It is no secret that people communicate not only in the language of words, but also in the language of emotions. Often, by the look, facial expressions, gestures of a person, we perfectly understand what is happening to him, even if he does not say anything. There are five basic emotions - interest, joy, fear, sadness and anger. The main emotions are represented in the neural structures of the brain, each of them corresponds to a certain motor pattern. This is what makes it easy to read information from the face and body that is imprinted on it when the neural networks responsible for this or that emotion are activated.
Experts advise to distinguish between emotions and feelings. Emotion is the body's psychophysical reaction to a particular event, a response to what is happening "here and now." Feelings are usually made up of several different emotions and develop over time.
In everyday life, we often divide emotions into positive and negative and attribute creative and destructive properties to them. But this approach greatly simplifies the understanding of emotions and does not give an idea of what role they actually play.
- Absolutely all emotions are important for a person, - believes psychologist Anna Garafeeva. - They perform a regulatory function between the individual and his environment, they become signals that the brain sends in response to a particular situation and which help to understand how to behave further. For example, fear warns us that there is some kind of danger nearby and we need to be alert. Anger says that someone encroaches on our territory, violates our borders and encourages us to defend ourselves. Sadness is associated with the experience of a loss that needs to be mourned. You can't say that being angry is bad, but being angry is even worse. All emotions that we used to consider negative, initially play a positive role. But they can become negative if, for example, a person experiences fear in the absence of a real threat - then the emotion turns from a regulator into a destroyer. The reasons why this happens can be very different. But in this case, without the help of a specialist, it is no longer possible to do.
Loss of direction
An equally important question is whether all emotions need to be expressed? Suddenly, open dissatisfaction with the controversial actions of the boss will make you the first candidate for dismissal, and the manifestation of anger towards your loved one will seriously complicate the relationship? Considering that the expression of some emotions is unworthy, shameful, capable of causing damage, we prefer to suppress them in ourselves. And we often demand the same from children. A simple and familiar example: a child is jealous of his parents for a newborn brother, angry with him. And they say to him: “You can’t be angry, you must love this baby!” He cannot control himself, begins to feel flawed, guilty and tries to hide this wrong emotion deep inside.
Suppressing emotions in ourselves, we lose the guidelines for adequate interaction with the world, - explains Anna Garafeyeva. - We cease to understand what is really happening to us in a difficult situation and how to react to it. In addition, no matter how suppressed an emotion, it still finds a way out - in a somatic disease or neurosis. You need to express your emotions. But how to do it? Of course, it is unacceptable to become hysterical, scream, insult others or resort to physical force. This is usually done by children who have not yet developed a system for managing emotions. However, some adults are also characterized by such behavior, this only means that a person is completely and completely in the power of emotion and is unable to control it.
Remote Control
There are many ways to express emotions in a dignified, civilized way, without causing harm and pain to others and to yourself. But before mastering them, you must learn to cope with the paralyzing effect of a particular emotion. Here are some tips to help you stop in time and direct your efforts in a constructive direction.
Anger. A very strong emotion that is difficult to control. In a person who is overcome with anger, energy rapidly soars upward: he stops feeling his legs, actively waves his arms, his blood pressure rises. A good way to get out of such an excited state is to transfer all your attention to your feet: stomp them, walk around, feel the movements of the feet and their contact with the floor. It is also important to bring back the feeling of your own center of the body by placing your palms on the navel area.
It is worth working with breathing, which becomes impetuous and sharp in anger, not allowing you to take a deep breath. Try to breathe deeply, calmly and slowly, focusing on the exhalation. In addition, in anger, the focus of vision can also change: extensive vision narrows sharply. In this case, look around to catch different objects and objects with your eyes, try to focus on them. And, of course, if you have the opportunity to leave the place where you were seized by a flash of anger, at least for a couple of minutes, use it - this will help you calm down a bit and restore peace of mind.
Fear. Most often, this emotion is associated with the threat of destruction, with personal safety. In this case, objective information sometimes helps: if a person is afraid to fly by plane, but reads reliable information that this is not the most dangerous mode of transport, he somewhat calms down.
