How To Effectively Manage Your Emotions & Feelings

Emotions, who need them?

We all enjoy feeling positive emotions like joy, love and excitement, but anger, fear, shame, grief – who needs them?

We’d all be better off without those nasty, icky, uncomfortable emotions, right? Indeed, negative emotions can sometimes get the better of us. They make us do things we regret, or even worse, they keep us from acting at all. I used to be the master of avoiding my uncomfortable emotions. However, I now know that to be able to feel emotion is a real gift.

“Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming, but we can choose which one to surf.” – Jonatan Mårtensson 

Emotions are essential for our survival, so we have to learn to accept them. The good news is, we can avoid much of the suffering that negative emotions cause by using emotion regulation skills.

What are emotions? Are they the same as feelings?

Emotions and feelings are two terms we often use interchangeably. However, they are not the same. 

Feelings come after emotions. Feelings occur in the brain, and they are a mental response to emotion. They assign meaning to the emotion, and they tend to be subjective. How you feel will depend on your genetics, your experiences, your beliefs and your memories. Compared to instantaneous emotions, feelings take a little longer to begin.

“When you own or take responsibility for your feelings, you place yourself in a position of power and control.” – Julie A., M.A. Ross and Judy Corcoran

Your body reacts to external stimuli, giving you a bodily experience, or an emotion. Then, your mind gives meaning to your emotion with a feeling.

Emotions and feelings are something that many of us don’t like discussing, and some of us may even believe that those wishy-washy, fluffy emotions are not at all helpful. However, emotions are essential, and knowing how to cope with them is where emotion regulation skills come in.

Why are emotions important?

Emotion isn’t a touchy-feely, wishy-washy, fluffy subject. Emotions help us survive and encourage us to take action. When an emotion arises, and you feel it throughout your body, it’s a signal, trying to tell you something.

According to author Mary Lamia Ph.D., emotions “attempt to tell you if a situation is optimal, or not aligned with your goal”. And when we know whether something is good, bad or somewhere in between, it informs our decisions. You can think of your emotions as a board of directors, advising you, the CEO, on the pros and cons of a given situation. 

If emotions are so important, why then should we regulate them?

Emotions are bodily messengers that inform the thinking, rational mind. However, even though emotions are useful and necessary, that doesn’t mean they’re always useful and necessary. Sometimes your board of directors will give you terrible advice, and since you are the CEO, the buck stops with you. Therefore, you need a way of validating their messages.

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” – Oscar Wilde

When your board of directors is advising you to punch the driver that just cut you off in traffic, it’s probably best to step in and use your veto power. It will probably be best for you and your potential victim that you decide NOT to go through with it, no matter how much you want to. Similarly, when your board of directors is advising you to flee in terror because you have to speak in public, it’s probably best NOT to run away from the podium screaming!

Therefore, emotion regulation skills are incredibly useful to utilise emotions without becoming a slave to them.

Regulating emotions is not the same as suppressing emotions

Usually, when you’re suppressing emotions, it’s because you believe you shouldn’t be feeling them. Maybe you think that sadness is a sign of weakness and shouldn’t be entertained? Perhaps you believe that anger isn’t an appropriate emotion, so it should be swallowed down?

There’s nothing wrong with disliking negative emotions, but suppressing emotions doesn’t help us feel better, especially in the long run. Remember, emotions are signals, and they act as an alarm, warning us that something’s not quite right. However, if we turn off the alarm, we won’t get to the root of the problem, and both the problem and the emotion will undoubtedly come up again, possibly stronger and fiercer than before.

“Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance.” – Deepak Chopra 

Suppressed emotions will find a place within the body and remain there, causing problems such as stress, mental and physical illness, digestive issues, and more.

Regulating emotions doesn’t mean ignoring them; we do just the opposite. We acknowledge both the presence of the emotion and its validity. Then, we listen to what the emotional message is, and decide on the best way to include this message into our actions.

Mindfulness is a fantastic way of regulating your emotions, and an excellent way to learn more about mindfulness is to join my 7-Day Challenge at www.chibs.co/challenge. This course is entirely free and is a fantastic place to start (or continue) your mindfulness journey.

Simply noticing what we are feeling allows us to change our reactions. Other ways to manage our feelings is through cognitive reappraisal. Therapies such as CBT, DBT and Anger Management all help us gain a broader and better perception of our triggers, and react to them with more positivity. 

Please reach out if you need any help or advice relating to mindfulness, meditation, or emotional regulation.