If you have trouble controlling your emotions, it is possible for you to do so. Learning how to get your emotions under control begins with the understanding that you are a complete and whole being. It is easy to think of your self in terms of different parts of you. However, you are made up of more than just the individual parts of you. Your brain, body, neurology, thoughts, and emotions all work together to create who you are and the reality that you experience. By realizing that you are more than the sum of your parts, you can begin the process of learning how to control your emotions. Elements of Empowerment Coaching can provide you with some techniques that you can use to help you through the process.
What is the goal of getting control of your emotions?
One goal for learning how to get your emotions under control is to gain the ability to separate an event from your reaction to it. You can then teach yourself that you have other choices available to you.
Finding your emotional baseline
Every person has a baseline of emotions from which they operate. Your emotional baseline is simply the mood that you experience in general. Having a higher baseline means that you will have a better outlook on your life and will experience fewer impacts when negative things occur.
To figure out what your baseline is, begin by checking how you feel randomly throughout the day. While you do this, pay attention to what is happening in your body and mind. Note the following things when you do this:
What are the time and the date?
What are the physical feelings in your body?
What is happening in your mind?
After you have written down these things about 20 or 30 different times, you should start to see a pattern showing your general mood. Realize that you are the only person who can control your baseline. Ask yourself about what pattern you have found. You should also look at the thoughts and feelings that you experienced frequently and consider whether they reflect the types of emotions and thoughts that you would like to have.
Raising your baseline
If you find that your emotional baseline is lower than you would like, you can take some steps to raise it. One easy way to do this is to follow the 5% rule, which is an NLP technique that can help you. The idea behind the 5% rule is for you to give additional energy to every situation that you encounter. For example, if you are using a treadmill, up your speed by 5%. Try applying the 5% rule to everything that you do for 90 days to see how your mood improves.
Developing more emotional flexibility
Increasing your emotional flexibility can also help you to master your emotions. Allowing yourself to experience a broader range of emotions can be helpful. You can do this by taking a comedy class, watching silly movies, noticing when others do something right, and allowing yourself to feel moved. Doing these types of things can allow you to experience more positive emotions.
Dealing with others
Other people do not have the power to force you to feel one way or another. Even though you might be able to make a logical connection between your emotions and what someone else said to you, you are the person who has control over your emotions. When you treat others as being able to make you feel a certain way, your body will cause you to feel that particular emotion. Even if you feel as if someone is causing you to feel bad, it is just as easy for you to make yourself to feel good instead.
In order to change things, you must take responsibility for your emotions. If you do not do so, you won’t be able to control them. If someone actively tries to make you feel bad, you should do the opposite and relax and enjoy yourself. In many cases, if you stay calm when someone else is in a highly charged state, he or she will eventually also calm down.
Realize that most people are more worried about themselves than about what you feel. If someone says something that you dislike, recognize that what he or she said was likely unintentional. Most people don’t actively try to make others suffer or to feel miserable.
How to deal with challenges
Everyone has to deal with challenges in their lives from time to time. Since you can expect that you will encounter problems, it is a good idea for you to learn how to appropriately handle them. When you are faced with a challenge, bring it down to your sensory level. Describe it to yourself by only using your senses such as your kinesthetic, auditory, and visual senses. This helps a problem to become more concrete so that you can handle it objectively.
After you have outlined the challenge, try to determine if there is a conflict between it and your desired emotional state. If there is, there is something that you can do to fix it. You should also regularly practice trying to consciously remove excess stress and tension from your body. Your body builds up tension in an attempt to adapt to the environment and to your thoughts. When you relax your body, it is easier to keep control over the emotions that you feel.
Realize that a majority of things that happen do not immediately threaten your well-being and health. Many people experience unnecessary stress because they think that it is possible for something bad to happen. You can instead choose to begin planning and working towards having a better situation than what you are in right now.
Dealing with habituated reactions
You might find yourself reacting to a situation before you can even take the time to consciously think about how you respond. These types of responses are formed from habit. When you are dealing with a habituated reaction, you can follow four steps to break the pattern, including the following:
Identify the pattern
Break it down to its smallest parts
Identify the least variable parts
Change the least variable parts
In most cases, changing the least variable parts of a pattern will cause the dynamic to shift.
Dealing with negative thoughts
Everyone has had thoughts that put them in bad moods. If you experience this, you might try putting it out of your mind only for it to return with greater force. This can make you feel worse than you initially did when the negative thought first appeared. To handle negative thoughts, you can begin by not resisting them. Understand that your thoughts only exist inside of your mind and are not real.
When you have a negative thought, go along with it. Inserting a conscious purpose into an unconscious process can ruin it. Learn to play with negative thoughts when they come up. For example, if you are flying on a plane, you might have a negative thought that you could die in a plane crash. However, the odds of this happening are extremely low. According to the National Safety Council, your odds of dying in a plane crash as a passenger is one in 205,552.
If you find yourself worrying that you might die on a plane, you can consciously add the thought that you will go to hell and suffer eternal torture after you die. This makes the thought seem more ridiculous. When you begin adding to a negative thought, it becomes more difficult for you to take it seriously.
When you find that you are imagining all of the worst-case scenarios that could occur, you should begin by expanding the range of possibilities. You can instead try to think about all of the good things that could happen instead of the bad things. Everything depends on how you choose to think and to use your mind.
Dealing with anger
It is difficult for many people to get anger under control. For example, if someone else cuts you off in traffic, you might feel angry. It is important for you to understand that your anger is simply a secondary emotion because it is a reaction to another event. When you are able to identify what is really at the root of the anger that you are experiencing, you can gain more insight into what is happening and what needs to change.
Gaining and keeping control over your emotions can be a lifelong process. You have to work every day to keep control of your emotions. Remember that your emotions are yours alone.
As soon as you begin to point fingers at the people around you for your emotional state, you give up your power to do something about it.
In summary, do the following things to master your emotions:
Check your emotional state several times throughout each day;
Follow the 5% rule;
Learn how to have greater flexibility in your emotions;
When someone tries to make you feel bad, focus on relaxing instead;
Follow the four-step process to handle habituated reactions;
If you have a negative thought, play with it by adding to it or by actively thinking it through from start to finish; and
If you become angry, ask whether anger is the most appropriate reaction.
If you are able to implement these steps, you will be able to learn how to control your emotions and to improve how you feel and the quality of your life.
Get help from elements of empowerment Coaching
Gaining mastery over your emotions is a very difficult thing to do, but it is possible when you learn the right techniques. However, if you are able to learn how to control your emotions, you can enjoy a better overall mood and a better life quality. At Elements of Empowerment, I can use neuro-linguistic programming techniques to help you to identify the root causes of the negative emotions that you feel and to help you to keep them under control. This can help you to improve your mood and to have a better quality of life.
To learn more about neuro-linguistic programming and how it might help you to control your emotions, contact Elements of Empowerment today by filling out my online contact form.