But the appeal to higher powers has a much greater effect. It can be a prayer, some magical signs or objects, amulets. You can imagine a saving cocoon around you that will not let you get into trouble. All this relieves stress and helps to gain additional strength in the fight against fear.
Sadness. For this emotion, the most important healer is time. Music also helps to cope with it, usually also sad, exactly corresponding to the sad state. Listening to such music, a person begins to feel that sadness is no longer inside, it is concentrated in the music. Thus, a great distance arises in the soul of a person between him and the feeling he experiences. Besides, sad music can be beautiful! This helps you recover faster, although you may need to listen to the same song dozens or hundreds of times to fully release.
Joy. It can be associated with a strong overexcitation that can unbalance. This emotion is physiologically somewhat similar to anger or anger: the energy also rushes up, you want to jump and fly. Here it is also important to pay attention to the contact of the legs with the floor or the ground in order to moderate the ardor a little. And it is also necessary to restore breathing. In contrast to narrow vision in anger, in joy, the gaze is usually scattered and needs to be focused - for one or two minutes to look at some object or object.
Often, before learning to express and manage emotions, you must first understand where they come from. Sometimes an emotion or reaction that a person considers his own can be adopted from other family members and even passed down from generation to generation. But to figure it out on your own, without the help of a specialist, is not possible.
Personal opinion
Valery Afanasiev:
I have absolutely no control over my emotions. Sometimes I get carried away, and here - just a hurricane! Some people are even afraid of me. I suffer a lot from this, but at times I can’t do anything with myself! Then I walk away, and I feel ashamed that I accidentally touched someone, insulted. But at that moment it seems to me that I am right, and the “boil”, which has matured, must somehow be “opened”.
My wife always says to me: “Well, why are you screaming? By doing so, you show your weakness!..” But I don’t know… Then I most often apologize to people…
Heightened emotionality, an explosive character distinguishes a person who, for any reason, violently expresses his own feelings and cannot control them. An event of any nature (joyful or negative) will be the impetus for a violent emotional response and can cause emotional burnout.
I want to laugh and cry, scream or break something in a fit of anger and irritation, the conversation is drawn to a showdown with breaking dishes and replicas in raised tones. Any news causes a flurry of sensual experiences: from overwhelming joyful to decadent - depressive, failures generally drive you crazy, you want to crush, break, scream, resent. If you are familiar with such states, then you are the owner of increased emotionality and you probably know firsthand that the result of such emotional outbursts can be emotional burnout.
Emotions help us express our own feelings, but sometimes their power is so strong that it starts to get out of hand. Here a person may think: is it possible to learn to control their emotions and how to cope with them in especially tense moments? This can be done, but in order to achieve the desired harmony with yourself, you will have to work hard and get acquainted with the mechanisms of the functioning of your own inner world.
Emotional balance - why not?
Of course, expressing your emotions violently is not normal for the human psyche. Moreover, sometimes it even has a destructive effect on his attitude, shattering calmness and a balanced perception of reality, but it can also serve as an impetus for the development of a bouquet of related problems: depression, apathy, the development of psychosomatic diseases.
It is also wrong to consider an increased emotional trait of character: they say, "I was born like that and nothing can be done about it." You can do just that if you understand that any so-called "character trait" is a set of a huge number of response automatons that work inside you under the influence of your subconscious, which stores all the information about your past, all your beliefs and ideas about yourself and the world:
- past grievances, especially those that were received in childhood,
- unspoken bitterness, tears,
- fears, phobias and suspiciousness, the habit of making "out of a fly - an elephant" and exaggerating the scale of any problem,
- past failures and failures and the conclusions drawn from them, the habit of "expecting the worst" and the fear of change,
- a lot of personal ideas and rigid beliefs about how "things should be", how "right", which gush forth when the situation goes beyond its expected ideal model.
As well as many other reasons that each person has their own. All this baggage accumulated over a lifetime is not only stored by the subconscious, but also determines the models of a person’s emotional response. Inside, it’s as if an automaton is triggered - and again and again we feel anger, rage, depression, anger or envy, without understanding why.
