How to cope with negative emotions: Useful tips and practices
Text: Rita Popova
The ability to understand and manage your own emotions makes life easier, and most importantly - makes it more pleasant. We asked Tatyana Strasnenko, the summer intensive student of the Emotional Intelligence in the Creative Business, Effective Intellect in Creative Business, how to cope with excessive emotionality at work and at home.
Emotions are the key to understanding yourself and the best path to goals and meanings.
We do not have time to fully experience the positive emotions, and the negative situation is even worse - the majority perceives them as something bad, from which you need to get rid of at any cost. But our irritation, anger, or fear can be important signals that the subconscious sends us. Emotions are the key to understanding yourself and the best path to goals and meanings.
There is a famous saying: "The wrath of a man who is angry once a year is terrible." If we ignore the emotions, the energy that is given to us for action (for example, to run or fight when fear arises) accumulates inside and becomes destructive. Almost everyone experienced a state of emotional storm, when emotions are so overwhelming that we practically do not give ourselves an account of our actions and words. When the storm subsided, the person wakes up and genuinely wonders what it was. However, if his behavior does not change, ignoring his feelings will most likely lead to a new breakdown.
In recent years, psychologists are increasingly talking about emotional intelligence - a set of emotional competencies that can and should be developed. Even our rather conservative education gets rid of stereotypes like "boys don't cry" or "a girl should always be cute." For serious work with emotions and consolidation of new habits, effort and time are required, but you can start taking the first steps in developing your emotional intelligence now.
Realize and name
How often do you tell yourself that you are angry, discouraged, offended, anxious or experiencing tenderness? If you do this regularly, congratulate yourself and postpone this article. If not, start right now. Ask yourself: "What are my feelings now?" - and write down the answer in the language of feelings and emotions. Recalling an event from the past, analyze it from the point of view not of words and deeds, but of feelings. Keep a special notebook in which you will record at least once a day the emotional states that you experienced during the day. Gadget followers can choose a smartphone app, such as Mood O Scope or Emotion Diary.
When you realized and named your emotional state, you did several very significant things. First, recognize that you feel it - instead of ignoring the emotions. Secondly, they took responsibility for what is happening (not “he pissed me off,” but “I got angry”), which means that the management of this situation is now in your hands. In other words, you have ceased to be an object that is affected by various emotions, and you have become the subject, that is, the master of the situation. Thirdly, you reminded yourself in time that anger or anger do not belong to the essential features of your personality - this is just a temporary state that comes and goes, it happens to everyone.
Choose how to dispose
When you realize that you feel, it is important to take control of the situation. If you control an emotion, you can use this resource for a good cause, and if a strong emotion rules you, the consequences are unpredictable. For example, when we are anxious, we want to immediately drop everything and hide somewhere. But if we are aware of anxiety and manage the situation, we once again recheck our plans and actions, analyze the weak points and possible risks. In a calm state, we might be too lazy to do it, but anxiety gives us an incentive to action and additional energy.
If you find that you are experiencing an emotion that is considered to be negative, do not rush to get upset. After the question "What do I feel now?" and honest answer to it, ask yourself the following question: "How can I use it?" What if my resentment will push me to prove something to others? Should I use my angry mood to finally say no to a person who has long used my kindness? Does my fear indicate that I have not fully clarified or thought through the upcoming action?
Reduce emotional heat
If you understand that you cannot cope with your emotions, the most important thing is to relax, to reduce the emotional intensity, in order to get an opportunity to think soberly. Help yourself in this can be quite simple, but quite effective methods.
DRINK COLD WATER. Remember that stress is a physiological reaction of the body, and water regulates metabolic processes, cools both literally and figuratively. In addition, the procedure can serve as a "switch": drink slowly, in small sips, focusing all your attention on the process.
HEAR. In stressful situations, our breathing quickens or stops, as if we completely stop breathing. Normalizing breathing, we normalize our condition. Take a few deep breaths, if possible, close your eyes and concentrate fully on your breathing, without being distracted by anything else. If you want, you can connect your imagination: imagine how with every breath you are filled with something pleasant (heat, sunlight, fresh air), and with each exhalation all unpleasant feelings and emotions leave you (for example, in the form of black or gray smoke).
ENERGY MOVE OR WALK. Exercise perfectly burns negative. If at the same time you take steps, follow your breath, clap your hands in a certain rhythm, or perform any other action that requires concentration, your mind will be forced to distract from “chewing” on unpleasant thoughts. If it is not possible to move, try changing the position of the body in space - very often the mental "sticking" is accompanied by stillness. Sometimes a simple change in the angle of view literally helps to see the situation in a new way.
DO YOURSELF. Even if you do not know anything about reflexology and human anatomy, there are several simple techniques available to everyone in almost every situation. Vigorously rub your palms and massage your fingers. Close your eyes and place your hand on your forehead without lowering your head. Also, bioactive points, the impact of which reduces stress levels, are located above the upper lip and below the lower lip, strictly in the middle. Massage each or both together for 2-3 minutes.
Analyze and draw conclusions
After you have realized your emotion and chose a way of action, be sure to return to the situation and analyze it. What caused anger? Were there any real grounds for anger? Did my interlocutor really want to hurt me or was he just poorly educated and incorrectly informed? In the end, did I provoke such an interlocutor's reaction? What other behaviors exist in this situation? Do I always react this way in such cases? Such an analysis is especially necessary if you did not manage to take control of the situation in time and you acted under the influence of emotions.
Unfortunately, people usually do not return their thoughts to a negative experience, but tend to forget it as soon as possible. As a result, instead of invaluable experience and new knowledge about ourselves, we are left with guilt, shame and disappointment. But if you make it a rule to regularly analyze your emotions, after a while you will replace automatic reactions with a conscious choice of behavior pattern. After all, there are always plenty of behaviors - when you are calm and fully aware of what is happening.
Photo: vadim yerofeyev - stock.adobe.com, Andrey Kuzmin - stock.adobe.com
Material was first published on Look At Me