

How to get rid of emotionality

As in any business, desire is important for internal changes. It is not realistic to force a person to follow a certain model of behavior, but it is quite possible to explain, convince and teach. Hyperemotionality in most cases develops already in childhood, which means the root of the problem should be looked for here. Digging deeper, you can notice an important trend: people carry into adulthood all the negativity that was poured on them at an early age, keeping it deep in the subconscious. First you need to recognize the problem itself and begin to change, but this requires complete self-awareness. You need to accept the problem and change your attitude towards it, focusing on the most important things.

If the awareness of change has come, you need to determine the most appropriate algorithm of action in a stressful situation. Regardless of your psychotype, teach yourself to leave time for reflection. People make mistakes, a priori. Hasty conclusions have the greatest probability of failure, because during stress, active biochemical processes in the body dull the functioning of the brain, and the illogicality of decisions makes it difficult to concentrate on the main thing. Here is the first answer to the question how to manage your emotions— develop the useful habit of first thinking, and only then saying, doing or deciding.

A very important and effective method will be one that can determine the root cause of emotionality by removing it and changing your attitude towards the problem itself by removing nervous tension. It is impossible to remove the reasons described above on your own, since a person cannot control his subconscious and restrain fear. This is serious psychological work that only a professional psychologist can do, so psychological help is the most effective and fastest of all.

There are various techniques that help to cope with emotional stress in a certain situation and make the right decision. The most effective of them:

• Count to 10 in your head and mentally calm down. The time can be adjusted based on the situation. The method is quite effective.
• Think about whether it will be important in a week, a month, a year. Most “important” problems will not be remembered after a couple of days.
• Do not give a big role to unimportant things. There is no need to exaggerate and invent unnecessary things.
• Breathing technique: “deep inhale, deep exhale.” This method slows down the flow of biochemical processes, thus relieving general stress and partially helping to get out of a crisis situation.
• Look at the situation from the “other side”. Reasoning logically, seeing the conflict from the outside without making sudden conclusions or decisions.
• Learn to manage your emotions (feelings of anger, aggression, nervousness) by restraining yourself.
• Meditations. Practice will help you feel inner harmony, relax and calm down.
• Rethinking results and focusing on more important things.
• Positive attitude and the fight against bad (negative) mood.
• As a last resort, in order to relieve emotional stress, it is recommended to transfer aggression to inanimate objects: a punching bag, a pillow or rough paper, without expressing anger on living objects.

To claim that one method or another will suit everyone without exception is stupid. All these techniques are universal and each individual determines individually how to learn to manage your emotions, finding your own “panacea”.

In communication, it is important not only to cope with thoughts, but also to learn a way to block external non-verbal signals, that is, the visual manifestation of experiences. Mainly you need to pay attention to the lips and eyes. They are the first to let you down: parted lips immediately indicate surprise, and clenched teeth indicate anger. So that the interlocutor does not notice pronounced reactions, the mouth should be relaxed, and the corners should be kept as natural as possible, without bending up or down.

As for the eyes, reading them is relatively more difficult, but still possible. Looking into the eyes can provoke mental outbursts even more, so it is better to avert your eyes for a while. Only by concentrating and calming down can you restore visual contact. This will return the feeling of a calm presence to the interlocutor and show your self-confidence. But here it is important not to miss the fine line and not to overdo it - hiding your eyes for too long can be regarded as fear or.

The body, unfortunately, is also capable of signaling internal anxiety. Learn to avoid the following:

• hyperactive gestures;
• frequent changes in body position;
• unjustified sudden movements;
• choppy, incoherent speech;
• kneading an object in your hands for a long time.

Concentrating on external manifestations distracts attention from the original stimulus, directing the force to mastery of the physical appearance, and not to others.

Having become familiar with the how to manage emotions and feelings, you can safely start practicing. Having set yourself the goal of normalizing the emotional background, the main thing is to clearly focus on the result. Awareness of the problem is half the success. Then everything depends on you and your efforts.

