Master Your Emotions in Three Steps

Jenny is a 38-year-old, kind, caring and hardworking woman, married with a young child. Like many of us, Jenny is juggling a lot of different responsibilities in her life and finds it hard to carve out time for herself. Not so long ago, Jenny was in an important performance-related meeting at work, she was trying to focus on what was being discussed but was having trouble concentrating, she had not slept that well the night before as her both her mind and her phone had failed to switch off.

In the meeting, her boss turned to her and made a comment on her performance that shook the core of her being, it was mild enough, a simple suggestion on how she may engage more directly, but to Jenny, it felt like a full blown attack.  Her heart raced, her palms were sweating and she was physically struggling to remain composed. It took all of her might to not flee from the room.  Her colleagues in the meeting including her boss were oblivious to how Jenny truly felt as she was delivering an Oscar-winning performance of remaining calm and accepting the constructive criticism. Later on, Jenny reprimanded herself so harshly and worried for days about her reaction in the meeting. Why was she so sensitive? So weak? She felt exposed and vulnerable and was certain her boss now judged at her in an even worse light. Should she just quit her job and be done with it before she was fired? These and other catastrophic, self-deprecating thoughts clouded Jenny’s mind so much so that she never connected the raw emotion she felt that day to the fact that she had never fully grieved for her brother who died suddenly two years before. Jenny’s solution was to work even harder, longer hours.

Unprocessed emotions lie under the surface and arise when we least wish them to.

Have you ever been at work or a social occasion where you have had a similar feeling to Jenny?  If you have moments, days or even weeks when your emotions can rule your life then you truly have my sympathy. If you have found yourself fighting back tears, suffocating sadness or frustration with the desperate hope that nobody will see how you truly feel then it is time to press pause and examine what is really going on for you. In order to live at peace with yourself and the world, it is crucial you become the master of your emotions rather than at the mercy of them.

To be a good master you must first and foremost be a kind one.

When we feel overwhelmed in any situation whether it is professional or personal it is often due to the unfortunate, common and entirely understandable habit many of us have which is to suppress emotions rather than to feel them. I see this so often in my work and my heart goes out to the person who has been walking around with this unnecessary pain. Blocked emotions are trapped within the body and tend to come out when we least wish them to, in the case of Jenny the tone of her boss was too much to bear and perhaps unconsciously reminded her of how her brother may have spoken to her.

In order to create calm from the chaos of emotional turmoil, the most important step you can take is to find the courage to sit with hard emotions such as anxiety and self-loathing with tenderness and patience. You need to take time to understand where they come from and the message they are delivering.

Most of us were never taught the most important form of intelligence that we need to thrive in a complicated world, emotional intelligence.

And yet, we are predominately emotional creatures and many of our decisions are made depending on the state of our emotional health.  We hear so much about physical health and thankfully more and more about mental health but what about our emotional well-being? These three, are, of course, all connected. Emotions are the integral link between the physical and the mental.  What we perceive and think in the mind we feel physically in the body.

Emotions are the language of the body and it is your job to listen to what they have to say.

We ignore our emotions at our peril as unprocessed negative emotions block our body from functioning and flowing.  When we get a bee sting, bang our hand with a hammer or we are simply fighting the common cold virus our body produces small proteins called proinflammatory cytokines. These small proteins can both be a friend and foe.  Friend when they help us to heal by drawing all the blood to the site of pain and causing it to swell. Foe when they are overproduced due to negative emotions such as stress and anxiety and cause inflammation in the body when it is not necessary.  There is no physical wound to heal and the inflammation leaves you exhausted, irritable and depleted and more susceptible to disease. As we move further and further away from the traditional reductionist medical view we move closer to getting to the heart of what aids us to be the best versions of ourselves, physically, mentally and emotionally. Ultimately, to be kind you ourselves.

Learning to master your emotions is a lifelong skill and like Socrates, the Stoic Greek philosopher once said: ‘To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”  In essence the journey of self-knowledge is the key.

Here are three key tips to help you on the voyage to help you to master your emotions.

1. If you feel sad, angry, upset, overwhelmed, anxious, fearful, or any of the plethora of negative emotions – remember the 90-second rule for emotions – neuroscience shows that if we sit with the emotion it will pass after 90 seconds.  One of the most positive things you can do is to allow yourself to feel negative emotions with courage, love, and acceptance. Feel the emotion – breathe into it rather than try to escape it. By doing so the emotion is less likely to emerge at a time that is not suitable such as in work.
2. Speak to someone you trust and love. Sharing the emotion with a close friend or family member is very therapeutic.  They don’t need to fix the problem, simply ask them to listen to you and through their care and love solutions will emerge from yourself. I also recommend finding a good therapist if you feel you need more support.
3. Journal – write down all the negative thoughts that have been spinning in your mind. You will be amazed at how when you release them onto the page they are also cleansed from your mind. Do this regularly and once you have released the toxic emotions, journal on all the things that you are grateful for in your life.