How to Manage our Emotions
Emotions are like colourful balloons—sometimes they soar high with joy, other times they deflate with sadness or pop with anger. Managing this rollercoaster ride isn't always easy, but fear not! In this article, we'll explore the art of emotional management, offering practical strategies to keep your emotional balloons afloat and your mental well-being on track.
In this article, we're diving deep into the art of emotional management, equipping you with practical strategies to navigate the twists and turns, keep your emotional balloons afloat, and steer your mental well-being on a smoother course. Whether you're riding the highs of ecstasy or weathering the lows of despair, we've got your back every step of the way.
12 minute read
What is emotional regulation?
Emotional regulation is the ability to recognise, understand, and effectively manage your emotions, steering them in a direction that aligns with your goals and values. It's about riding the waves of feelings without capsising the boat, finding that sweet spot between expression and control. We don’t always get it right and it take work to regulate your emotions well, so, grab your life jacket and let's dive into the deep waters of emotional regulation together.
Understanding how to manage your emotions
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You and your friend need to ace Friday’s exam to avoid summer classes,
and after a week of studying, you both feel confident that you pulled it off.
But when you get your grades back,
they’re much lower than the two of you expected.
You’re devastated.
However, your friend doesn't seem too bothered,
and it's making you wonder why you can't shake this off like they can.
But should you really be trying to look on the bright side?
And is controlling our emotions even possible in the first place?
The answer to the last question is a definitive “yes.”
There are numerous strategies for regulating our emotions,
and one framework to understand these techniques is called the Process Model.
Psychologists use this tool to identify where and how to intervene
in the process that forms our emotions.
That process has four steps:
first, we enter a situation, real or imagined,
and that draws our attention.
Then we evaluate, or appraise, the situation
and whether it helps or hinders our goals.
Finally, this appraisal leads to a set of changes in how we feel, think, and behave,
known as an emotional response.
Each step of this process offers an opportunity to consciously intervene
and change our emotions,
and the Process Model outlines what strategies we might try at each phase.
To see this in action, let’s imagine you’ve been invited to the same party
as your least-favorite ex and their new partner.
Your first strategy could be avoiding the situation altogether
by skipping the party.
But if you do attend, you could also try modifying the situation
by choosing not to interact with your ex.
If that’s proving difficult, you might want to shift your attention,
maybe by playing a game with your friends
rather than focusing on your ex’s new partner.
Another option would be to re-evaluate how you think about the situation.
After seriously reappraising things,
you might realize that you don’t care who your ex dates.
If none of these strategies work,
you can always try tempering your emotional response after the fact.
But this can be tricky.
Many of the easiest ways to do this,
like hiding your emotions or trying to change them with recreational drugs,
generally lead to more negative feelings and health concerns in the long term.
More sustainable strategies here include going for a long walk,
taking slow, deep breaths, or talking with someone in your support system.
While using all these strategies well takes practice,
learning to notice your emotions
and reflect on where they’re coming from is half the battle.
And once you’ve truly internalized that you can regulate your emotions,
doing so becomes much easier.
But should you use these techniques to constantly maintain a good mood?
That answer depends on how you define what makes a mood “good.”
It's tempting to think we should always try to avoid sadness and frustration,
but no emotion is inherently good or bad—
they’re either helpful or unhelpful depending on the situation.
For example, if a friend is telling you about the loss of a loved one,
feeling and expressing sadness isn’t just appropriate,
it can help you empathize and support them.
Conversely, while it’s unhealthy to regularly ignore your emotions,
forcing a smile to get through a one-time annoyance is perfectly reasonable.
We hear a lot of mixed messages about emotions.
Some pressure us to stay upbeat
while others tell us to simply take our emotions as they come.
But in reality, each person has to find their own balance.
So if the question is: “should you always try to be happy?”
The answer is no.
