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- What are emotions?
- How do people deal with their emotions?
- Making your emotions work for you
- Mastering your emotions - know your true feelings
- Mastering your emotions - give value to your feelings
- Mastering your emotions - learn what your feelings mean
- Mastering your emotions - deal with your feelings straight away
- Mastering your emotions - handle your feelings in future
- Mastering your emotions - take action
Emotions are what you are feeling at any given moment, which make you react and behave in specific ways. Your emotions are caused by either external or internal stimulus (whether they are good, bad or neutral) and these stimuli cause you to behave in certain ways.
Emotions are non-intellectual, very subjective and individual (not everyone feels the same things to the same stimulus), plus they are very reactive and are felt immediately (although some people do have a delayed emotional reaction).
Every person experiences their emotions (or feelings) in their own individual manner and uses different words to describe their emotions, which may or may not resonate with other people's experiences of the same emotions.
Often people cannot explain or describe their emotions, which leads to an inability to really feel their emotions and learn how to make the connection between the emotions and specific events and circumstances in their life and therefore to understand how to deal with their emotions.
Emotions are situation focused, very time limited (you do not continue to feel the emotion forever) and reactive. This means you react with an emotion (or more than one emotion) to a situation that you experience, but once that situation has resolves, you no longer experience the emotions associated with it.
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There are four basic feelings which form the foundation for all other emotions:
- Glad - includes the emotions of joy, happiness, delight, content and other such emotions; it is the word used to describe moments of happiness and peace in life; it is also the only case where the mind-set and the feeling have the same name and same effect on mood (in a positive manner)
- Mad - includes the emotions where we feel used, let down, maligned lied to and other such emotions; it can be felt as a slight irritation or as extreme as rage (anger is not just feeling mad - anger is a mind set not an emotion)
- Sad - includes the emotions where we feel loneliness, grief, melancholy, hopelessness and other such emotions (depression is not just feeling sad - it is a mind-set, which affects everything you do)
- Scared - includes the emotions where we feel frightened, on edge, nervous, agitated, terrified and other such emotions (anxiety is not just feeling scared - it is a mind-set and it covers a whole range of emotions)
When your mind-set is full of negative thoughts (anger, anxiety, depression), then you are viewing your future in terms of your negative beliefs and often it is a self-fulfilling prophecy: what you believe, is what you will often encounter.
How do people deal with their emotions?
When people cannot deal with their emotions, when they do not want to feel them, this means they become disconnected from themselves and their true feelings. There can be a whole host of reasons for this, but the main underlying reason is that some people feel that they will not be able to control their emotions and so become overwhelmed when they do feel anything, that they would rather avoid it. They can turn to alcohol, drugs, overeating, sex and other detrimental emotional coping mechanisms in an effort to avoid feeling their emotions.
The techniques that many people use to handle (or rather avoid dealing with) their emotions are:
The above techniques are not the way to deal with emotions and only leads to more disconnectedness, making you feel even more out of control emotionally. Read about these emotions avoidance techniques and determine whether you are using them and sabotaging yourself from being the best you can be.
Denial is a strategy used when emotions feel too overwhelming and it is preferable to pretend they do not exist, by not acknowledging them. In this way, we become disassociated from the emotions.
Denial has the effect of not recognising an emotion for whatever type of feeling it is. Instead of saying, "you hurt me by forgetting my birthday", people who use denial will just brush it off and pretend it didn't matter to them at all. Yet, the resentment and feelings of hurt are still inside and continue to be a problem if this person does anything to hurt you in any small way - they feelings continue to become bigger and bigger.
Some people are so adept at denying their feelings because that is the only way they have known how to survive, that they cannot even recognise their emotions and describe how they feel.
When you deny how you feel, you do not honour yourself and your value. When you deny your feelings you are denying yourself from being happy and getting the best out of yourself, your experiences and your life.
When you deny a feeling, instead of pushing it out of your mind, it actually makes it grow and fester inside you.
You will keep on repeating the same mistakes again and again until you learn to acknowledge how you feel and honour those feelings.
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Avoidance is another strategy used to not feel any painful emotions. While it is understandable to want to try to avoid feeling hurt, it is not beneficial in the long run as it continues the disconnectedness of the emotions.
