Managing Emotions

Managing emotions, or being intelligent about your emotions, takes learning, practice and making mistakes.

But we can help you identify your stuck-points and give you tools and techniques to become better aware of your emotional reservoir, so you can choose how to regulate your emotions in the future.

Whether it's about being able to manage or express anger, to controlling outbursts and emotional reactions, we can help. We also have experience in 'Developing Emotional Intelligence', so if this is of interest or relevance to you, please get in touch.

Here's a short extract from The Crisis Book, reproduced with permission and thanks;

Emotions serve the important human function of expression. But sometimes we might feel that the emotions we express are not appropriate or they’re out of control.

Know yourself. You experience emotions many times during each hour of your working day. You don’t have an emotion just for the sake of it. You form an emotion in response to something that’s happening around you.

Emotional test. Get to know your emotional self with a simple monitoring test. Carry around a notepad and at a set time, say every hour, record what you’re feeling (the emotion you’re experiencing) and why.

Expression. Once you know what emotions you’re experiencing, you’re in a better position to scale the intensity of that emotion. Anger, for instance, can range from mild irritation to being in a blind rage.

Consequence. If you react without thinking, you can unleash unintended consequences. You have the power to manage these consequences if you introduce a “consequence awareness meter” into your reaction time. Pause before you attack others. Ask yourself how this is going to solve the situation.

24 hours. If you find yourself reeling with an intensely negative emotion, it can be difficult to react objectively. Get out of the situation, change what you’re doing or how you’re feeling and commit to not reacting for 24 hours. This helps you reintroduce reason and rationality.

Nuances. Humans have the capacity to detect tiny nuances of emotions in each other. Consider a tiny flick of an eyebrow or a twitch of a smile that can convey so much information. What hidden or implicit cues are you picking up or giving off?

Empathy. Once you’ve better understood your own emotional makeup, you’re more able to understand others and empathize with how others are feeling. It works in two ways: the more you understand yourself, the more you understand others, and vice versa.

Journey. Managing emotions is a life-long journey. You’ll be shifting, adapting, evolving and learning throughout your life. Writing down your feelings in a journal can help you understand them.

Deep freeze. Emotions are an important part of your makeup, yet many find expressing them so difficult, as though they weaken us or the emotions themselves can overcome and destroy us. Expressing your emotions is actually a strength – take them out of the “deep freeze”, so they can help you.