Each person has his own personal "baggage" accumulated over his life, so we are all different and react differently, experience, suffer and laugh under the influence of different reasons. But the achievement of emotional balance is universal, since it lies in the liberation of the subconscious from all the negative information stored in it, all suppressed emotions.
How to control your emotions and live in harmony with yourself
You can reassure yourself every time by saying that "everything is fine", you can visualize and try to radiate "love and light" or turn to the all-knowing Internet for help and ask for advice on forums or search for it in psychological columns. BUT. All these measures will be a kind of redecoration, because they will not reveal to you all the true roots of the problem. It is hard to radiate light if anger props you up from within and aggression overflows. To force yourself and smile through tears is not only difficult, but also harmful. Logically, trying to convince yourself that in this or that situation you need to remain calm is also useless. Consciousness is involved in about five percent of the mechanisms of the functioning of the human essence, everything else is the work of the subconscious, it does not heed logic, exhortations and temporary measures.
By eliminating the response programs embedded in the subconscious mind, it becomes possible to really effectively manage your emotions. You should not treat the subconscious at the same time as an enemy, of course. Accumulating information in itself, the subconscious seeks to protect us, not to destroy, because it preserves all our injuries, everything that hurt our psyche, and tries to prevent the occurrence of these injuries again through automatic machines. Through anger, aggression, depression, we defend ourselves like small children from beatings and punishments.
If you try to remove these automata, then the expression of emotions becomes free. Your experiences are no longer determined by what you experienced in the past or what "thoughts" you have about how you should behave, but by your emotional balance. Harmony with oneself is not insensitivity, it is an emotional balance, in which emotions do not overwhelm, do not lead to emotional burnout, this is a calm and even state. Failures, if they occur, are perceived as a working moment: "it was and has passed", and joy is experienced as one wants at the moment here and now.
The information in this article is the result of the personal experience of its author, all articles are written based on their own results of using the system and are not intended to convince anyone of something.
This site is a personal initiative of its author and has nothing to do with the author of the Turbo-Gopher technique Dmitry Leushkin.
In everyday life between people, due to the difference in temperaments, conflict situations often occur. This is due, first of all, to the excessive emotionality of a person and the lack of self-control. emotions? How to "take over" your own feelings and thoughts during a conflict? Psychology provides answers to these questions.
What is self-control for?
Restraint and self-control is something that many people lack. This comes with time, constantly training and improving skills. Self-control helps to achieve a lot, and the least of this list is inner peace of mind. How to learn to control your emotions, and at the same time prevent intrapersonal conflict? Understand that it is necessary and find agreement with your own "I".
Control over emotions does not allow aggravation of the conflict situation, allows you to find with completely opposite personalities. To a greater extent, self-control is necessary for building relationships with people, whether business partners or relatives, children, lovers.
The impact of negative emotions on life
Disruptions and scandals, in which negative energy is released, adversely affect not only the people around, but also the instigator of conflict situations. How to learn to control your negative emotions? Try to avoid conflicts and not succumb to provocations from other people.
Negative emotions destroy harmonious relationships in the family, hinder the normal development of the individual and career growth. After all, few people want to cooperate / communicate / live with a person who does not control himself and, at every opportunity, starts a large-scale scandal. For example, if a woman cannot control herself and constantly finds fault with her man, which leads to serious quarrels, then soon he will leave her.
In raising children, it is also important to restrain yourself and not give vent to negative emotions. The child will feel every word spoken by the parent in the heat of anger, and subsequently remember this moment for the rest of his life. Psychology helps to understand how to learn to restrain emotions and prevent their manifestation in communication with children and loved ones.
Negative emotions also have a big impact on business and work activities. The team always consists of people of different temperaments, therefore self-control plays an important role here: negativity can spill out at any moment when a person is put under pressure, they are required to do overwhelming work. And instead of the usual dialogue, where the parties can reach a consensus, a scandal develops. How to learn to restrain emotions in the workplace? Do not respond to the provocations of employees, try to start a casual conversation, agree with the authorities in everything, even if the tasks set are difficult to accomplish.
