How do you control your emotions?
You have heard the experts say you can control your emotions. It seems so easy when they say it. But trying to control them is something totally different. Those experts don’t feel the anxiety that creeps up on you in social settings. They don’t feel the rage you have when you have been betrayed.
They don’t even feel the excitement and joy you can’t seem to control no matter how hard you try.
Emotions, whether good or bad, can get out of hand and become inappropriate at times. Our emotions can even feel like they consume our daily living, preventing us from engaging in everyday, normal activities.
During these times, we feel embarrassed and may even allow negative self-talk to enter our heads. We feel like no matter what we do, we can’t control our own emotions.
There is good news …
Managing your emotions is possible
How to Control Your Emotions?
You can control your emotions. It takes time and practice but it can be done.
Today, we’d like to take a closer look at what you can do to actively practice and develop emotional control.
Below are five common emotions that many people find hard to control. Steps for controlling these emotions are listed. Following these can help you get started on changing the way you react to situations and prevent your emotions from getting out of hand.
The goal here is to develop a healthier mindset and overall mental health, thereby learn to control your emotions.
1. Control Your Anger
Everyone has pet peeves or triggers that can make us feel angry. How we react to anger varies from person to person. To avoid being a person who lets their anger influence their entire day, implement strategies that can help you quickly overcome your anger.
Learning relaxation techniques that you can apply to every situation will help you control your anger when you first start to feel yourself getting mad. Once you notice yourself getting frustrated or angry, start practicing deep breathing or meditation.
Another way to control your anger is to retrain your brain. At the onset of the thoughts that lead to anger, switch over to more positive statements. Replacing these thoughts with positive ones can help ease your anger.
You can also give yourself a time out, delaying your reaction to a trigger is one of the best ways to control anger. This allows you time to calm down, which can often help in avoiding anger over-reactions.
2. Control Your Fear and Overcome Anxiety
When you fear, you feel threatened by something or someone.
Controlling your fear and anxiety may be difficult but it can be done.
Facing your fears is one of the best ways to control your emotions. Sometimes it is the anticipation of the event that is scarier than the actual event. Breathing exercises are another way. When you start to feel anxious, start taking deep breaths.
When we are fearful, we are often irrational in our thinking. Making sense of your fears and realizing what is true and what is not can help you control your emotions.
3. Control Your Excitement and Channel Energy
This sounds strange, to be told to control your excitement. It feels a little wrong to say, “don’t be so happy.” However, sometimes your over-excitement can become a problem, and a disappointment.
The disorder of over-excitement is related to anxiety and can be both negative and positive in nature.
To control your excitement is to control your mind. Keep everything realistic and not exaggerated. Train your mind to focus on less, not more. It is also important to give yourself an outlet for your excitement. Outlets such as exercise, writing, or creative activities can allow you to get the emotion out of your brain and into a physical form.
4. Control Your Sadness and Maintain Positivity
Everyone feels blue or down in the dumps from time to time. When your sadness cannot be easily controlled and you feel like it is taking over your life, changes need to be made.
To control your sadness, insert comedy into your life. Watch funny movies, listen to comedy routines, visit with friends who make you laugh. Laughter increases the happy brain chemicals such as serotonin.
Sunlight has been shown to give us vitamins that are connected to happier moods, such as Vitamin D. If you are feeling sad, make sure you are getting enough sunlight and Vitamin D.
Negative self-talk can contribute to sadness. When you start replacing the negative self-talk with positive affirmations, you can train your mind to feel more positive.
5. Control Your Jealousy and Maintain A Rational Mindset
Wanting what others have or feeling jealous is quite normal. When that jealousy makes us behave in ways that are inappropriate or even dangerous, it is time to start making changes.
Jealousy can take place in relationships or it can be an individual struggle. Because jealousy is often the product of insecurity, the most important way to control your jealousy is to deal with your internal issues.
Self-esteem building activities can help you overcome jealousies. You no longer feel the need to desire what others have because you are happy with yourself.
Another way to control jealousies is to admit them out loud. Talking about why you are jealous can often lead to the rationalization that there is no need for it.
Complete Emotional Control
For managing your emotions effectively, avoid suppressing your emotions. Instead, learn how to deal with them appropriately. Journaling your emotions each day can help you sort through positive and negative reactions.
Relaxation and breathing techniques are a common management technique that can help with all emotions. Living a healthy lifestyle can also contribute to the ability to control emotions.
But most importantly, getting professional help for your emotional struggles is key. Counselors are trained to teach you current ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. They are skilled in helping you address the emotions causing you problems.
Counselors can give you tangible methods of retraining your brain to think more realistically in the heat of an emotional battle.
Most importantly, counselors can teach how to prevent negative emotions from taking over your life. A few tips they may give you is to avoid blowing things out of proportion, learn to see the lighter side of situations and implement stress management techniques.
Taking steps such as these will not only help you control your emotions, they can lead to better physical health. Stress has been proven to lead to migraines, digestive problems and even heart disease. Since stress and negative emotions are directly linked, managing your stress is an essential part of taking control of your emotions.