How to take control of our emotions?

Emotions are not facts – they are the way we feel in different situations. From being angry, to being sad, to being in love, these emotions define the moments for us through senses of different feelings. However, what happens when only emotions run our lives? It can get extremely tricky to take the right decisions when we let emotions run our lives. “When emotions drive our behavior, we do things we regret or go into self-protection mode. When we learn how to witness our emotions, we see ourselves as separate from them. We become the witness experiencing emotions. Then, we have choice and can act in alignment with our values,” wrote Psychologist Nicole LePera as she explained a few ways on how to take control of the emotions.

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In situations of stressful emotions, there are two ways that people cope with it. They are:

Emotional reactivity: This is when people become extremely reactive and they end up showing their loudest behavior – yelling, storming off, making aggressive statements, or ending up saying things that they will regret later.

Emotional shutdown: Some people go into extreme denial and refuse to talk. They also dissociate from the situation and avoid having a conversation about it.

However, we need to end this cycle. Here are steps to end it:

Self-witnessing: This is the awareness stage when we start to observe the way we feel. We also need to understand our ways of handling conflict and act accordingly.

Pause: We need to practice pausing before reacting. This helps in getting the body out of autopilot.

Impulse: When we are stressed, our mind starts having automatic impulses. We need to beat them off and avoid the impulse at all costs.

Self-soothe: The best way to calm ourselves down before coming to a decision is to take our minds away by soothing ourselves. We can go for a walk or engage ourselves in doing something that distracts us.

Choice: We need to choose how we want to react. When we make an informed decision about the way we want to react, we gain more confidence in ourselves.