Suppression of emotions
Constantly holding yourself back within certain limits and preventing the release of negativity is not a panacea. Suppressing accumulates negativity in itself, and therefore, the risk of developing psychological diseases increases. It is necessary to “splash out” the negative from time to time somewhere, but in such a way that the feelings of other people do not suffer. How to learn to restrain emotions, but without harm to the inner world? Go in for sports, because during training a person spends all his internal resources, and the negative quickly disappears.
For the release of negative energy, wrestling, boxing, hand-to-hand combat are suitable. It is important here that a person mentally wants to give vent to his emotions, then he will feel relieved and he will not want to take it out on anyone. However, it should be borne in mind that everything should be in moderation, and overwork during training can provoke a new influx of negativity.
Two ways to keep your emotions in check:
- Do you dislike a person so much that you are ready to destroy him? Do it, but, of course, not in the truest sense of the word. At that moment, when you become uncomfortable from communicating with him, do mentally with this person whatever you want.
- Draw a person you hate and write down on a piece of paper next to the image the problems that appeared in your life thanks to him. Burn the leaf and mentally put an end to your relationship with this person.
Prevention
How to learn to restrain emotions? Psychology gives such an answer to this question: in order to control one's feelings and emotions, prevention is necessary, in other words, emotional hygiene. Like the human body, his soul also needs hygiene and disease prevention. To do this, you need to protect yourself from communicating with people who cause hostility, and also, if possible, avoid conflicts.
Prevention is the most gentle and optimal way to control emotions. It does not require additional training of a person and the intervention of a specialist. Preventive measures allow you to protect yourself from negativity and nervous breakdowns for a long time.
The main thing that helps to get the better of your emotions - over your own life. When a person is satisfied with everything in his home, work, relationships, and he understands that at any moment he can influence and adjust all this for himself, then it is easier for him to restrain the manifestation of negative emotions. There are a number of preventive rules that help manage your own feelings and thoughts. How to learn to control your emotions and manage yourself? Follow simple rules.
Unfinished business and debt
Complete all the planned tasks in a short time, do not leave the work unfinished - this can cause a delay in deadlines, provoking negative emotions. Also, "tails" can be reproached, point out your incompetence.
In financial terms, try to avoid delays in payments and debts - this is exhausting and prevents you from reaching your goal. Understanding that you have not repaid a debt to someone causes negativity, helplessness in the face of the circumstances.
The absence of debts, both financial and other, allows you to fully spend your own energy resources and forces, directing them to the realization of desires. A sense of duty, on the other hand, is a hindrance to mastering self-control and achieving success. How to learn to restrain emotions and control yourself? Eliminate debts in a timely manner.
Cosiness
Create a comfortable workplace for yourself, equip your home according to your own taste. Both at work and at home, with your family, you should be comfortable - nothing should cause irritation or any other negative emotions.
Time planning
Try to competently make plans for the day, strive to ensure that you have both time and resources for the implementation of the tasks set a little more than you need. This will avoid the negative associated with the constant lack of time and worries about the lack of finances, energy and strength for work.
Communication and workflow
Avoid contact with unpleasant people who waste your personal time. In particular, with individuals who are called "energy vampires" - they take not only time, but also your strength. If possible, try not to intersect with overly temperamental people, as any incorrect remark directed in their direction can provoke a scandal. How to control your emotions in relationships with other people? Be polite, do not exceed your authority, do not overreact to criticism.
If your job brings you nothing but negative emotions, then you should think about changing your place of work. Earning money to the detriment of your soul and feelings, sooner or later, will lead to a breakdown and disorder of peace of mind.
Border marking
Mentally create a list of things and actions that cause you negative emotions. Draw an invisible line, a line beyond which no one, even the closest person, should cross. Make a set of rules that restrict people from interacting with you. Those who truly love, appreciate and respect you will accept such demands, and those who oppose the settings should not be in your environment. To communicate with outsiders, develop a special system that will avoid violation of your boundaries and the formation of conflict situations.
Physical activity and introspection
Playing sports will bring not only physical health, but also mental balance. Give sports from 30 minutes to 1 hour a day, and your body will quickly cope with negative emotions.
