Healthy Living

Why do you want to manage your emotions? If you are reading this, it is probably for one of the following reasons:

• You don't like some emotions you experience because they are 'negative' and/or uncomfortable
• Your emotions 'lead' you to do or say things you wish you hadn't said or done
• You feel 'out of control' in some way
• You don't experience some emotions

If any of the above applies to you, the information in this article can help although the caveat is that, in general, you consider yourself an 'emotionally healthy' person who has 'blips' in specific areas. If you suspect you are depressed or have had a long-term problem with your emotions that is severely impacting your life, you need professional help.

Firstly, it needs to be said that your emotions are here to stay. Welcome or not, they are along for the ride and you are going to need to learn how they work, and how to work with them. They are part of the everyday process of you living your life, and no matter how you have stuffed them, ignored them, or covered them up they are like the arcade game where the gnome pops out of the hole and you hit it down with the hammer, only to have another pop up somewhere else.

So what are emotions to you? You might say 'they are my feelings' but actually they are much more than that. When someone strokes your arm or pinches you - that is a feeling. An emotion is more complex and occurs in your mind-body at the point your expectations of the world meet the world. Read that again.

In other words, an emotion arises when you get back a response from the world outside your head (or from within yourself) and you compare it with your version of how things do or should work - according to you.

For example, if you have just come back from a surprise party (and you love surprise parties) you got more than you expected from that evening and you may feel happy in response. Or if you just got unexpectedly fired you certainly got less than you expected and accordingly could feel miserable (or liberated if you hated your job!)

Both of these are the result of responses to the world. You also have responses to yourself - if you did something that violated your standards then you might feel guilty even though no-one else knew about it!

Emotions are information about your ongoing experience of life and how it matches up to your beliefs, values, expectations, and so on.

They are not:

• Instructions
• Guidance
• The TRUTH
• Reliable interpreters of experience
• In control

The above may seem rather harsh and there are certainly cases to be made for some exceptions but, in essence, having any of the above as a dominant way of thinking about your emotions will lead you down the wrong path.

Ironically, emotions whilst emotions are neutral in a moral sense they are always 'right' because they confirm or disconfirm something YOU believe. But if you believe that Santa is real at age 32 and you find out he isn't (sorry) then your feelings of betrayal, loss etc will be appropriate - given your beliefs. It doesn't mean you were right to believe he still existed...

Emotions are information purely about YOU although they sometimes don't seem that way. He made me feel that way. When she gave me that look, I felt so angry. It's the economy I feel depressed about. Even this is just you projecting onto someone else the results of how YOU responded.

However, at other times, they seem so strong that we feel overwhelmed. So, what can we do to manage or tame them? The process is quite simple and also quite paradoxical: you will need to do exactly the last thing you may want to do. You need to accept those emotions. THIS is the key.

Some people will have pushed back their chair and shouted at the screen at this point that they don't WANT to accept feeling this way. But consider this - 'whatever you resist, persists' and that includes the discomfort. It is in accepting your emotions that you are welcoming them in on YOUR terms - and that puts you in the driving seat.

When you bring feelings of acceptance to your feelings and your thoughts about your feelings, you take away their insistence and clamour because you are opening the dam on the stream of feelings, and letting the water flow again.

How do you do it?

The process is fairly simple and it helps if you have someone to talk you through it:

1) Identify the emotion you want to tame or neutralize

2) Imagine a situation in which you last felt it, and take a mental snapshot of how it feels

3) Step out of that (you can physically take a step back if you want) and think of something neutral - where do you want to go on holiday most?

4) Think of something small and simple that you accept*

5) Imagine feeling acceptance towards that fully and completely: breath the breath of those feelings, adopt the posture of that emotional state, and speak with the voice that you use when you accept and acknowledge something.

6) When you feel that fully, think about the emotion to 'tame' whilst feeling this feeling and notice how it changes things, how does it transform that?

7) Walk around a bit, holding this acceptance state about the lower emotion.

8) Think of something neutral again, and after a couple of minutes, think about the original emotion.

*The kind of acceptance that works best is the sort that acknowledges that something exists without having to like it:

• It's a rainy day
• The color of your front door
• How water feels on your hand

You will find in many cases a substantial lessening of the impact of the emotion and your ability to think about the situation more clearly improves. You may want to repeat the exercises several times to increase the effect.

It is important to not that accepting an emotion as existing is not the same as saying you are going to leave it alone forever. If you feel strong feelings for someone (positive or negative) at some point you might need to tackle the source of those feelings (your thoughts) and once you change them, so will the resulting emotion change. But getting a clear head is a good start.