Avoidance also includes avoiding any situation that may lead to the painful emotions. If a person has been hurt by their partner's betrayal (infidelity, for example), they may try to avoid getting involved with anyone else for some time after the betrayal, as they want to avoid feeling hurt again.
While avoiding negative situations may protect you in the short term, it is just setting you up for failure and continued unhappiness in the long term, as it robs you of the opportunity for finding a happy outcome in your life.
You will keep on repeating the same mistakes again and again until you learn to acknowledge how you feel and honour those feelings.
Indulgence is the strategy used when we feel totally and utterly overwhelmed by our emotions and just feel and feel and feel.
While this strategy seems to make you get in touch with your emotions, it actually is again a way to avoid learning from the experience.
When submerged in indulgence mode, a person will just become overly emotional (and even hysterical) when a negative situation occurs. They can indulge their negative emotions (hurt, pain, betrayal etc) for a long time and feel like a victim, actively seeking pity from others for their huge pain.
This strategy can become an attention-seeking one, in which the person who feels hurt thinks their pain is bigger and worse than anything anyone else may feel, even comparing hurt with others.
Unfortunately, this strategy does not allow the person to learn the lesson from their hurtful experience, so while they can feel their feelings, they cannot seem to understand why this situation occurred, why they were so hurt by it and how to learn from it so that it does not occur to them again.
You will keep on repeating the same mistakes again and again until you learn to acknowledge why you feel the way you do and learn to honour yourself.
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Making your emotions work for you
If you want to feel connected to yourself, your emotions and other people, it is important that you learn to understand your emotions and make them work for you.
You need to face your emotions, to understand them and yourself. Your emotions are a true indication of your comfort and happiness in any given situation in your life. If you can feel your emotions and understand why you feel this way, then you can make the changes necessary to put yourself on a path with a positive direction for you.
In order to create a better life for yourself, you have to learn from your emotions, the way you feel about any given situation and the more intense your emotions, the more you need to understand your emotions and why they have occurred in such a way. You must be able to connect with how you feel.
You need to be able to intellectualise your emotions so that you can describe them. Once you can describe your emotions, you are well on your way to understanding yourself better and therefore understanding what you really need in order to be happy in your life.
Your painful emotions are a call to action, a sign that you need to make some changes in order to feel happy again. Once you understand this, your life will undergo some amazing changes, for the better.
Just be aware that sometimes feeling those painful emotions can be too much for some people to handle, as they have been locked away, avoided or denied for a long time and in order to feel them safely and get the most benefit out of this, some people may need to see a mental health specialist (psychologist, counsellor, psychiatrist). Having some counselling sessions may be the best way to help you learn how to handle your emotions in a safe manner.
Mastering your emotions - know your true feelings
The first step in learning how to master your emotions to be able to recognise and understand your true feelings about any situation, even or person.
Sometimes feelings can be so overwhelming that you may find it difficult to recognise what you are truly feeling. You may be feeling a whole range of negative emotions, but couldn't really identify them, other than to say, "I feel bad" or "I feel so awful", neither of which give any indication of your true feelings (neither to others or to yourself).
The best way to tackle this and stop this pattern from continuing to happen, is to:
- step back intellectually from a hurtful or negative situation (thinking instead of feeling for a moment)
- you need to ask yourself if you are feeling one of the four basic emotions (or a subset of them)
- ask yourself, "what am I really feeling at this moment?"
- if your first thought is, "I am feeling angry", remember that anger is not an emotion, but a mind-set, so you need to probe further
- ask yourself then, "am I feeling mad (maligned, used, let down, disappointed) about something?"
- then ask yourself, "is this a mild irritation or is it rage that I am feeling?"
- then continue to probe more until you work out exactly what is the root cause of this feeling
By investing some time and energy into this strategy, you will be able to determine your feelings by challenging your emotions and so lessen the intensity of the emotion you are experiencing and be able to deal with the situation much more effectively. You will also be able to learn from the emotion - what it means for you.
Mastering your emotions - give value to your feelings
Next you need to admit to your emotions as they enable you to feel connected to yourself and others. If you can admit to your most painful emotions, you ensure that your inner self (subconsciousness) is connected with your outer self (consciousness) and it will enhance your communication with others when you value and honour your emotions.
We must be thankful that our brain is letting us know whether a particular situation or person is good or bad for us, through the signals of the emotions and this will ensure that we are having the best experiences possible. Trust your emotions, even if you do not completely understand them yet. Know that your emotions are there to support you to make positive changes in your life.