At the same time, analyze everything that happens to you during the day. Ask yourself questions about whether you did the right thing in this or that situation, whether you communicated with the right people, whether there was enough time to complete the work. This will help not only to understand yourself, but also in the future to eradicate communication with unnecessary people that cause negativity. own emotions, thoughts and goals allows you to fully develop self-control.
Positive emotions and prioritization
Develop the ability to switch from negative to positive emotions, try to see the positive side in any situation. How to learn to control emotions in relationships with relatives and strangers? Be positive, and this will help you defeat your own temper.
A well-chosen goal is a great help in achieving self-control. When you are on the verge of a surge of negative emotions, imagine that as soon as you stop being nervous and paying attention to provocations, your dreams will begin to come true. Choose only realistic, achievable goals.
Environment
Take a close look at the people around you. Is there any benefit in talking to them? Do they bring you happiness, warmth and kindness, do they make you happy? If not, then the answer is obvious, you need to urgently change to switch to individuals who carry positive emotions. Of course, it is unrealistic to do this in the workplace, but at least limit yourself from communicating with such people outside the workspace.
In addition to changing the environment, expanding the circle of friends will help to achieve the development of self-control. This will give you new opportunities, knowledge and a positive charge for a long time.
endure or fight?
Discomfort, trouble, anxiety, pain, suffering... "Negative emotions" is a rather vague definition that summarizes the emotions of this series.
Even people who consider themselves happy experience emotions from the "negative spectrum" of human experiences. And although a variety of emotions are understood as negative emotions, their common feature is that we feel something unpleasant, unwanted, "bad". The strength of these experiences can grow from barely perceptible discomfort to a state of unbearability.
Throughout life, each person (consciously or unconsciously) develops his own strategy for dealing with them, giving his own answer to the question:
How to deal with negative emotions?
Avoid.
Some people feel that any experience is very hard for them, hurts a lot, or even just “unsettles” for a long time. At the same time, they feel that there are not enough resources to change the situation or cope with their emotions. Often such people choose the path of avoidance. Avoidance is an attempt to encounter as little as possible with events, people, and even with one's own manifestations that can upset the internal balance. A person leaves the activity associated with negative emotions, makes a stop in something.
When Masha was 8 years old, at a lesson in the classroom, she raised her hand and went to answer to the blackboard. She knew the material well, but was excited by the opportunity to prove herself and, under the influence of strong emotions, mixed up something. Classmates laughed, and the teacher gave a three for the wrong answer. Masha was ashamed of herself and hurt for the troika. At home, she received a comment from her mother: "Why did you volunteer to the board if you weren't sure of yourself?"
Maria is now 32 years old and works as a junior manager in a small company. She could have become a leader long ago, because she is well versed not only in her work, but also in the work of the entire department. But nobody knows about it. The fear of showing herself (and the expectation of possible shame) negate the possibility of her professional growth.*
Anton is 42 years old. He is a hardened bachelor. Women happen in his life - for a day, two, a week ... The longest romance in his life lasted 8 months and ended 23 years ago. Then the girl he really fell in love with went to his friend. He suffered a lot, wanted to kill him, her, and then yourself. These feelings were even more acute than those that he experienced at the age of five, when his parents divorced and his mother married his stepfather. It took Anton 2 years to recover from an unfinished romance. The wound from the loss, from the experience of betrayal, healed, but the scar remained. Now, as soon as there is a "threat" of rapprochement with someone, the opportunity to become attached, Anton mercilessly breaks off relations. He is ready to sacrifice love, warmth, the opportunity to raise children, if only not to face the terrible pain of betrayal and parting again. *
Use those around you.
Another possibility is to use the people around you to transfer to them what is unpleasant and hard to experience inside. Unconsciously trying to avoid contact with negative emotions within oneself, and unable to process them into something useful, a person feels anxiety, irritation or anger. On a conscious level, he connects these feelings with what is happening around - with the behavior of loved ones, life circumstances, political systems, etc. As a result, he does not really try to understand the reasons that cause these emotions, and denies his contribution to what is happening: the defensive reaction works instantly and unconsciously. Emotions themselves feel like a tangled, unpleasant, hand-burning ball that needs to be disposed of by throwing it to another. In most cases, after that, the internal balance is more or less restored. But loved ones suffer from the emotions splashed out on them. And then either loved ones become unhappy, or they try to communicate less. And negative emotions still remain strong.
