Are you still trying to figure out how to live life to the fullest? If so, you need to learn to invest your energy in present moment. You must learn to regulate your current emotions because feelings like anger, guilt, love, joy and fear play an important role in our life. By regulating your emotions, you can make right decisions and communicate effectively.
Reading this article, you will find ideas you can put into practice to make your life better. You will be able to regulate your painful emotions. According to Curt Thompson (Anatomy of the Soul) emotions such as sadness happiness and anger are behavioral or surface emotions. These are the emotions that we are aware of and we feel them most of the time. But there are actually some deep emotions that we consciously are not aware of, but they play a huge role in how we act or react to situations. We usually ignore deep emotions and focus more on the behavioral emotions. For example, If someone smirk, you may appraise it as angry when it was intended to be comical. The arousal of your brain tells you not to laugh but instead to feel hurt or sad. You may react negatively, possibly causing an unwanted argument or hurting the other person.
Those primary emotions are on the subconscious level, so we don’t realize we do this until we pay attention to them. Therapy is a place that provide safe environment to see primary emotions. A person feel safe and accepted during therapy sessions.. The first step in regulating emotion is learning to identify and label current emotions. The most important thing is to observe and describe your painful emotion and then interpret the event which prompts the emotion. Also try to observe physical sensation and after effects of the emotion. Increasing the number of pleasurable events in one’s life is one approach to increase positive emotions.
In short term this involves increasing daily positive experiences. For example you can make your daily drive a more positive experience. Take a moment to enjoy the things around you such as sunrise or the fresh air blowing through the car windows. In the long term it means making major life changes such as taking insurance policy, setting long term fitness goals etc. Mindfulness to current emotions means experiencing emotion without judging them or trying to inhibit them. You can also regulate your painful emotion by taking an opposite action for instance, doing something nice for a person one is angry at or approach what one is afraid of. You can also design an energy aware approach to diet exercise and health. It can also generate positive emotions. The food you eat can have a direct effect on your energy level and mood.
A healthy diet is one that has enough of each essential nutrient. Some vitamins and minerals may help with the symptoms of depression. Similarly regular exercise is important to your physical and mental health. Your body makes certain chemical called endorphins after workout. They relieve stress and improve your mood. Your mind and body also feels better if you sleep well. Your body needs time every day to rest and heal. You can also apply distress tolerance techniques to regulate your mood. These skills help a person with overwhelming emotions. Try to engage yourself in hobbies such as cleaning, playing games and visiting friends and relatives. You can also contribute by doing volunteer work and also try to compare to the people who are trying to cope with the same distress.
Sometimes it is also helpful to push the situation away by leaving it for a while. If a person does not know how to manage their emotions they will try unhealthy coping strategies such as drugs or self-harming behaviors. If you’re one of those who feel you can handle a lot of stress, you might be high in the executive skill of Stress Tolerance. Executive skills are brain functions or cognitive skills that neuroscientists have located in specific regions of the brain, primarily the frontal lobes. These functions develop starting at birth; they’re hardwired into every person, and fully developed by adulthood. The skills are called executive skills because they help people execute tasks. Every individual has a set of 12 executive skills (self-restraint, working memory, emotion control, focus, task initiation, planning/prioritization, organization, time management, defining and achieving goals, flexibility, observation and stress tolerance).
Each person has two or three that are their strongest and two or three that are their weakest, and they are not dramatically changeable for life. For example, if a person’s weakest executive skill is stress tolerance, several stress-relieving seminars or classes taken are not likely to dramatically change it. The executive skill of stress tolerance is the ability to thrive in stressful situations and to cope with uncertainty, change and performance demands. Emotional resilience refers to one’s ability to adapt to stressful situations or crises. More resilient people can adapt to adversity without lasting difficulties; less resilient people have a harder time with stress and life changes, both major and minor. It’s been found that those who deal with minor stresses more easily can also manage major crises with greater ease, so resilience has its benefits for daily life as well as for the rare major catastrophe. Resilient people see the positives in most situations and believe in their own strength. This can shift how they handle problems from a victim mentality to an empowered one, and more choices open up. People strong in emotional resilience are able to laugh at life difficulties and they have good sense of humor. They believe that they, rather than outside forces, are in control of their own lives. Resilient people understand that there is a separation between who they are at their core and the cause of their temporary suffering.
The stress/trauma might play a part in their story but it does not overtake their permanent identity. Practicing these strategies will help you become stronger emotionally .Try to practice stress tolerance techniques at home and workplace, build meaningful relationships with your family, friends and colleagues, increase the quality of your life, and decrease the level of stress.
