How to Control Your Emotions
Controlling your emotions plays an important part in your daily life. Emotion control will influence critical aspects such as decision making, relationship success, and your day-to-day activities. When under control, emotions help handle daily challenges and take charge of your day. Jonathan Osler San Francisco states that emotions help elevate joy and a positive view of life. With sufficient practice, you can learn to take control of your emotions and positively impact your day-to-day activities, decision-making, and interpersonal relationships. Here are some strategies you can practice to control your emotions.
Understand the impact of your emotions
Emotions will have a tremendous impact on a person’s life. It is usual for people to be emotionally overwhelmed occasionally, but it is equally important not to dwell on them for too long. To understand the impact that emotions have on your daily life, one needs to examine factors such as:
- Trouble at work or school
- Interpersonal relationships and friendship conflicts
- Physical or emotional outbursts
- Difficult in relating and communicating with others
- The urge to use substances or drugs to control your emotions
Find time to monitor how emotions are affecting your day-to-day activities. This will make it easier to identify key problem areas and how to deal with these problems.
Aim for emotional regulation, not repression
According to Jonathan Osler San Francisco, one of the mistakes that people make when starting the emotional control journey is trying to suppress their emotions instead of controlling and regulating them. Emotions suppression inhibits a person from experiencing and expressing feelings. This may either happen consciously or unconsciously. While emotional repression may help you get over a difficult emotional situation momentarily, it comes at the cost of other major issues such as anxiety, depression, substance misuse, muscle tension, or difficulties in managing stress. When exercising emotional control, it is vital to find a balance between emotional overwhelm and emotional repression.
Accept your emotions- all of them
Accepting emotions as they come makes you get comfortable with them. This allows you to experience the moment without acting in extreme ways that could have negative repercussions. Studies have shown that accepting emotions leads to greater satisfaction and less probability of mental illness. Additionally, the perception of emotions as helpful may increase a person’s happiness levels.
Keep a mood journal
A mood journal helps you monitor your feelings and the responses that they trigger. This is instrumental in recovering from unhealthy and disruptive patterns. You may also get one of those gratitude journals for sale to chronicle and examine your thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes retracing your emotions through your thoughts is not enough. Writing down the emotions can help you reflect more deeply on them. It also helps you identify specific events that make it difficult to control your emotions.
Keeping a daily journal will be most helpful if you do it daily. Write down your mood triggers and reactions, and if the reactions did not help, try out other different possibilities next time.
For additional support in enhancing your emotional well-being, consider exploring how Wellness Wag can help you get an emotional support animal. The presence of such a companion can offer a unique source of comfort and assistance in managing your emotions and fostering overall mental health.
These are just some of the ways that one can use to ensure that they are under the control of their emotions and that motions work to serve them and not them to serve their emotions.
Remember, if the feeling of emotional overwhelm persists and none of the above strategies work, it is always advisable to speak with a therapist.