Happy Thursday!

This week I’m continuing the theme of emotional mastery, and I really want to stress that WE SHOULD ALL HAVE LOTS OF EMOTIONS! ALL EMOTIONS ARE VALID! Emotional mastery isn’t about limiting our emotions, it’s just equipping us with the tools to ride the waves.

So I sent you the feelings wheel and cycle of action and today is about TOOLS for managing emotions when they take hold.

Ironically, I write this as a person who has cried in probably every public place, to nearly every boss/doctor/teacher/shop assistant(?) I’ve ever met. BUT that’s exactly why I’m well equipped to tackle this topic because I have a goddamn PhD of life experience in learning to manage emotions.

We now know to feel the feels and understand where they are coming from (thoughts, beliefs, past experiences, see previous emails!). If we want to control our BEHAVIOURS, then we need some strategies. These are three of fave hacks:

1. “Take them outside or put them in water”

Now, this is old parenting advice for grumpy children, but when we’re emotionally dysregulated it’s our wounded inner child who’s in the driving seat and WE are the tantruming child, so this advice works perfectly for us too. Either find a way to get outside, changing the immediate environment, or find water. Even splashing cold water on hands/face or drinking water helps! Both bring us back to our senses and bring a quick state of calm and clarity.

2. Focus on the FACTS of the situation

The more boring and mundane the better. “He’s wearing a green shirt”, “my last meal was a cheese sandwich”, “the sun is shining today”. These are simple, straightforward, non-emotion-inducing facts that enlist a bit more left-brain action to counteract our emotionally charged responses.

3. Think of something you’re grateful for or you love.

Yes, even when you’re full of rage or exploding with tears, it’s hard, but it works. Thinking about something you love or find particularly awesome about the world causes a mini interruption to the signals in our brains saying EMOTIONAL OVERLOAD: ACT NOW!

The train may be heading for a collision at full speed but you can stop it! Think about your goofy cat, or biting into a good piece of cake, or how cool it is to see a new bird (maybe this one’s just for me 😅). The better your powers of visualisation are, the more effective this one will be.

So please, allow yourself to invite in all the emotions and practice with some of these techniques. As always, write to me and tell me how it went for you, or reach out if you want to explore this together in more detail.

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Love,
Nicola