Emotional Control Techniques: 10 Effective Strategies

Emotions influence thought and behavior, which is why emotional control is important.

Any event, no matter how simple it may be, arouses a wide range of emotions. This is due to the fact that a large part of our brain, the Limbic SystemThis is because a large part of our brain, the Limbic System, is in charge of them and makes emotions so deeply rooted in the nature of human beings that we can consider that they are part of us and our way of reacting to the world.

Emotional control techniques

Each one of the memories that make up our life history has an emotional charge associated with it, and the fact is that there is nothing that makes us feel more alive than emotions.. Perhaps for this reason, one of its great representative icons is the figure of the heart, the organ that sustains our lives. Emotions bring out the best in us, but they can also bring out the worst in us, and by this I am not only referring to negative emotions such as anger or fear, because even an excessive load of positive emotions such as joy can lead us to euphoria and thus to uncontrolled behavior.

For this reason, almost none of our emotions escape the filter of the consciousness. If we keep in mind that we continuously feel, we will easily recognize that we also continuously channel or repress our feelings, so that we all have a certain emotional control that we execute automatically and therefore unconsciously. But in spite of this control that we have, partly learned and partly written in our genetic material, all people at some point in our lives have felt altered or out of control due to our emotional experiences.

Feelings and emotions create an aftertaste

We all know that feelings alter our thinking. In fact, many psychological and psychiatric disorders often arise as a result of a disproportionate emotional response that the person is unable to control. In the 1930s, the psychoanalyst Franz Alexander discovered that people who repressed their feelings had permanently elevated Blood pressure.

The repressed emotions become overflowing seeking to be released and produce the psychosomatizationwhich consists in the expression of the psychological by means of physical symptoms, so that the body also becomes ill. But the key to getting along with our emotions is not in not repressing them either, because not repressing them in any way can lead to other types of even more serious disorders, and to getting into more than one mess that you may regret. In this sense, I would like to recommend you to read the article by Bertrand Regader, called "The 10 essential rules to free the emotional ballast", where you will learn other techniques to manage your emotions.

We can neither disconnect nor choose our emotions, but we can try to manage them by means of emotional control, which should not be understood as a form of repression of emotions, but as a way to regulate them, and not as a way to control them.This should not be understood as a form of repression of emotions, but as a way to regulate them, and thus be able to modify our mood and emotional state, when necessary. The objective of the techniques of control is to avoid that when a negative emotion is triggered, it drags us and we express it in an overflowing way that we can later regret. Here are some techniques to help you control your emotions and feelings.

Non-cognitive techniques to regulate emotions

Although psychologists do not like to prescribe avoidance or flight from situations (the avoidance and flight coping style is not very effective in problem solving), in the case of controlling negative emotions, I, like many other colleagues, will make an exception and state that the first and simplest emotional control technique is to learn to avoid what generates negative emotions. simplest technique of emotional control is to learn to avoid what generates negative emotions, whether they are people or situations, such as people or situations that generate negative emotions.We can avoid people or situations, such as trying to avoid a person who overwhelms us every time we see them, not going to an event that we know our ex-partner is going to attend, or if we are on a diet to avoid having forbidden foods in front of us, for example.

Deep breathing techniques

Another of the simplest and most useful techniques to control both emotions and physiological reactions, before, during and after facing emotionally intense situations, is deep breathing. On the one hand because it oxygenates our organs and makes the brain work better, and on the other hand because it relaxes us and thus calms us down. relaxes and thus calms us down..

There are multiple techniques to perform it, a well known one is to perform the phases of breathing by counting, this count can be varied because we all have different breathing rhythms and it is not about forcing breathing, the ideal is to find the number that best suits ours. An example of this way of doing deep breathing is the following:

• Inhale deeply while mentally counting to 5

• Hold the breath while mentally counting to 4

• Release the air while mentally counting to 10

• (Repeat several times until you feel more relaxed).

In this way we will obtain a slower and a little more intense than our normal breathing.. You can check that you are breathing correctly by putting one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen, you are doing it correctly if only the hand on your abdomen moves when you breathe (for this reason deep breathing is also called abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing).