The criterion of a person’s maturity (development) is his ability to manage himself: his perception, internal processes, personal resources, energy, etc. This also gives a big “bonus” of resistance to various kinds of external troubles and unfavorable circumstances.

Unpleasant truth about the world No. 1

The average person strives for two things.

Experience as many and as strong pleasant feelings as possible (love, joy, happiness, pleasure, etc.).

And not experience (preferably never) unpleasant feelings (suffering, disgust, resentment, uselessness, grief, melancholy, jealousy, shame, etc., etc.).

Desires are quite understandable and natural. For a child 5-6 years old, but not for an adult.

The truth (which stings the eyes) is that in order to free yourself from negative feelings and begin to enjoy positive feelings, you need to work hard on yourself. But the average person, unfortunately, really doesn’t like to work on himself. An ordinary person likes it when everything happens quickly and, preferably, by itself: press a button and oops! everything is immediately in your pocket.

The world, however, is organized according to completely different principles than an ordinary person would like. You have to pay for everything in this world. And for the ability to manage your feelings as well.

Be prepared for this!

“Don't think down on seconds...«

Feelings have one interesting feature - they can completely discourage the ability to think rationally and make thoughtful decisions. On the wave of feelings that overwhelm him, a person is capable of doing such things that then puts an end to the rest of his life. Do you understand? There was a whole life with hopes and a plan, but just a couple of minutes or seconds (even hours) and that’s it - that life no longer exists and will never exist!

Example 1. A pretty girl makes a scene for her lover and, succumbing to immature feelings, the man decides to leave the family. Young children are left without a father. But the relationship between the girl and the man does not work out - the feelings turned out to be unreal. They find themselves with nothing. Nobody won - everyone lost.

Example 2. A man (being 100% sober), flaring up in a fit of jealousy, kills his wife, two young children and mother-in-law. Four people are dead, one will live in a concrete barred box for the rest of his days.

Example 3. A compassionate and childishly trusting woman sheltered “refugees.” Exploiting her immature feelings, enterprising guys pushed her into committing a property crime, and in addition deceived her into depriving her of her apartment. Now the unfortunate woman is forced to deal with her feelings in the colony.

Example 4. The young man became angry with his friend because of the latter’s position on one issue and mortally insulted him. The long-term friendship began to crack and then fell apart. And when the young man got into serious trouble, his friend refused to help him.

You can collect millions of such stories - they were, are and will continue to be.

All the troubles that happen in our lives are our fault. We ourselves, with our own hands, allow feelings from the unconscious to seize absolute power over us and force us to act “exactly this way and not otherwise.”

Obviously, it is critically important for any person to learn to manage their feelings, since the inability to manage them is a direct path to the destruction of oneself and life around, a direct path to Satan (I use this term as the most understandable cultural symbol for our people of the finitude of life and existence).

Why Pushkin masterfully controlled other people's feelings

It is good to have a “hot heart” when accompanied by a “cool head”. Feelings are an element that in skillful hands turns into an endless source of inner strength, and in leaky hands it becomes destructive chaos and entropy tending to death (i.e., a manifestation of the same Satan).

Let's see how you can manage your feelings and always be your own master.

To begin with, it should be understood that while a person is under the power of his limited egoistic mind (which divides the world into I and Not-I), he is not his own master - he is under the heel of his insane servant.

When a person (after many years of meditation or as a result) has learned to realize his Self beyond the limits of the limited egoistic mind, he gains unprecedented power over himself and his feelings. Now he just needs to look at the reactive feeling and immediately take control of it.

Remember - without a “pumped up” ability to take an external position (an external point of view), all talk about managing feelings is nonsense of “typopsychicholochs”. You can only manage what you understand. And you can only be aware of something by “rising above it.”

Second point is that you can’t approach feelings with a “ruler and compass.” We can express in words only what is decomposed into elements. Feelings cannot be broken down into elements, so logical rationalization here, as they say, “doesn’t work.” The only effective tool for managing feelings is working with them as metaphors. By the way, poets and songwriters knew this very well “since the time of King Pea” - all their sensual lyrics are built exclusively on metaphors.