Ivan Andreevich - head of department of a trading company. He studied a lot, he is very demanding of himself, he is a really good specialist. But his department has a serious problem: staff turnover, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the department as a whole. Only one employee stayed there for more than two years. The rest either move to other departments or quit altogether. The reason is this: Ivan Andreevich is considered a petty tyrant, they hate and fear him. This surprises him and offends him a little, because he just wants everyone to work "normally". Just like his father, who always scolded him (and even flogged him) for any fault (and anything could be considered a fault), Ivan Andreevich considers himself fair. After all, his anger is always directed at some imperfection of the employee. But he does not realize that the true causes of his emotions are often not the actions of employees, but his own poor health, deteriorating relationship with his wife, unconscious dissatisfaction with himself, fear of being unsuccessful and losing the trust of company management. "Educating" employees, he does not solve the true problems, and people from the department keep leaving and leaving ... *
Tatyana got married at the age of 18. She wanted to feel freedom so much that she accepted the offer from the first person who made it, without thinking about her feelings. It was not easy for her in childhood - she lived alone with her mother - a lonely and very anxious woman who made her daughter her only friend, her mother, her psychotherapist. Unconsciously, she used her daughter so as not to feel loneliness, anxiety, fear for the future.
Tanya lived with her husband for only 2 years. He was unable to compete for Tanino's attention with his mother-in-law, who called many times a day, with whom he had to spend all weekends and holidays. Finally, her mother began to feel bad and Tanya, unable to cope with her guilt towards her "abandoned" mother, moved back to her ... The return of her daughter cured her mother and together they lived for another 20 years until her mother died. All this time Tatyana was angry with her. But anxiety for her mother's well-being and a sense of guilt and betrayal did not allow Tatyana to think about starting to live her own life.*
Suffer and endure.
Sometimes a person realizes that he is sacrificing his own interests, and may even stop living his own life in order to save someone else. In some cases, you really have to sacrifice some of your interests (for example, when a loved one is seriously ill). But quite often sacrificing oneself and one's interests to someone is not so much a tribute to severe necessity as a passive way to cope with various negative emotions - anger, resentment, guilt.
In some cases, suffering serves as self-punishment. This is how a suffering person unconsciously copes with the feeling of guilt, which sharply manifests itself whenever he tries to think about his interests.
And sometimes suffering and self-denial constitute the secret pride of a person. and feed his self-respect. From the outside, such a person may look like a saint. Although it is not easy for his relatives: they are forced to constantly feel guilty for wanting to realize their desires and follow their interests, while their loved one refuses everything in their favor.
Let's return to Tatiana from the previous example. Her mom unconsciously used her to deal with her anxiety and loneliness. When there was a threat that Tanya would break this symbiosis, my mother began to get sick. And then Tatyana experienced strong fear (of losing her mother, and also causing her death) and guilt (for leaving her mother and for the desire to have her own life, as well as for the accumulated unexpressed anger at her mother). Fear and guilt led Tatiana to the outcome described above: she spent her whole life caring for her mother, supporting her, and giving up opportunities to build close relationships with other people.*
Elena Sergeevna is the mother and grandmother of a large family. She devoted her life to her family and children. Raising her sons, she almost refused to communicate with her friends and had no hobbies. Elena Sergeevna never demanded anything for herself. Having given herself to her children, now she does not understand: why do her children feel unhappy?*
Use negative emotions to improve your life.
Emotions in human life exist for a reason. Positive emotions let us know that something useful for us is happening. Negative emotions are a signal that something is going wrong. It is important not only to get rid of them, but to understand this signal and respond to it.
When something turns out to be emotionally unbearable for a person, it can seem as if the emotions are turned off: the person no longer suffers, but he also does not really rejoice, and over time there is a feeling that life is meaningless, or a feeling of deadness, living life in the absence of life itself.
