How to control negative emotions
Anger, fear and sadness. The three main categories of what we view as negative emotions. Now if like me you’ve been feeling some of these or a lot of this is over the last three weeks, know that there is a really effective technique of dealing with them, and we all tend to have a go to so the first one ‘anger’ covers things like frustration and resentment, so don’t know if that’s yours? The second one is ‘fear’ and that covers anxiety, uncertainty, lack of trust. That’s certainly mine. And the third one is ‘sadness’ and this can cover feelings of despondency, victim mentality, sense of resignation.
So I don’t know if that’s your go to. Now because whatever one it is for you, they are very difficult emotions to be with and sit with what we all tend to do is do sticking plaster techniques, as I call them, so these tend to be for me, and my clients tend to be working excessive long hours.
Or it can be drinking, comfort eating or social media addiction.
Whatever is going to give you an instant hit of feel good hormone dopamine.
Now, the problem with this is that you have to keep doing more and more to feel okay and also underneath the surface your stress in your body and your brain is building. And that’s really bad for mental and physical health and well being. So what to do? Well, I’ve developed a ‘triple a’ exercise. That I use myself with my clients, and the first one is to ‘accept’. So the first ‘a’ is to accept. So say hey, i’m feeling anxious. Hey, i’m feeling scared. And really name it.
The second biggie. The really big important one is to ‘allow’ so really allow it to flow through your body. So this is the difficult one for many of us because we’ve been conditioned to do otherwise. But you know, when you see a child fall over, hurt the knee, get really upset, and then they’re up and out and they’re fine and they’re playing again.
And that’s because they’ve been allowed to feel the emotion.
And it said that all emotions take roughly 20 to 30 seconds to flow through the body. If you let them – so stay with it and the third one is to ‘ask’ so ask what is it that’s important? What’s going on for me what’s the information in this emotion? And then you can actually do something with it. Take action. So that’s it. That’s my ‘triple a’ exercise.
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