For example

And the heart burns again and loves because it cannot help but adore. (A.S. Pushkin)

The burning heart is a metaphor

And managing metaphors is already a fairly simple technology.

Plus basic things, without which managing feelings will resemble an attempt by an illiterate and incompetent boss (whom in Russia you can meet at every turn) to complete a complex project in record time (i.e. it will be done “through the ass” according to the principle “they wanted the best” , but it turned out as always").

It's about acceptance and taking responsibility. These things are different, but interconnected.

So, everything you have is an integral part of you. Your “property” so to speak. And any property implies some kind of responsibility for it.

Get ready to accept.

Unpleasant truth about the world No. 2

What else do you need to know about how to manage your feelings?

Any control aims to influence the object of control in order to achieve some important and necessary result. No matter how different people imagine the ultimate goal of managing feelings, it will always be the same (just with different degrees of purity) - this is the achievement of internal harmony. There is simply no other goal. It simply cannot exist, just as there cannot be two Taos.

It is difficult for an ordinary person to admit that there is something more important than harmony; an ordinary person wants wealth and pleasures from life. But another unpleasant truth about the world is that having become rich and having access to exquisite pleasures, such a person does not become one iota happier (let alone more harmonious).

Typical example

Here is a collective description of a typical American tragedy:

“He is a multimillionaire who owns a chain of 73 retail stores selling electronics. His cholesterol levels are very high and he is 60 pounds overweight. He hasn't had time to even talk to his children for the past five years, and the children themselves are taking drugs and perceive him as some kind of shadowy figure about whom they have no real idea. He sleeps in separate rooms with his wife, and love and romance in his life are nothing more than memories erased from memory ... "

And do you know what this “winner” thinks about most? Everything is very simple. There is only one thing on his mind...

How to Open the 74th Store

In Your Trading Network!

(Gary Halbert)

Wealth, fame, recognition, honor, etc. – these are the goals that you can achieve much easier if you are in a state of inner harmony. If, of course, you decide that you need them. Or receive them as accompanying “bonuses” for what you do or will do.

And here is an important point - you must achieve harmony between yourself and the ultimate goal of your activity (and your actions as such) both in order to achieve serious creative success in this activity, and in order not to experience unnecessary stress in the process.

Therefore, always strive exclusively for harmony, this is the right direction.

Three ways to learn to manage your feelings

I know several ways to learn to manage feelings. One of the most common and popular- this means reading a couple of hundredweight of books and other educational materials on psychology, philosophy, esotericism, listening and watching terabytes of audio and video on this topic, scooping up all possible exercises/techniques from there and performing them all carefully. It is likely that by the time you finish, you will be quite many years old, “but”... you won’t have to spend money!

Another way much more practical - You can invent a time machine and periodically travel back, continuing to study everything that needs to be learned and practice what needs to be practiced. What will happen in the end? What happens is that in fact you will spend very little, just a few years on self-education, and judging by the clock, only three hours have passed since you read this article.

But if you don’t want to waste precious years of your own life, and you can’t invent a time machine, the only thing I can advise you is personal work with a trainer who will build a systematic work for you and help you achieve results much, much faster.

And first of all, I would advise you to overcome the most difficult barriers to managing your own feelings, which are hidden in the depths of your unconscious. This is quite simple to do - just go through (and this can be done within a couple of weeks) several specialized sessions - Gnostic Intensive and the Shunyata complex. This can be done within

How to manage your emotions? Part one

Tags: Managing Emotions

Does it ever happen that your emotions get out of control? Do you experience experiences that reduce your quality of life? If yes, then be sure to read this article!

To be honest, writing about managing emotions is not at all easy for me: there are so many nuances and aspects to this topic that when you start describing one side of the issue, you realize that you are missing out on a lot of other, equally important things.

Today I planned to describe a very effective meditation exercise for managing your emotions. But simply describing the essence of the exercise, its stages, is too little: mindlessly following the instructions will be of little use. For maximum benefit, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which our emotions function.