Studies suggest that people fixated on happiness
often experience secondary negative emotions,
like guilt,
or frustration over being upset,
and disappointment that they don't feel happier.
This doesn't mean you should let sadness or anger take over.
But strategies like reappraisal can help you re-evaluate
your thoughts about a situation,
allowing you to accept that you feel sad
and cultivate hope that things will get better.
Figuring out what’s on your mind
You know when you're trying to untangle a ball of yarn, and you finally start to see the threads peeking through? That's kind of what figuring out your feelings is like—it's a bit messy and confusing at first, but once you start pulling at those threads, things start to make sense. Taking a moment to check in with yourself and name how you're feeling is like shining a flashlight into the dark corners of your mind.
It's not always easy, but when you can put a name to those swirling emotions, it's like putting together a puzzle and seeing the bigger picture emerge. So, whether you're feeling a little lost in the maze of your mind or basking in the warmth of clarity, know that you're making progress with every step forward. Keep shining that flashlight, and soon enough, you'll illuminate the path ahead.
How to figure out what’s bothering you
Sometimes it’s not all that clear what’s bothering you or how you feel about it, it may even feel a bit much and you may want to avoid it entirely, but if you are wanting to figure out what it is that’s bothering you so you can then figure out how to deal with it, here’s a few ways you can get your mind and body on side to try and crack that door open.
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Pause for a moment and take a few deep breaths. It sounds simple, but it can really help clear your head and make room for your feelings to come to the surface.
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Your body often gives you hints about how you're feeling. Maybe your heart is racing, your stomach is tight, or your shoulders are tense. Pay attention to these signals—they can clue you into what's really going on inside.
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Giving what ever is on your mind a name. Are you feeling bummed out, stressed, or maybe just a little meh? Sometimes putting a label on what you're feeling can make it easier to deal with.
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Grab a journal or open a note on your phone and jot down what's on your mind. Writing things out can be super therapeutic and help you make sense of your emotions.
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Reach out to a friend, family member, or even a pet and spill the beans about what's bugging you. Sometimes talking things through with someone you trust can bring a whole new perspective.
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Cut yourself some slack as you're sorting through your feelings. It's okay to not have it all figured out right away. Give yourself permission to feel whatever you're feeling without judgment.
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At the end of the day, take a moment to think back on how you felt and what might have triggered those emotions. It can help you learn more about yourself and how you respond to different situations.
Why is emotional regulation important?
Emotional regulation is like having a trusty umbrella on a rainy day—it helps you weather life's storms with grace and resilience. But why is it so important? Well, imagine a world where emotions run wild, like a herd of stampeding elephants with no one to steer them. Without the ability to regulate our emotions, we'd be at the mercy of every passing feeling, leading to impulsive actions, strained relationships, and overall chaos.
Emotional regulation allows us to hit the brakes when our emotions threaten to take the wheel, giving us the power to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. It's the key to maintaining stable relationships, making sound decisions, and preserving our mental well-being in the face of life's inevitable ups and downs.
So, whether it's taking a deep breath before responding to a heated argument or finding healthy outlets for stress, mastering the art of emotional regulation is essential for navigating the twists and turns of life with grace and resilience.
Why can’t I control my emotions?
It's a question that many of us have asked ourselves at one time or another, and the answer isn't always straightforward. Emotions can be like wild horses, sometimes bucking and galloping out of control despite our best efforts to rein them in. There are a variety of reasons why you might struggle to control your emotions, and understanding these factors can be the first step toward gaining better emotional regulation.
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Some people are simply wired to be more emotionally reactive due to genetic or neurological differences.
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Traumatic or stressful experiences from the past can leave emotional scars that make it difficult to regulate your feelings in the present.
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Your surroundings, such as a chaotic or high-stress environment, can impact your ability to control your emotions.
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Lack of sleep can wreak havoc on your emotional state, making it harder to control your feelings.
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Prolonged periods of stress can wear down your emotional resilience, making it more challenging to manage your emotions effectively.
