Simple and effective strategies to manage your emotions

Do you sometimes find it difficult to manage your emotions? It’s tough when something has triggered you and you feel like you’ve been emotionally hijacked. You know your feelings aren’t helping you to best manage the situation you’re in, but how do you get yourself out of the grip and back into a more resourceful place?

Here are some tips/techniques that I use myself and that my clients find really helpful.

1) Understand why it’s happening

As with everything, the first step in making a change is building awareness. As humans, our brains make sense of the world through the lenses of our values, beliefs, experiences and personality traits. These create our perceptions, which in turn trigger emotional responses that unconsciously drive our behaviour. When our perceptions incite strong negative emotions such as anger, frustration, guilt, shame or fear, the rational thinking part of our brain (the neocortex) shuts down and our limbic brain (our emotional brain) takes over – hence the emotional hijack. It is doing this to try and protect us from the perceived threat, however, the ‘threat’ is usually not a real one. Just being aware of this cerebral process can help to create some space between us and our emotions, giving us the conscious choice of how we manage it.

2) Stop before you react – A strong emotion hits us in an instant, and before we know it, we can be reacting in a way that is really not helpful for us or our colleagues. Using an anchor can create an immediate pause before we respond. What I mean by an ‘anchor’ is a physical, visual or auditory cue that sends a message to the brain to pause. It could be a visual of a stop sign that you see in your mind’s eye, it could be simply saying to yourself “It’s ok”, or you might sit on your hands – it can be anything; whatever works for you.

3) Create space – in that moment when the emotion grips you, just take a few deep, slow breaths. This will create space between you and the emotion and calm your sympathetic nervous system, reducing the intensity of the emotion and allowing the rational part of you brain (the neocortex) to re-engage.

4) Start with acceptance - don’t fight your emotions. This only creates more frustration and compounds how you are feeling. As humans, we are all emotionally driven, so try not to beat yourself up about feeling emotional. Recognising that your brain is trying to protect you, but acknowledging that it’s not needed right now, can also help to lessen its grip on you.

5) Recognise what’s triggered you– ask yourself “what’s this about”? or “where is this coming from?” . This can help you to identify what's inciting the emotion and allow you to step back and see the it for what it is.

6) Reframe your thought – all emotions are coupled a thoughts. Identify what you are thinking in that moment. Ask yourself “what’s the truth in that?”, then exchange your thought for a more positive and objective alternative. This will immediately take you into a more positive emotional state.

7) Change your physiology – this is a simple, in the moment technique that can instantly change how you feel. It is based on the neuroscience that your physiology shifts as a direct reflection of how you feel. You can therefore change how you feel by adjusting your physiology, Simply change your stance to reflect how you’d like to feel – for example, if you want to feel more confident, sit upright, with your shoulders back and your head up, and, if you want to feel more positive, simply smile - it really does work!

8) Change your perspective – If your emotion has been triggered by another person’s thinking or behaviour, try changing your perspective by putting yourself in their shoes. What’s going on for them that would lead them to think or behave in that way? Alternatively, imagine you are a fly on the wall, looking in on the situation between the two of you. What do you see happening? What’s it really about? This enables you to be more objective, thereby reducing the heightened emotion.

Next time you find yourself in the grip of an unwanted emotion, try out a couple of these techniques and see how they work for you. I hope you find them helpful. I’d love to know how you get on - feel free to drop me a line at becs@incacoaching.com.