And so I began to describe the mechanisms. Having finished my description, I realized that the volume of the text fully corresponds to a full-fledged article. But I haven’t even started describing the exercise itself yet!

So, I decided not to inflate the article to the size of “War and Peace”. I will write detailed instructions for the exercise in the next article, in a week. Today we’ll talk about how it works. I will list several points that are most often associated with difficulties in managing emotions. It is these moments that the meditative exercise will influence.

So, let's go...

1. Awareness of emotions

In order to manage your emotions, it is important to be aware of them. Many people are often not used to paying attention to their emotional state. Therefore, if you ask them how they feel in a given situation, they will answer very vaguely: “Good,” “Bad,” “Somehow not very good,” “Normal.” What emotions are hidden behind these words? Unknown.

There are many words that can be used to describe emotions: joy, sadness, anger, irritation, sadness, melancholy, fear, anxiety, resentment, guilt, shame, embarrassment, hope, pride, tenderness, delight, etc.

The ability to describe your inner state using these or similar words is the first important step towards managing your emotions. Read more about why this is so important. Here you will find simple and understandable instructions that will help you become more aware and understand your emotional state. In the same article there is an audio recording of a meditation that helps you look deep inside yourself and become better acquainted with your emotions.

The meditation exercise, which I will describe in detail in the next article, also helps you become more aware of your own emotions.

2. Acceptance of emotions

What happens when we experience something unpleasant? Of course we want to get rid of what we don't like! We are designed in such a way that we instinctively resist pain and unpleasant sensations. We strive to avoid uncomfortable situations. And of course we don’t want to experience negative emotions!

Therefore, when faced with a negative experience, many try to suppress or muffle painful emotions and not notice what is happening inside.

An even more serious type of struggle is when, for some reason, a person considers the emerging emotions unacceptable. For example, many do not allow themselves to be angry. “Aggression, anger, irritation are bad,” this belief is often present. And then, having felt forbidden emotions, a person begins to push them inside himself.

Some do it so masterfully that they manage to hide their emotions even from themselves. Such people, for example, may sincerely believe that they never get irritated, angry, or offended. It must be said that such suppression of emotions never occurs without consequences, and sometimes the price is too high: depression, chronic anxiety, and psychosomatic disorders often arise as a result of the struggle with emotions.

Fighting your own emotions is harmful for many reasons. But now I want to dwell in detail on only one of them (read about other reasons).

Any struggle only increases tension.

There is a principle in Aikido called “non-struggle.” Its meaning is as follows: if the enemy strikes, then there is no need to respond to this blow with resistance, since in this case you may lose your balance or not withstand the force of the blow. If you subtly sense the opponent’s movements and follow these movements, in this case you will be able to use the opponent’s strength for your own purposes.

This principle is quite difficult to understand unless you see it happen. Therefore, I found a video on the Internet where the principle of refusing to fight is shown very clearly.

I'm sure that most of my readers are far from martial arts. However, watch this video. At first glance, it does not fit in with psychology. But this is only at first glance. Watch it to the end and then let's continue the conversation.

Have you looked? Now imagine that the guy in the orange T-shirt from the video is your emotions, and the man in the sweater is you. Do you see what will happen if you offer direct resistance? If your emotions are very intense, you will most likely have a hard time!

So, you can’t fight your emotions! This is an absolutely futile endeavor. How then?

It is important to learn to accept emotions as they are, without trying to somehow change or suppress them. Only in this case will you be able to use emotional energy for your benefit and not for your harm.

It’s very easy to say “accept your emotions as they are.” This is much more difficult to implement: when unpleasant experiences arise, most of us instinctively, automatically, out of habit try to change something and actually turn on the fight.

By making any emotion the object of meditation, you have much more opportunities to learn to accept it: during practice, it is easier to notice your own attempts to influence emotions and inner experience. By stopping your desire to fight over and over again, you gradually learn to treat any of your experiences, no matter what they are, with kindness and acceptance.

