Techniques To Manage Emotions

Techniques to manage emotions provide us with adequate mechanisms to channel the daily tension, pressure and stress that weakens our potential, our calm and our creativity. Although emotions are part of our life, knowing how to regulate them is the key to shaping a more satisfying and opportunity-rich reality.

Neuropsychologists explain that humans process an average of 6,000 thoughts a day, 95% of which are the same as those of the previous day and a little less than those of the week before. Learning to think differently and to change your attitude towards certain people, ideas, situations or things is not an easy task, you know. It is not because no one comes into the world aware of what emotions are and how they can be controlled.

Each of us comes to this world crying, and crying remains our only way of communicating until someone tells us enough or explains that “grownups (or heroes, beautiful and strong people) don’t cry”. And we do. We let the years go by repressing anger because they told us that it doesn’t express itself that way, but without giving us other directions. The heroes do not get angry and are not afraid, and here the role models for learning to manage emotions are reduced to a minimum, for children as well as for adults.

James Gross, director of the psychophysiology laboratory at Stanford University, explains that knowing how to apply appropriate emotional management techniques in everyday life is the secret to preventing diseases such as depression or borderline personality disorder. In this sense, controlling the ball of our negative thoughts and emotions is synonymous with well-being and health.

Techniques for managing emotions

There are many techniques for managing emotions. However, before delving into the subject and risking losing ourselves among the countless proposals, dynamics and points of view offered by the publishing market, it is good to have one thing very clear in mind. Managing emotions comes from personal learning, it is essential to have your own personalized toolbox: not all the tools that others need will be good for us, and vice versa.

On the other hand, it is easy for many to believe that they are starting with mindfulness, for example, hoping that it solves most of their puzzles. However, not everyone learns to meditate, not everyone finds in themselves that physiological and mental calm with which to better manage anxieties and worries through a technique in vogue and that works with most people.

The ideal is to rely on a multidimensional focus. An approach in which the cognitive as well as the physiological, behavioral and emotional aspects are harmonized towards the same purpose: to offer us well-being, calm and a better mental concentration. Below we will see the 7 techniques to manage the emotions that have proven to be most effective: we advise you to try them all before choosing the most valid for you.

1. Situations to avoid, situations to face

It is clear that we cannot always control everything that happens in our days. However, some situations are under our control and we may avoid them to gain personal well-being and integrity.

• If, for example, leaving the house at the last moment leads you to rush things and get in a bad mood for work, try getting up earlier to be more calm.

• If those Sunday family lunches cause you anxiety and great tension, the best thing is that you propose different options and that you avoid situations that negatively affect your health.

There are, however, situations from which you cannot and must not escape. For example, avoiding public exposure at work or taking a flight will only increase your anxiety. In fact, sometimes it is necessary to face one’s fears in order to overcome them.

2. Direct attention elsewhere

Your colleague is signing more contracts than you are. Your neighbor was able to lose weight before you. The train you took goes too fast and you will certainly have an accident, the newspapers only publish bad news, something bad will surely happen …

These thoughts generate tension, fuel fear, reduce our self-esteem and make us lose control of reality. We must learn to shift our gaze from the surrounding environment and its complexity and direct it within us.

When we know how to take care of ourselves and listen to ourselves, everything will be back in balance. It is undoubtedly one of the best techniques to manage emotions to learn and apply day after day.

3. Improve self-control by thinking about the immediate future

We are always reminded to focus on the here and now, on the present. Well, today we will offer you something different: think about your immediate future, think about tomorrow, next week.

• Sometimes our present is inhabited by fear, by stress, by a layer of chaos in which frustration reigns.

• Starting today, start thinking about what you want for your nearest future: “I want to feel good, I want to achieve this, I want that to happen, I want to feel braver, more confident”.

• Use the technique of reaffirmation, remember your successes and your virtues of the past to put all your hopes in the immediate future.

4. Mental note: relegate emotions to a single moment of the day

Nietzsche said it at the time: thoughts come when they want it, not when we want it. The same happens with worries: they are like crows perched on the electrical wires of our fears and anxieties to intensify them, to turn off our optimism and our potential and leave us in the dark.

Don’t let that happen. Whenever you see a concern appear at the door of your mind, put it on hold. Leave it for later, set a time of day in which you are calm and relaxed, an hour in which with pen and paper in your hand you can reflect and find a solution to those problems.

5. Question and Answer: What is the worst that could happen?

It happens to everyone. Sometimes we are so obsessed with the possibility of something happening to the point that we head the wall without finding a way out. Thoughts like “they will fire me”, “my partner ignores me”, “I will never put enough money aside to pay off that debt” … lead us to a labyrinth with no way out, a spiral that consumes us.

Instead of fueling these thoughts, we should try to go one step further. Let’s ask ourselves what could happen if our fear became a reality, but let’s do it in concrete terms, adding a solution:

• “If they fire me, I’ll have the excuse to finally start that personal project.”
• “If my partner ignores me, I’ll ask him if something is wrong. If our relationship doesn’t work anymore, I’ll get over it, I’ll suffer but I’ll carry on. “
• “If I can’t pay my debt, I’ll have to sell this or that or ask my family for help.”

6. Meditation to relax body and mind

Meditation is one of the most effective techniques for managing emotions; but to bear fruit, it requires constant and frequent practice. You won’t see results after the first week and maybe not even after the first month, but over time they will come. The secret lies in patience, from which constancy derives.

7. Find your own escape route, your own channel of expression

There are those who find a refuge and a channel of emotional expression in writing. Others draw or color mandalas as techniques for managing emotions. There are those who go for a run, those who need to immerse themselves in silence or nature. There are also those who feel an improvement when they go for coffee with friends, others have reading, music or an animal to walk with. Others seek precious moments of silence.

The best techniques for managing emotions are sometimes not found in books. Sometimes we can find them ourselves, without even thinking about them, through that activity that allows us to enter into harmony with the world and with ourselves. It is a space in which we find ourselves to discover the root of our problems: a palace of peace and satisfaction in which the flame of courage is rekindled.

Therefore, find that universe of personal expression in which you feel best, dedicate some quality time to it and implement some of the strategies described above to invest in your health and well-being. Any effort will be worth it.