Make your emotions work for you- Not against you

Stress is addictive, and emotions are complex.  The past year was a year of major emotional roller coaster for most of us.  But all said and done, life happens.  Dreams are shattered and promises are broken.  Loved ones depart leaving us feeling lonely and helpless.  Health falters. Nothing is ever constant.  But do we stop living?  At times, we often find ourselves in a wide range of emotional states without ever understanding why we sometimes feel happy or sad, expansive or restricted at any given time. No matter what is going on in your life right now; know that we as humans were never made to live continuously with restrictive emotions like fear, stress, anxiety, worry and anger. The purpose of our lives is not to remain stuck, stressed and wasting energy we could use for positive purposes, like enjoying life more and realizing our dreams.

Why understanding our emotions is important?

Let’s look at it this way. When life feels good and hopeful; our possibilities seem endless. One feels much more energetic and filled with purpose. On the other hand; when we feel bad about ourselves and our possibilities, hope is lost and a hoard of negative emotions like fear, anger, frustration, confusion, sadness, worry, and more overtake us and drag us down.  On the same note, a mixture of joy and anger may at times lead to pride while anger and surprise may lead to an outroar.   While an event or an opinion of a trusted friend may take us by surprise; anger might creep in unannounced if the said event or opinion is not to our taste or liking.

1. Understanding our emotions is key to making them work for us; instead of against us.

When you understand your emotion and what triggered it, you can break the cycle of mindless reaction to those events.   Does your co-workers undeserved promotion make you want to be hostile towards him?  Or do your neighbor’s glamourous Instagram posts send you on a mindless shopping spree?   When you take a moment to understand your emotion, it’s triggers and the response it invokes in you, you will find a more productive way to refocus and resolve the problem. When you know you have no control over the traffic light, you will think of better ways to deal with your impatience.

• Noticing, recognizing and understanding our emotions is an integral part of moving on with our lives.

Self-awareness and an in depth understanding of our emotions has the potential to affect multiple areas of our lives. Your emotions are crucial to your ability to adapt to the challenges of your daily life. When you feel good, you’re able to shrug off even the most daunting tasks, but when you’re down and low, even an enjoyable activity or a person can put you down. Emotional awareness helps you to let go and move on.

Emotions serve an adaptive role in our lives by motivating us to act quickly and take actions that will maximize our chances for survival and success.  When we understand our fear, we know when we need to either fight or flee.  When we understand our anger, we are inspired to apply logic rather than act out in haste.  Similarly, when we understand our feelings of hurt and turmoil, it helps us move on, rather than drown in our grief.

• Understanding ourselves and our emotions is the key to understanding our relationships with others.

Understanding our emotions helps us in dealing with our relationships, be it at home, at work or in school. Flying off the handle over a minor inconvenience may make others feel more guarded and cautious towards you whereas reacting with uncontrolled laughter at a simple joke will make people question your maturity and mental stability. This awareness has the potential to affect multiple areas of your life – your time with family, in the classroom, at a job and time spent with friends. 

So how do you deal with this?  Understanding our feelings, and why we feel the way we do, will help us to navigate our friendships and other relationships, successes and disappointments, including our conflicts with others.

Know the range of your emotions

Based on the circumstances and how you choose to react to those circumstances; the range of one’s emotions may widely vary.  From feeling, admiration, adoration, appreciation of beauty, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, sadness, satisfaction, and surprise to feeling interested and lethargic, the range of emotions experienced by individuals corresponds to the trigger that provoked it.

  These are some of the ways, the extents of emotional variance has expressed:

1. Light, expansive, supportive, and energizing emotions – like love, happiness, gratitude, excitement, and optimism:  These positive emotions often lift us up and encourage us to keep working towards achieving our goals. . They take us closer to what we want.
2. Peaceful Neutral Emotions – like satisfaction, stillness, and peacefulness:  Help us in maintaining our mental wellbeing while keeping us calm and steady.
3. Prolonged Heavy, Restrictive, Limiting, and De-energizing Emotions – like fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, jealousy, hatred, and depression: These negative emotions often deviate our minds from our true potential and drag us down. They take us further from what we want.

Make your emotions work for you

Learning how to master your emotions is a skill anyone can build in six straightforward steps.

1. Identify and Label your emotions:

The first step in learning how to master your emotions and controlling our responses is identifying what our emotions are.

Let’s put it this way:  A friend’s criticism evokes feelings of anger within us; this anger leads to physical consequences such as increased heart rate, racing pulse and loss of emotional control.  But when you take a moment to stop and identify your emotional response as anger, you begin to feel calmer, your heart rate comes back to normal and you are in a better position to control your emotional response to it.  Perhaps an outburst can be avoided.

Take that first step toward emotional mastery now, ask yourself:

What am I really feeling right now?

(Emotionally drained, angry, sad, overwhelmed, happy and so on)

Am I really feeling…?

(Am I really happy or am I trying to cover up my overwhelm or insecurity by just laughing?  Is this actual migraine or a sense of dread that I am experiencing?)

Is it something else?

Am I experiencing self-doubt and inadequacy because the promotion/job that I thought I deserved went to someone else?

Do not always try to control the situation in the same manner that led you to failure in the first place.  Instead, think outside the box.  Trying finding new possibilities or alternate solutions to your problem. Look for new information that will help advocate your case. A new perspective may change your circumstances and your responses to them.