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Conflict or tension in relationships can trigger strong emotions that are difficult to control.
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If you haven't been taught effective coping mechanisms for managing stress or regulating emotions, you may struggle to control your reactions.
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Fluctuations in hormone levels, such as during puberty or menopause, can impact mood and emotional regulation.
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Drugs and alcohol can impair judgment and inhibit your ability to regulate emotions effectively.
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Conditions like anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder can affect your emotional regulation abilities.
How to process your emotions
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It is a quirk of our minds that not every emotion we carry is fully acknowledged, understood
or even truly felt. There are feelings that exist in an ‘unprocessed’ form within
us. A great many worries may, for example, remain disavowed and uninterpreted and manifest
themselves as powerful directionless anxiety. Under their sway, we may feel a compulsive
need to remain busy, fear spending any time on our own or cling to activities that ensure
we don’t meet what scares us head on (these might include internet pornography, tracking
the news or exercising compulsively). A similar kind of disavowal can go on around hurt. Someone
may have abused our trust, made us doubt their kindness or violated our self-esteem but we
are driven to flee a frank recognition of an appalling degree of exposure and vulnerability.
The hurt is somewhere inside, but on the surface, we adopt a brittle good cheer (jolliness being
sadness that doesn’t know itself), we numb ourselves chemically or else adopt a carefully
non-specific tone of cynicism, which masks the specific wound that has been inflicted
on us. We pay dearly for our failure to ‘process’ our feelings. Our minds grow unoriginal from
a background apprehension as to their contents. We grow depressed about everything because
we cannot be sad about something. We can no longer sleep, insomnia being the revenge of
all the many thoughts we have omitted to process in the day. We need compassion for ourselves.
We avoid processing emotions because what we feel is so contrary to our self-image,
so threatening to our society’s ideas of normality and so at odds with who we would
like to be. An atmosphere conducive to processing would be one in which the difficulties of
being human were warmly recognised and charitably accepted. We fail to know ourselves not out
of laziness or casual neglect; it simply hurts a lot. Processing emotions requires good friends,
deft therapists and ritual moments like Philosophical Meditation, in which our normal defences can
safely be put aside and unfamiliar material ring fenced for investigation. The outcome
of processing our emotions is always an alleviation in our overall mood. But first we must pay
for our self-awareness with a period of mourning in which we gradually acknowledge that, in
some area or other, life is simply a lot sadder than we would want it to be
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How can i manage my reactions?
It's a question many of us ponder, especially when our emotions threaten to hijack the steering wheel. While it's natural to react impulsively in the heat of the moment, learning to manage our reactions can lead to more constructive outcomes and healthier relationships. Fortunately, there are several strategies you can employ to regain control over your responses and navigate life's challenges with greater ease and grace.
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When things start heating up, hit the pause button. Take a deep breath (or a few) to cool off before jumping into action.
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Pay attention to what sets you off. Knowing your triggers is like having a heads-up before the storm hits.
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Try seeing things from the other person's perspective. It's like changing the channel to see a different side of the story.
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Share what’s on your mind, what bothering you without pointing fingers. Saying "I feel frustrated when..." is way better than playing the blame game.
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Establish boundaries and make 'em clear for yourself, it’s about how you can help regulate yourself and what you can chance if you encounter this again. In some cases, thismigh be taking some space for yourself or going fo a walk.
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Reach out to your friends. Sometimes a chat with a friend is all you need to see things in a new light.
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Take time to recharge your batteries with stuff that makes you feel good—whether it's a jog in the park or a cozy night in with a good book.
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Reflect on past blow-ups and think about what you could've done differently. It's like hitting rewind to learn from your mistakes.
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If you're stuck in reaction mode or feeling overwhelmed, don't hesitate to reach out to a pro for some expert advice. They've got the tools to help you navigate those rough waters.
Written by Cara Hernon BSc Medical Science
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