Everybody has emotions. Emotions let you know how you feel about things - happy, angry, sad, excited, and jealous. And they don't lie. These instant, instinctive responses of your body to the world are always truthful. But not always right!
You'll notice that the word 'emotion' contains the word 'motion', that is, movement. Emotions are there to induce action.
We live our lives on an emotional spectrum which varies constantly from hour to hour, day to day, and when our lives are in reasonable control it moves in a balanced way.
When our lives are not satisfying in a balanced way, and we are also under additional pressure in life and we call this stress.
Then if our situation worsens, we become emotionally distressed and we call this anxiety, depression, panic, rage, tearfulness when we cannot concentrate or make decisions, may be irritable or angry, weepy or sad, do not sleep well, lose interest even in enjoyable things. We despair and lose hope.
That’s when we need to gain good control over our emotions.
Emotional control is the ability to direct the emotional expression of oneself or of another.
DISCOVERING YOUR EMOTIONS
SECRET LANGUAGE
The first step in discovering how to gain a sense of emotional control is to learn what it is your emotions are trying to tell you. Once you understand that your feelings are there to make you aware of your needs, wants and desires, then you will not consider any feeling as "bad." Rather, you can come to appreciate the guidance that they offer you. You are on the way to gaining emotional control
Even those emotions that are labelled negative by many people have a purpose. The problem is that most of us have not learned to speak the language of our emotions. We remain deaf to their messages and end up suffering instead of learning and growing from our life experiences
A FULL CUP.
In these cases, our "emotional cup" of anger/sadness/guilt etc. that we are carrying within ourselves is full. It does not take much of a situation to cause that cup to spill over completely.
We need a way to empty our emotional cup if we are to gain emotional control and wellbeing. When we do that we find that we are nowhere nearly as bothered by situations that previously caused us (and often those around us) an immense amount of grief and stress.
Certain irrational thoughts that can interrupt your peaceful emotional state which leads to uncontrolled emotional break outs..:
- I must be perfect in all respects in order to be worthwhile:
Nobody can be perfect in everything that we have to do in life. But if you believe that you're a failure unless you are perfect in every way, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of unhappiness.
- I must be loved and approved of by everyone who is important to me. :
Sometimes you just can't help making enemies, and there are people in the world who bear ill will to almost everyone. But you can't make your own life miserable by trying to please them.
- When people treat me unfairly, it is because they are bad people:
Most of the people who treat you unfairly have friends and family who love them. People are mixtures of good and bad.
- It is terrible when I am seriously frustrated, treated badly, or rejected:
Some people have such a short fuse that they can are constantly losing jobs or endangering friendships because they are unable to endure the slightest frustration.
- Misery comes from outside forces which I can’t do very much to change:
Many prison inmates describe their life as if it were a cork, bobbing up and down on waves of circumstance.
- If something is dangerous or fearful, I have to worry about it :
Many people believe that "the work of worrying" will help to make problems go away. "Okay, that's over. Now, what's the next thing on the list that I have to worry about?"
- It is easier to avoid life’s difficulties and responsibilities than to face them: Even painful experiences, once we can get through them, can serve as a basis for learning and future growth.
- Because things in my past controlled my life, they have to keep doing so now and in the future:
If this were really true, it would mean that we are prisoners of our past, and change is impossible. But people change all the time -- and sometimes they change dramatically!
- I can be as happy as possible by just doing nothing and enjoying myself, taking life as it comes:
If this were true, almost every wealthy or comfortably retired person would do as little as possible. But instead, they seek new challenges as a pathway to further growth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn to avoid the cognitive distortions which make things look worse than they really are.
Most of us have heard the expression, "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses." But when you use cognitive distortions, you tend to look at the world through mud-colored glasses! Here are some examples.
o Overgeneralization.
A single negative event turns into a never-ending pattern of defeat. "I didn't get a phone call. I'll never hear from anybody again."
o Disqualifying the positive.
If somebody says something good about you, it doesn't count. But if somebody says something bad about you, you "knew it all along."
o Jumping to conclusions.
You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
o Mind reading.
You think somebody is disrespecting you and don't bother to check it out. You just assume that he is.
o The Fortune Teller Error.
You think that things are going to turn out badly, and convince yourself that this is already a fact.
o Emotional reasoning.
You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
o Labeling and mislabeling.
This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. When you make a mistake, you give yourself a label, such as, "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
o Personalization.
You believe that you were the cause of something bad that happened, when you really didn't have very much to do with it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
One very valuable tool in emotional control is the ability to pause. While there are no pause and play buttons in real life, people have the capability to stop themselves, and take a break in certain situations that usually cause emotional outbursts
.
Before shouting and screaming out of a disappointing occurrence, you should first take a break to think and reflect. Pausing in itself is a form of emotional control. At this point, you can think if letting go of the emotions is indeed necessary.
You should also think of the consequences that the emotional explosion would entail. If the emotions involved in the situation are too strong to withhold, you can think of reasonable emotional expressions such as crying instead of screaming when you are depressed, or smiling instead of jumping around when you are elated.
The problem with most people who are unable to control their emotions is that they dwell too much on the present situation. It is undeniable that the height of emotions experienced in certain circumstances could be overwhelming. However, these are also the times when you are vulnerable to do things that you might regret later on. To avoid this, it is important to examine how things would go in the future.
Emotional control is indeed difficult to master. But with will power and determination, it can be possibly achieved. You just have to be aware that emotions do not really have the power to overcome people. On the contrary, people have the ability to watch over their emotions and control them to what they think is necessary…….
No comments:
Post a Comment