Emotions are inescapable, unavoidable; sometimes, unendurable. You cannot escape from emotions if you are in the business of living and trying to lead a whole and complete life. Emotions are energy; valuable bundles of energy, which if channelized properly can serve us a lot of good. Emotions in balance are the perfect horses to be ridden in life. Emotions are biologically designed to keep us aware of our contexts, surroundings and help us to be alert. But what if they do the reverse?
Imagine the disasters that can occur when you have rampaging and uncontrollable emotions in charge of you. Think of the events in life when that has happened. When you got angry and you shouted at someone–the rage that you felt. How did you feel during that?
Or the other occasion, when someone criticised you so badly that you could not take it and you ended up in tears. And you end up sliding down into depression. Did you wonder why these comparatively simple triggers left you in misery? The reason is that you were unable to manage your emotions and as a result, they became very destructive. They became unhealthy. They became your enemy, rather than your friend and guide. Unhealthy emotions can also arise as a result of emotional trauma suffered on account of disasters and traumatic events such as domestic violence, killings, etc. Even students may experience emotional challenges as a result of stress of college life.
Some Simple and Effective Ways to Manage the Emotions:
Channel Your Negative Emotions
There will be moments in life when you cannot escape feeling angry, hurt, resentment. These are emotions, which when allowed festering within, can build up within you can disrupt your functioning. It is, thus essential to channelize them in the best possible way. Whenever you have such a torrent of feeling, expend it out in doing something useful. It could be a walk , a run, it could be doing something creative and energetic. Research has shown that there is a direct connection between emotional regulation and emotional intelligence. The more you can harness your emotion, the higher would be your emotional intelligence. So, the better you are able to make use of your negative emotions, the better you would be at facing life challenges. Anger, for example, can be used to great benefit in a just cause. You would be able to forcefully work on the issue, till the results are in your favour. In fact, a balance between anger and happiness in your emotions, can be used in the handling of disputes.
Meditate
Spending time everyday in the morning and evening to meditate is a good way of getting control on emotions. By developing this habit and watching thoughts flow by, you would stop responding to needless and unnecessary thoughts which provocate you into emotional responses.
Reflection
Making a reflection a daily habit will help you understand your response and the reasons for your response to certain triggers. It would help you to manage your response to that trigger in a better way. The next time, you are faced with that object or person; you are already mentally prepared for the kind of reactions they would incite in you. You will not respond so rashly to any provocative thoughts at that point. Thus, you can lessen and hopefully, prevent the occurrences of such events.
Identify Your Traditional Responses
There are some unhelpful behaviour displayed by people, when they are dealing with uncomfortable emotions. These include avoidance, guarding, judgement, depression, anxiety and anger. Some people prefer to consciously ignore how they are feeling in response to a particular trigger. This is a kind of escape for them. But it is not helpful, because it only leads to accumulation of more pain inside and chances of bursting out with that pain. So, it is good to go to the roots of each emotion you experience, feel it deeply and let it go. Do not let it remain longer than necessary. Guarding is another way to cope with unpleasant emotions. We end up not expressing our feelings. In authentic relationships, you can express yourself fearlessly. So we need to try and develop an authentic attitude to things in life. Be confident enough to stand up for yourself and say what you feel, in the right way; without being negative to others. This would help in preventing the accumulation of negative emotions.
Learn to Calm Yourself
Look beyond the immediate. Think of the future. Ask yourself whether the current unhappy situation or feelings is going to get resolved, simply by feeling unhappy. If not, turn to the future, look ahead and calm yourself. Experience the emotion and let it go. There is no particular time table for the resolution of an issue. Fretting about it unnecessarily and feeding the wrong emotions are not going to bring a lasting solution. Learn to distract and detach yourself from the present cloudy state by focussing on future things and things to do.
Pursue Creative Activities
Sensitive people, who are susceptible to extreme and unhealthy level of emotions, can pursue creative activities on a regular basis. It helps them to be focus and get out of the emotional pit, into which they can very often slide into.
Unhealthy emotions are responsible for much of the stress that people suffer from today. They are what can lead to mental illness and depression, among other things. Anger management issues, can socially and psychologically affect you in your personal life as well as in the workplace.
So it is very important to learn how to manage them!