Cognitive techniques to regulate emotions

When we experience a negative emotion, our attention is focused on the thoughts that keep that emotion active, and if we continually dwell on those thoughts, we strengthen the emotions. However, if we think less about the event that brought the negative emotion to the surface, it diminishes. We see in this fact how emotion and thought are closely linked.

For the Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology human psychology expresses itself on three levels that are in constant interaction, as the following diagram shows:

As I said earlier, emotions cannot be changed, but since emotion and thought go so closely together hand in hand if we change thinking we can regulate both our emotions and our actions. This is the fundamental principle of cognitive techniques such as those presented below.

Positive affirmations

It is already part of popular knowledge that thinking positive makes us feel better, we can even find in the market brands that have made positive affirmations a form of 'branding' and sell us a product appealing to emotion. So if positive affirmations have become so popular it must be because they must work. To be able to fill our mind with positive affirmations we have to empty it of negative thoughts, for this, first we must detect which are the thoughts that generate, maintain or increase our negative emotions and make us feel sad, angry, anxious, scared, etc.

Once identified, we have to replace them with more positive ones, for this, although it can be done mentally, I recommend writing down each negative thought and the thought that replaces it. Once this is done, you just have to put it into practice and every time the negative thought appears, change it for a positive one automatically. This seems so simple and will reduce both our cognitive and physical anxiety.

Stopping the thought

This strategy seeks to control the thought and can be used before, during or after the situation that generates the negative emotion. The idea is that when you start to feel nervous or upset, pay attention to the thoughts you are having, and identify the negative connotations it has for you. Once you have done this little analysis, give yourself orders that seek to interrupt the thought that evokes the emotion, such as: "STOP!STOP!Stop!", "Stop!", "Now!", "Enough!". Following this self-instruction, replace the thoughts detected as negative with positive affirmations.

The only difficulty with this simple technique is that identifying the thoughts that evoke negative emotions and turning them into positive ones takes a bit of practice.

Mental rehearsal

Sometimes when a person knows that he/she has to do something for which he/she does not feel confident, such as speaking in public or taking some kind of test, for example an exam, we anticipate the anxiety of the moment and we establish it in the present moment, which generates that the anxiety before the act is increasing, since the negative thoughts are negatively reinforced and we enter into an upward spiral.

To prepare us to face these situations and combat the anxiety that they generate, the technique of the mental rehearsal is ideal, apart from being simple. It consists of visualizing that the feared situation goes smoothly, and you feel confident and relaxed because you are satisfied with the way you are acting. You can also repeat to yourself slogans such as: I'm doing well, I'm relaxed, the audience likes it... this will reinforce the technique. Plan your performance of the act and practice it mentally and repetitively. With each mental rehearsal the level of anxiety will be reduced and this feeling will give you more confidence to overcome the situation successfully.

Change of perspective

People tend to make two major mistakes that can affect our emotional balance. On the one hand, we are self-centered and consider our point of view to be the only correct or valid one, and on the other hand, we give others intentions that may not be correct. This can lead us to arguments or to feel bad for no reason. That is why trying to change our perspective on people or events can be helpful. There are several ways to change the perspective we have and adopt a different one, here are two.

The first one I recommend is broaden the focus of the situationThe closer we are to something, the less we see. To do this, we can step back from the situation literally or mentally, trying to see the situation as a whole and reanalyze the situation from this perspective. Another way to change perspective is to to put ourselves in the other person's placeAnother way to change perspective is to put ourselves in the other person's place, and think about what that person may be feeling or what circumstances may be motivating his or her behavior.

In this way, from empathyIn this way, from empathy, it is very likely that we will acquire more tolerant attitudes towards that person and reduce our negative feelings towards him or her. If for example you are in a restaurant and you are starting to get angry because the waiter does not attend you, think that maybe he has a lot of work or that something has gone wrong in the kitchen, how overwhelmed he must be feeling at that moment, and this will surely help you to feel more relaxed and have more patience.

Concluding

The techniques that I have presented in this paper, although simple, have demonstrated their effectiveness in clinical practice, and therefore few psychotherapists refuse to use them in their daily practice, but like most things in life they need to be practiced in order to become a skill.

If you manage to incorporate them into your repertoire of behaviors, it is very likely that you will achieve greater control of the emotions and feelings that arise in your life. and feelings that arise in your day to day life.