Hello my dear,

I hope you enjoyed last week's email. Did you get a chance to look at the feelings wheel and check in with your complex but fabulous cocktail of feelings?

Today I’m building on from last week, so if nothing makes sense from here onwards, make sure you read last week’s intro to emotional regulation here!

We started by noticing our feelings. Hopefully NONJUDGMENTALLY, just noticing and writing them down.

Next, we need to understand that our feelings aren't just things that happen to us out of the blue, our brain creates them by THINKING. So we move on to look at our thoughts and beliefs.

Think about a time when you felt and behaved particularly “emotionally”. Whether your flavour is rage, breaking into tears, snapping at someone, getting impatient and storming off (or all of the above!) it doesn’t matter, just pick one and we’ll go with it.

Try to note down what you were thinking in that moment, what beliefs about yourself of the situation were cropping up? Eg. If you felt really ANGRY, maybe you had an argument with someone. What were you thinking? Maybe something like "that person is so selfish and inconsiderate" or "people always let me down" or "I’m such an idiot!"

Our feelings directly influence our behaviour, but it’s our thoughts (usually unconscious) that create the feelings based on all our past experiences, past beliefs, good and bad memories etc.

This is why two people could experience the exact same situation but respond remarkably differently because we’ve all lived different lives, all learnt different lessons, all had slightly different “programming”. What angers one person may make another fall into fits of laughter.

So when mastering regulating our emotions, we take note of our FEELINGS: What’s coming up for us? And THOUGHTS: What’s driving these feelings? What did I think to feel this way?

These lead to our actions, as explained here:

We’re working on raising awareness of our unconscious thoughts and how they influence our feelings which then influence our behaviour.

With emotional regulation, we can’t just try to stop an action (hey, have you ever tried just NOT being emotional? 😜), we have to get to the root of it in the first place.

Next week - Managing intense emotions when they take hold. See you then! (And please, let me know how this is going for you and if you're following this!)

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- Nicola

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