Emotions are not consciously controlled.

The part of the brain that

deals with emotions is the limbic system. It’s thought that this part of
the brain evolved fairly early on in human history, making it quite
primitive. This explains why an emotional response is often quite
straightforward, but very powerful: you want to cry, or run away, or
shout.

Some emotions are very specific, insofar as they concern a particular

person, object, or situation. Others, such as distress, joy, or depression,
are very general. Some emotions are very brief and barely conscious,
such as a sudden flush of embarrassment or a burst of anger. Others,
such as long-lasting love or simmering resentment, are protracted,
lasting hours, months, or even years (in which case they can become a
durable feature of an individual’s personality). An emotion may have
pronounced physical accompaniments, such as a facial expression, or it
may be invisible to observers. An emotion may involve conscious
experience and reflection, as when one “wallows” in it, or it may pass
virtually unnoticed and unacknowledged by the subject. An emotion
may be profound, in the sense that it is essential to one’s physical
survival or mental health, or it may be trivial or dysfunctional. An
emotion may be socially appropriate or inappropriate. It may even be
socially obligatory—e.g., feeling remorse after committing a crime or
feeling grief at a funeral.

Your emotions are crucial to your ability to adapt to the challenges of

your daily life. When you feel good, you're able to shrug off even the
most burdensome of tasks, but when you're miserable, you view even
an enjoyable activity with a sense of gloom and doom.
Emotions also affect our relationships with others.

Interpersonal relationships

If a friend tells you a tragic story and you react by snickering instead of
looking sad or concerned, you'll seem rude and insensitive. On the
other hand, if you frown when you should smile at your friend's jokes,
you'll cause offense for different reasons.

Flying off the handle to a minor annoyance can make you seem hyper
or even unbalanced. Conversely, if you react with undue glee to a
relatively minor piece of good news, people will also question your
maturity and stability. Babies are allowed to shriek with pleasure or
howl with rage but as adults, we're expected to rein in the outward
show of our feelings.

1. The first step is awareness.

If you are not aware of the times when you are overly emotional or
overreacting, how can you try to manage it? It is impossible. Start to
monitor your emotions and give names to them. Sometimes we find it
difficult to identify what we are feeling. Giving it a name helps us gain
clarity, which is essential in moving forward.

2. Discover the ‘why’ of your emotions.

Once you have identified how you are feeling, you want to discover why
you are feeling it. What is causing this feeling inside you? Of course,
there could be a million reasons, and to find out you have to ask yourself,
like you would a friend, “What is wrong? What is causing me to feel this
way?”

Your mind will always look for an answer. Most of the time, simply the

way you are thinking about the situation is causing you to feel the way

you do.

3. Then ask yourself, “What is the solution?”

Once you have discovered why, what can you do to take back control?
Sometimes you might need to change the way you are thinking about the
situation. You see, your thoughts lead directly to your feelings, so if you
are feeling bad, you most likely have a negative thought that is making
you feel that way. If you start thinking of other possible ways of looking
at the situation, you will begin to feel better immediately. What you focus
on expands!

Sometimes by simply understanding why you feel a certain way at a

certain time, your emotions will start to diminish because understanding
always leads to calming.

4. Choose how you want to react.

This is the hardest part. The way that we react and manage our emotions
is habit. Haven’t you noticed those people who get stressed out about
nothing, literally freaking out at nothing. You almost feel sorry for them.
They have created a habit of associating a situation they don’t like with
‘freaking out.’ Their emotions have hijacked them.

Learning to listen to your emotions, to identify, understand and then

choose them, isn’t something that you decide to practice twice a week at
lunchtime. No, it is with continuous effort and discipline that you can
start to build this essential skill.

Here are my 9 Steps to Help Manage Your Emotions:

1. Use your emotions and bodily responses to recognize when you are under stress. A
racing pulse, dry mouth, aching stomach, tight muscles, or muscle pain may all indicate that
something is amiss in your emotional world.

2. Write down your thoughts and feelings about what is stressing you. Take a daily
inventory of your emotions. By writing down what you feel and when, you may be able to
identify patterns of emotional ups and downs. If is also important to write down the thoughts
that go with the feelings.

3. Control whatever aspect of the stress that you can. Life presents many situations
every day, and you should not view them in black and white terms- those you can control
versus those you cannot. Look for the shades of grey- the elements you can control. When
you know what’s going to happen in a situation, you nervous system can gear up to handle
it.

4. Don’t make mountains out of molehills. When difficult situations arise, it is important to
assess how bad they really are before going into panic mode. If you want to live a low-
stress life, don’t get all worked up or emotional over trivial matters.

5. Redefine the Problem. Your attitude to stress can affect your health more than the
stress itself can. If the problem is out of your control, recognize that and redefine the
problem to determine which parts you can avoid or handle.

6. Develop behaviors that distract you from stress. Anything you do that distracts you
from your stress for a while is good. For example, take a walk or work in the garden.

7. Reach out to a friend of family member. Social relationships are good for your health,
and reaching out to someone about your stress can improve your outlook. If you are lacking
social networks, you may find it easiest to meet others during a shared activity.
9. Meditate and Relax. Meditation has a wide variety of health benefits, and stress reduction
is one of the big ones.
Follow my six steps to control your emotions and regain rationality in any
challenging situation:

Don’t react right away. Reacting immediately to emotional triggers can be an

immense mistake. It is guaranteed that you’ll say or do something you’ll later
regret. Before refuting the trigger with your emotional argument, take a deep
breath and stabilize the overwhelming impulse. Continue to breathe deeply for
five minutes, feeling as your muscles un-tense and your heart rate returns to
normal. As you become calmer, affirm to yourself that this is only temporary.

Find a healthy outlet. Now that you’ve managed your emotion, you’ll need to
release it in a healthy way. Emotions should never be bottled up. Call or go
see someone you trust and recount to them what happened. Hearing an
opinion other than your own broadens your awareness. Keep a journal and
transfer your emotions from your inner self onto the paper. Many people find it
helpful to engage in aggressive exercises, such as kickboxing or martial arts,
to discharge their feelings. Others meditate and chant to return to a tranquil
state of being. Perform whatever activity is best-suited to you in order to
liberate your being from pent-up sentiments.

Replace your thoughts. Negative emotions bind us to recurring negative

thoughts, creating cycles of downright negative patterns. Whenever you are
confronted with an emotion which is making you feel or think something bad,
force it out of your mind and replace it with a different thought. Imagine the
ideal resolution to your problem playing out, think about someone who makes
you happy or remember an event that makes you smile.

Forgive your emotional triggers. Your emotional triggers may be your best
friend, your family members, yourself or all of the above. You may feel a
sudden wave of anger when your friend “does that thing she does,” or a stab
of self-loathing when you remember something you could have done
differently. But when you forgive, you detach. You detach from the
resentment, the jealousy or the fury lingering within you. You allow people to
be who they are without the need for escalating emotions. As you forgive, you
will find yourself disassociating from the harsh feelings attached to your being.

A constant reminder of our ardent nature, emotions surge through us at every

second of the day. But we often take wrong actions when wrong feelings filter
through our mind without restraint. To avoid the burn of acting out during an
emotional upsurge, take a few simple steps to calm your heightened spirit and
quiet your uneasy mind. When the moment has passed (in hindsight), you’ll
be grateful you were able to be the master of your emotions.