2. Acknowledge and appreciate your emotions knowing they support you

Mastering your emotions basically means appreciating them as part of yourself without completely shutting down or denying your feelings.

When you have labelled your emotions and have understood their presence, you learn to appreciate them even more.   For instance, when you are afraid of something, or experience extreme fear, your muscles become tense, your heart rate may increase, and you position yourself to either flee or fight the fear/fear producing trigger.

Know that not all emotions are bad at all times.  Take them as your companions and they will motivate you to get going throughout the day.  Imagine if you woke up one fine day just to discover that you had no emotions?  You did not feel anything.  Would you feel motivated to get out of bed and to work?  Would you enjoy your favorite meal?  Or feel comfortable around a warm fire? How would you decide what to do that day? How would you know what’s important and what’s not? Why bother to do anything at all?

3. What is the message this emotion is offering you

Emotions can often be perceived as signals that ‘something is happening’ around us.  Try approaching your feelings with a sense of curiosity. Your feelings will teach you a lot about yourself if you let them.

Ask yourself:  Is your anger telling you that your boundaries have somehow been crossed?  Or is it protecting other fragile emotions like anxiety, powerlessness, and discontent?

Does the ‘joy’ you feel motivate you to go after whatever generates it?

Learning the underlying message your emotions have to offer helps you solve the most complex of problems while preventing recurring challenges.

4. Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive restructuring, a process of recognizing, challenging, and changing negative or self-limiting thoughts or emotions with an intent to change.  Although formal cognitive restructuring may take place in a therapist’s office, it is possible to develop a positive mindset with the right information and a strong motive to change.   Remember the time when you felt a similar emotion and handled it successfully.   If you managed it well in the past, you can also do it today.

What are some of the distorted thinking patterns that you have been harboring?

Take for instance All-or-nothing pattern of thinking: “My co-workers always talk ill about me”.  “My boss will never like this”, “I will never succeed at this”, “I always get stuck doing this” and the list goes on.  Then, there are the negative Nancy’s who have a tendency to look at the brightest spot with a negative mindset.  Apart from these, we might also have cultivated the habit of over-generalizing things.  “My husband loves to dominate; all men are the same”. 

Being self-aware of these distorted patterns in thinking is the first step towards their release.  Release these emotions.  Practice positive affirmations.  Tell yourself that you can do this.  That you are good enough.   Just because you did not win last time does not mean you are a failure.  Work on improving your weaker areas.  Try harder and wiser next time.  Build confidence by rehearsing handling tough or stressful situations in the future. See, hear and feel yourself handling the situation. Lift up your ‘emotional weights’ and build enough mental muscle to handle your feelings successfully.

5.  Know your threshold and take timely action

If you want to gain mastery over your emotions, get to know your threshold.   In other words, know when to step away or back out.

Step out:

 Are you getting involved in a power struggle with your spouse, boss or co-worker?  Time to step out.  Gaining self-awareness is also knowing how much conflict you can handle before you are at your brink.  When things start to overwhelm, learn to step away from the physical environment.  Take a brief walk if you need to.  Take a break from your work.  If nothing else, at least shift your focus to something else.   Stepping away does not mean you are weak, but knowing when to step away before things escalate signifies emotional maturity.  It often helps reduce emotional arousal and regain clarity, functioning, and productivity.

Check-in with your emotions

Make a habit of checking in with your emotions at different times during the day.  Did you just argue with your friend?  Did you just receive the good news that you had been waiting for a long time now?  Does the traffic light seem like it is stuck on the red forever?  How do these day-to-day experiences make you feel and what affect are they having on your general affect?  Are they overwhelming?  Write them down if you need to.   Talk to your friend.  Vent if necessary.

Chris Gollmar – A “teacher, occasional artist, and generally rather quiet person” set up a hotline for people who were frustrated or angry and just wanted to scream.  The hotline allows you to just scream your heart off and hang-up as a means to emotional release.  The website justscream. baby – outlines how to use the hotline.  Those looking to let out their frustrations can call +1 561 567 8431 and, simply, scream down the phone and hang-up. According to the website, the project will be active until January 21 2021.

• Sensory relief

Another way to reduce stress and emotional strain is by practicing deep breathing exercises using mindfulness.  Try using your senses—what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch as you breathe deeply through your abdomen.  If it helps, look at something that gives you pleasure while you deep breathe, light your favorite scented candle, listen to some soothing music, and try hugging your pet or your child to help you relax.

• Change what you can

Change the circumstances that need to change.  Once you have identified your stressors, it is easy for you to determine what needs to change.  Are you a constant procrastinator?  Try not to put things to the last minute.  Getting ready for an appointment on time will ensure that the traffic light will not overwhelm you.  Cut down on the work stress and avoid bringing work home.  Practice assertive communication at home and at work and make your boundaries known; so, people will not trample all over you.

Be mindful of others people’s emotions as you try to understand your own.

It is a really valuable way to understand yourself and your friends better and to build healthy relationships.  “I thought that new email from the boss was really unfair and it made me tense and a little angry afterwards, what did you feel about it?” This will give you an overview of your emotions in comparison to others. Each person acts differently and feels differently to situations.  Examining, comparing and discussing our reactions helps us to relate more thoughtfully to others.

Your Takeaway

These are some of the  many powerful strategies for making your emotions work for you. Find some techniques that resonate with you and take action to put them into practice. Soon you’ll enjoy a new serenity and passion for life as you break free from the limits of negative emotions and discover the joys of a life filled with positivity!