The meditation, which I will tell you about in the next article, is designed in such a way as to learn how to positively accept any of your emotions.

3. Seeing the broader context

Usually, when a person experiences some strong emotions, he tends to go headlong into them. He dives into the abyss of emotions and spends all of himself worrying. His whole life, the whole world at this moment narrows down to one specific situation and the emotions associated with it.

If there is resentment inside, then all internal dialogues will be aimed at punishing the offender or proving something to him. If you are disappointed, then all your thoughts will revolve around the situation associated with these experiences. A person spends all his strength, all of himself on the experiences that arise within.

In order to learn to manage your emotions, it is important to be able to look at your experiences from the outside. What does it mean?

This does not mean that you are trying to muffle your emotions. No, when you focus your attention on them, they may feel even more intense and stronger than usual.

This does not mean that you look at the emotion and decide for yourself: “Well, it’s kind of stupid to experience such feelings in such a situation.”

To look at your experiences from the outside is to allow yourself to feel, to allow your emotions to be what they are. And at the same time, while living your emotions, it is important to realize that you are something more than the emotions that you are now experiencing.

Imagine that you are standing in front of a huge painting, pressing your nose into it. You see some fragment and are completely concentrated on it. If you take a few steps back, you will continue to see that fragment, but the whole canvas will also open before you. You will find that you have only seen a small element that is part of the whole picture.

About the same thing happens when you concentrate on emotions during meditation. You have the opportunity to go beyond these emotions, to see your experiences in a broader context.

4. Understanding the meaning of emotions

I have already written in other articles that any emotion contains valuable information (for example, read about this). There are no emotions that do not carry any meaning. Each experience serves a specific function. That is why it is impossible to simply suppress some emotion without negative consequences.

In order to manage your emotions, it is important to understand the meaning behind each of them.

It is not always easy to understand the meaning of a particular experience, especially if it is painful and significantly spoils life. Intensified work of thought, the inclusion of analysis and logical thinking are often meaningless here.

Emotions are born from within, and understanding their meaning also comes from within. Meditation helps to reveal the meanings embedded in emotions. However, don't expect this to happen instantly.

Imagine that you entered a completely dark room. At first you will peer into the darkness and see nothing. Gradually your eyes will begin to get used to it, and you will begin to see the outlines of objects more and more clearly.

When you start meditating, it can be like being in a dark room: You seem to be following the instructions, but you don't see anything special. At this stage, the main thing is not to be disappointed, because if you continue to look inside yourself, gradually a lot of important and valuable things will begin to emerge from the darkness.

So, I repeat: understanding the meaning during meditation occurs not due to what you analyze, but due to the fact that you fix your attention on your experiences, allowing yourself to simply feel. As a result, you may suddenly discover something that you had not noticed or understood before.

5. Letting go of unproductive emotions

There are emotions that obviously interfere with a person. For example, you are preparing for an important exam. Anxiety may grow inside. The thoughts come again and again: “Will I be able to do everything on time?”, “What if I get a ticket with questions to which I don’t know the answers?”

Anxiety can be very painful and take up a lot of strength and energy that would be better spent preparing for the exam.

We have already said above that every emotion has a positive meaning. Even if it seems to us that emotion is absolutely destructive and only gets in the way, inside, on a subconscious level, there lives the conviction that emotion is actually necessary.

Returning to the anxiety example, we can assume that the prospect of failing an exam is perceived at an unconscious level as a disaster. And then anxiety arises in order to mobilize one’s strength to the maximum. The fact that the result of such mobilization not only does not help, but also hinders, is not taken into account by the unconscious. The unconscious acts irrationally, outside the laws of logic.

What can be done in such a situation? You can try to convince yourself of something, tell yourself: “Oh, come on! This exam is not that important. There is nothing to be afraid of,” but such actions most often lead to nothing, because we convince ourselves at the conscious level, and the problem is at the unconscious level.