Few people want to experience physical pain. However, when a person actually loses the ability to feel pain for some reason, they are in mortal danger. He will no longer withdraw his hand when it comes into contact with a hot object ... He no longer feels that a serious inflammation is starting ... Having broken his leg, he will continue to walk, tearing the bones inside ... In a word, without pain, he will not be able to during respond to danger...
But what then to do with negative emotions? By avoiding them, we hide from the world and do not realize our potential. By using others to deal with them, we make those close to us suffer, and the rest just leave us. Suffering and enduring, we sacrifice our lives.
An alternative to these not pretty options is inner work with your emotions. A person can do it on their own or with the help of a psychologist. Of course, each case is individual, but in general, this work goes through several general stages:
1. Awareness of which emotions are unpleasant or cause suffering.
2. Understanding what exactly causes them.
3. Determining what is happening can be changed.
4. Deciding what exactly you want to achieve and how.
5. Begin change.
Such inner work not only allows you to cope with negative emotions. It changes lives for the better, and gives reason to be proud of your inner growth.
* Typical life situations are given as examples in the article.
Psychologist-psychoanalyst
ECPP Training Analyst and Supervisor
Incredible Facts
Feeling emotions is normal, the problem is that often we do not know at all what to do with them.
Therefore, in most cases, we resort to familiar methods. For men, the most common outlets are video games, alcohol and smoking. Women deal with their emotions through food or shopping.
It's good if it happens from time to time. However, more often than not, we use such unhealthy methods regularly. In the end, our relationships, work and health suffer.
How can you learn to manage your emotions effectively?
There are a few rules to remember.
How to learn to control your emotions
1. You don't choose your emotions because they originate in a part of the brain that we have no control over.
2. Emotions defy moral rules. They are neither good nor bad, right or wrong. It's just emotions.
3. You are in charge of your emotions.
4. You can suppress emotions, but you cannot get rid of them.
5. Emotions can lead you astray or lead you down the right path. Everything depends on your actions.
6. The more you ignore them, the stronger they become.
7. The only way to deal with emotions is to allow yourself to feel them..
8. Emotions fuel your thoughts. You can use your thoughts to control your emotions.
9. You need to understand your emotions and what they want to tell you so you can deal with stress. In other words, you need to digest your emotions.
10. Every emotion carries an important message. This message helps you understand yourself better, even if you try to hide it. Do yourself a favor and accept whatever emotions you have by feeling them.
11. How your parents reacted to your emotions determines how you feel about your emotions now. As you have matured, your emotions have matured along with you. They developed, became deeper and more influential.
How to manage emotions
Your emotions have long been trying to come to the surface. They do not disappear, but go deep into the roots, and these roots make sense.
If you want to get to know your emotions better, start acknowledging them to avoid misunderstandings with others.
There are a few simple steps on how to learn to deal with your emotions.
1. What emotion are you experiencing
The first thing you need to do is determine how you feel. Psychologists distinguish 4 basic emotions: anxiety, sadness, anger, joy.
When you are anxious, thoughts come to you: " What if I don't find a job?", "What if I'm lonely?", "What if I fail the exam?". You worry about the future and what might go wrong. Physically, you may feel an increased heartbeat, muscle tension, jaw clenching.
When you are sad, you have negative thoughts about the past. You feel tired and heavy, you may cry and have difficulty concentrating.
Anger is expressed in thoughts focused on how someone encroached on your values. The physical symptoms are similar to those of anxiety: heart palpitations, a feeling of tightness in the chest.
When you rejoice, thoughts are focused on your accomplishments. For example, you got a desired job, bought an apartment, or received a compliment. Physically, you feel light and calm, smile and laugh.
2. Determine the message of your emotions
Ask yourself a question to understand why you have this or that emotion:
Anxiety: What am I afraid of?
Sadness: What have I lost?
Anger: What values of mine have been hurt by the other person?
Happiness: What did I get?
Emotion management
Once you have identified an emotion and its message, you need to take action. Ask yourself if there is anything that can solve the situation. If possible, do so.
For example, if you are sad and cannot find a job, you can turn to friends and acquaintances for help.
If there is nothing you can do, think about how you can deal with the emotion. Meditate, talk to a friend, write down your thoughts on paper, get physically active, seek professional help. Choose what's right for you.