Do not feel ashamed of any of your emotions as they are normal and human. We all feel painful emotions, we all feel mad, scared and sad at some point in our lives. You will be an even better and valuable person if you can give meaning and name your emotions, as you will be able to handle life much better and more positively.
Mastering your emotions - learn what your feelings mean
The next step to mastering your emotions is to learn what your emotions mean for you and in doing so, you can prevent the same hurtful (or negative) experiences from reoccurring in the future.
If you can understand what your feelings mean, then you can understand the lesson they are teaching you. If you always feel the need to say yes to everyone, yet you always feel that your time is over stretched and you are starting to feel very anxious, nervous or even irritated about your commitments; this means you need to understand that your emotions are tied in with your inability to say no. Your inability to say no could be because of a long-held belief that if you say no, people will not like you any more. You need to dig to understand your emotions and learn from them, because sometimes the emotion you may be feeling is really giving you a signal about another situation to the one you are currently experiencing.
If you are feeling rejected at work because you missed out on a promotion, ask yourself if you are really feeling rejected because of the loss of promotion, or is there something else underlying this, something else that makes you feel rejected.
Ask yourself the following questions when questioning what your emotions are saying to you:
- What is it that I truly want to feel?
- To feel the way I have been feeling what would I have to believe?
- To create a solution and handle this right now what am I willing to do?
- Is there anything I can learn from this?
- What actions can I take now?
Your answers to these questions will help you to learn about your emotions and their uniqueness each time they occur.
Mastering your emotions - deal with your feelings straight away
It is vitally important that you feel your emotions the minute it happens and not later (which is called avoidance or denial and is not an effective management strategy for mastering your emotions).
If you can recognise the feeling, understand what it means to you and try to learn from it right at the moment it happens, you will be able to lessen it's effect on you and will not repeat the same patterns that have caused the emotion to arise in the first place.
A good strategy of dealing with an emotion straight away is to recall an instance in the past where you felt a similar emotion and how you were able to successfully handle it. If you were able to deal with it in the past, then you will be able to deal with it now (no matter how large or intense the emotion may feel right now).
Think about how you handled your emotions in the past instance and use this as a guide to help you deal with your emotions right now. Think about your process in the past and use it to help you with the present:
- Did you change your perception of the situation so that the feelings lessened?
- What were the questions you asked yourself?
- What did you focus on?
Focus your energy on this and you will be able to handle your emotion right now to lessen the emotion, so it isn't so intense and crippling.
Mastering your emotions - handle your feelings in future
The next step is to ensure you can handle your emotions in the future too.
The best strategies for this are:
- Recall how you handled the emotion in the past and rehearse dealing with those situations when this negative emotion may arise in the future. You will need to visualise the possible situations to hear, see and feel yourself handling the situation with ease. By doing this over and over, you will train your mind to react in a specific way to a certain emotion or situation and reduce your fear of that emotion or situation
- Think about ways in which you can change your perception of a specific negative situation to one which is more positive and helpful for your emotional growth
- Think about ways you can change how you communicate your feelings to others, so that you honour how you feel and can honour the other person's feelings too
- Think about how you can change your reaction to specific emotional triggers, so that you can handle them in a better way, using the techniques above
Mastering your emotions - take action
Finally, the last step in learning how to master your emotions is to take action. If you master the other steps, but take no action, then nothing is changed and you will not progress.
Once you have started to learn how to handle your emotions, take action straight away in a positive manner (as described in the points above) to lessen the emotion, learn and grow from it. You can do it.
These pointers will help you master any of your emotions, that may occur in your life. If you can practice the steps as often as you can, you will soon be on your way to mastering your emotions and becoming everything you can become. While it may be a little difficult at first and you may need some assistance (through the help of a psychologist or other mental health professional), you will soon realise that you you can handle your emotions and the easier it will become for you.
It is important to realise that the best time to deal with an emotion is as soon as it occurs, so do not delay in applying these step above and learn how to master your emotions so you no longer feel overwhelmed by them.
REFERENCES
- Collins B. How to Recognise Emotional Unavailability and Make Healthier Relationship Choices. 1997. MJF Books, NYC
- Davis and Palladino: Psychology 2nd ed
