Emotional awareness: managing emotions during confinement

These are the principles of emotional awareness that help the most in times of quarantine.

Emotional management is our great workhorse, especially during these days when our freedom has been curtailed.

The pandemic is shattering our habits and mobilizing us to create new routines.. It is normal that we feel intense and disparate emotions and, without realizing it, we let ourselves be carried away by them. Here we will see some keys to learn how to manage them.

Managing emotions in the face of home confinement.

To be able to identify, to put a name to what we are feeling, will help us to regain the reins of our mind. We cannot control the external factors, but we can control the relationship with our emotions.. Allowing ourselves to feel them, experience them and let them go without being trapped or negatively conditioned in our relationships. Without hurting ourselves, or anything else, or anyone else.

In these moments in which the coexistence is closer, managing them properly becomes more important, so we must try to avoid conflicts and not add a greater dose of tension.

Throughout my work as a psychologist and my experience as a meditator (for years), I have synthesized five steps grouped in two phases, which help us to improve the management of our emotional world. They are steps aimed at living the direct experience of the emotion from the moment it begins until it fades away.. They allow us to investigate where we need to work with more attention and observe our tendencies. Identify those that condition us and prevent us from an adequate management.

In my sessions I accompany patients on this path as an internal resource so that they can learn to manage their emotions in a healthier way. Mindfulness at every step allows them to get to know themselves better, to gradually release the knots of conflict.to progressively release the knots of conflict. Each movement needs a deep look to make explicit what is moving at the unconscious level and move towards a more complete and kind life. Let's see this path in a synthesized way.

1. Awareness

Emotions are an energy, which unfolds for a cause. They emerge, have a development, resonate physically in our body and then fade away..... They can be deep, coarse or subtle, kind or harmful. Sometimes there is a main emotion and other secondary ones; a more emergent one and a deeper one. Whatever they are, they have an impact on us and are not always controllable.

The first step is to become aware of what we feel. Connect with our Heart to free it from the emotions that trap it. To unfold this awareness in each movement of the process.

1.1. Realizing that something is happening

We must open an inner space to connect with what is moving inside: stop and feel ourselves.. If we are too distracted and busy, the emotion may be growing internally and act disproportionately to any stimulus that triggers it.

An involuntary thought may pop into our mind and cause us to sweat, our heart to race, or our restlessness to become uncontrollably anxious. We may be angry and discover it when our attention is called, because we change our tone of voice, without even being aware of it.

Recognizing this emerging energy is the first step to avoid being dominated by the situation without realizing it.. Consciously inhabiting our body and feeling it will help us to recognize that something is arising.

1.2. Identify the problem

Once we recognize that something is manifesting itself, it is necessary to stop, observe and name it.. We can be angry because we are afraid of being sad and we externalize it with anger. Anger can set its plans in motion and manifest itself with aggressive, uncontrolled behavior, hurtful words or other more subtle but no less painful compartments.

If we identify the emotion it will be easier to deal with it: "I am scared, angry and upset about what is happening". Feelings of frustration or fear can feed this anger. Uncertainty, lack of freedom, change generate insecurity and fear.. Expressing it, narrating it, making sense of it with words, will release a great unnecessary burden and help us to initiate the next step.

1.3. Accept what we feel

If we have identified what we feel, now we have to accept it, embrace it without turning back: not to deny it, not to minimize it, not to repress it? We have to be honest and daring to explore by adjusting ourselves to reality, without sweeteners or additives..

Pain is inevitable, but there is a plus of suffering that we can decide whether to add or not. Accepting emotion means opening ourselves to it. To feel it in our body. The conscious connection with it facilitates its release. Identifying the heat of anger or the pressure in the chest of anguish, allows us to give space to these sensations from the center of our heart outwards.

Sometimes we get stuck in here because we don't accept. We don't like our reality and we get into conflict. We feed obsessive thoughts. We wear out our energy and damage our body. We eat compulsively to silence the anguish or we lull ourselves with our cell phone reading absurd memes to divert us from reality. Acceptance means looking with affection, respecting and welcoming what opens up in us in order to let it go in the next phase.

2. Self-regulation

Emotions are manifestations of our mind. They unfold driven by thoughts or tendencies that we have been incorporating throughout our life. They have a path, an intensity and then they are diluted spontaneously, if we allow it. The body has the ability to regulate itself and return to its homeostatic balance naturally. One of the qualities of the mind is its spaciousness.

With these two premises in mind, emotions have no interest in staying with us. It is we who hold them back by blocking and solidifying (with pain, discomfort or disease) their manifestation. We need to keep moving forward to self-regulate.

2.1. Letting go

Once we have accepted the emotion we need to let it go. Do not hold it in, feed it back, or hide it. It is easy to get wrapped up in thoughts and get trapped like flies in honey. We retrieve memories, reproaches, we fantasize about misfortunes or thoughts tinged with pain, fear or any other color..

We accommodate the emotion in our mind, without giving us other options and we solidify its sensations in our body giving rise to pain and discomfort and in the long term, illnesses. Learning to let go is learning to live lightly.. To navigate our mind and surf with the waves.

Once we let go of emotions, we can observe that they leave a residue. Like the scent left behind when we empty a bottle of perfume. If we are willing to keep moving forward, we can take one more step. The most difficult and interesting one.

2.2. Transform

After experiencing our emotions in depth with more or less intensity, we can continue to move forward with other resources to enrich ourselves with the experience.

On the one hand, identify the most recurrent emotions and explore our own "antidotes": to illegitimize the path that leads us to our own "antidotes".On the one hand, to identify the most recurrent emotions and explore our own "antidotes": to choose the path that leads us to well-being and to counteract the one that leads us to dive into suffering and anchor ourselves in it.

On the other hand, by observing our mind and how every emotion unfolds we can distill the nectar that underlies each process. For example, we could turn an emotion such as pride, which distances us from others, into self-love, improving our self-esteem. Envy, which fosters resentment and bitterness, into shared joy for the successes of others. Uncertainty into recreating resources to learn to live in the present.

Concluding

The interesting thing about this process is that it is not limited to a more or less intense discharge or experience of our emotional world.. It allows us to explore each step in depth and to enter in intimate connection with ourselves: what moves us inside; to identify our wounds; what repeats itself over and over again; to know the emotions that come to the surface more easily or to unmask the trigger in order to deactivate it.

We tend to be very reactive to external phenomena. If we respond when the conscious process has not finished, it is easy to do so from a place that harms us or others. If we become aware, progressively our mind will soften and emotions will leave less of an imprint. Like writing on water. We will be more understanding, creative and reflective in our responses..

The reality we are living in is not easy. We need to maintain a center of serenity to counteract difficulties. Allowing ourselves to feel our vulnerability without letting ourselves be dragged down by anxiety, fear or frustration.

Learning to know ourselves, to be kind to ourselves, is a first step.. Requesting the help of a specialized psychologist to accompany us on the path of self-knowledge and management of our emotional kaleidoscope, can give us the opportunity to walk a new path in the way we relate to ourselves, to others and to our environment.