Imagine that you live on the second floor, and the neighbors on the first floor turn on the music at full volume at one in the morning and disturb you from sleeping. From the fact that you get out of bed, start walking around the apartment and saying into the void: “Turn off the music and don’t disturb me from sleeping!” nothing will change. In order to be heard, you need to go down to the floor below and negotiate there.

We can say that consciousness and unconsciousness live on different floors. This is why attempts to convince yourself of something and set yourself up for certain emotions often turn out to be ineffective: in this case, the conscious mind tries to prove something to the unconscious without going down to its floor.
Meditation is a practice that helps you get in touch with unconscious processes.

How does today's meditation work? Over and over again you establish contact with your emotions, become aware of them, feel them, while accepting them and not trying to change them in any way. You just stay with the emotions as they are. This leads to you becoming more and more aware of your emotional reactions. This happens not only and not just at the level of logic and consciousness. Immersing yourself in direct feeling, you go down to the floor to your unconscious.

As a result, the understanding may gradually come that the emotions that arise have no practical meaning, do not help, but only interfere. This understanding is not at the level of logic and consciousness. This is understanding on a different, deeper level. At the level of the unconscious. If such understanding comes, emotions go away by themselves.

This only happens if the emotion really no longer has any meaning and arises “out of habit.” But often an emotion contains an important meaning that its owner is not aware of. In this case, during meditation an understanding of these meanings may come.

6. Awareness of the roots of emotions

Often the roots of emotional reactions that arise in the present lie in the distant past. Let me illustrate this with the example I gave in the previous paragraph. Exam anxiety. Now I will tell you about the common roots of this phenomenon.

Once upon a time there was a child. Like any baby, more than anything else he needed the love and care of his mom and dad. But the adults did not have enough time for this, and their child grew up experiencing a constant, chronic hunger for parental attention.

The child never blames the parents for such a situation. He most often begins to think that something is wrong with him. “If my parents don’t pay attention to me, then I’m somehow different,” the kid reasons. And then he has a desire to become better. He tries at all costs to meet his parents’ expectations: to behave ideally, to study well.

He discovers that an A grade brought home from school makes parents proud, and this is how the child receives at least a little warmth and attention. He also sees mom and dad's disappointment about the B they received. And this is very painful for him, since the most important thing in a child’s life is parental love.

This is how the baby begins to panic about bad grades. After all, for him a bad grade means loss of love.

Time passes. The child turns into an adult who no longer experiences such a strong need for love from his parents. Perhaps he decides for himself: “Well, yes. I didn't have a warm relationship with my mom and dad. It's a pity of course. But that's in the past."

It seems that everything is in the past. But the fear of negative evaluation continues to haunt an adult. He is present at exams, at work when necessary to submit reports, etc. A negative assessment is still perceived on an unconscious level as a threat of loss of love. No longer parents, but simply the people around them. And this is still a very painful topic that causes a lot of anxiety.

Of course, the situation described is not the only one that leads to anxiety before exams. There are other reasons.
With this story I wanted to show that the roots of emotions that arise in the present can stretch from the distant past, often from childhood. A person may not even be aware of this.

Often, when working with a psychologist, people have strong and deep feelings about something that they thought was long in the past. “Could this really matter? This was so many years ago! I thought I had overcome this situation a long time ago,” these are the words I regularly hear in consultations. But suddenly surfacing emotions about situations from the past clearly show that this is important.

So, we see that an emotional reaction often has its own history. Its source may be some old trauma, emotional pain. Emotions may be associated with beliefs that were formed a long time ago. For example, exam anxiety may hide unconscious beliefs: “In order for people around me to love me, I must be successful and show good results,” “If I fail, then I am an unworthy and bad person,” etc.

Of course, in order to sort out this tangle, it is best to contact a specialist. But you can also do a lot on your own.
During meditation, focusing on emotions, an understanding of where they come from may suddenly appear. It is not an understanding gained through intellectual analysis. It is an understanding that spontaneously arises from within. You don’t have to wait for it or try to do anything to make it appear.

All you need to do is stay with your emotions, accepting them and living them. And at some point, understanding may come, and with understanding, healing from emotional pain.