Dealing with intense negative emotions like anger and fear is a necessary life skill.  Learning the source of our feelings allows us to control our reactions.  It’s something everyone can do.  Are you ready?

We learn ways to cope with emotions in our family.  You are ahead of most people if your family has healthy coping skills.  Finding a family unit with healthy emotional management skills that accommodates everyone is difficult.

We were meant to experience the full range of our emotions.  It is part of everyday life.  We look forward to positive feelings of love and joy But experiencing the full range of emotions also includes the negative emotions of pain and loss.  So, dealing with intense negative emotions is necessary to maintain emotional balance.

Understand the Source of Our Feelings

Our feelings create a host of hormones affecting our bodies and minds, which are part of our survival system.  One of the primary triggers engages our fight, flight or freeze reaction.  This system triggers emotional states like fear, shock, and anger.  The mind reacts to protect the higher thinking areas of the cortical cortex when powerful hormones associated with anger and fear are released.

The key to handling our feelings is implementing the tactic as soon as possible.  Once we are downward, it becomes harder to stop the emotional chain reaction.  The sooner we act, the less likely we will get caught up in negative feelings.  You can “know” what is needed but fail to implement them when you are too far along.

Dealing with Intense Negative Emotions

“Let today be the day you control your emotions. Don’t let them get the best of you. Whatever you are feeling right now should not be overwhelming. Don’t allow others to dampen your spirit. You are entitled to enjoy peace.” — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

To deal with our feelings, we must be aware of them before they are too intense to control.  There are three specific tactics we can use to maintain emotional equilibrium.  Will you always be successful?  No.  The more you practice taking back control, the more often you will succeed.  You’ll need to learn three basic skill sets.

First, Be Mindful

Learn to monitor your thoughts.

Second, Learn to Take Control of Emotions

We can learn to take control of emotions through breath, ocular focus, and body awareness.

Third, Practice Body, Mind, and Spirit Integration

Activities that promote integration makes us more aware of our thought life and emotions.  We control our thoughts and feelings when body, mind, and spirit are balanced.

When you practice these three tactics, you will minimize the effects of harmful negative emotions.  Here’s how to do it.

Be Mindful and Monitor Your Thoughts

When you become aware of your thought life, you will be more in touch with your feelings.  When you are more in touch with your feelings, you live from the heart.  This perspective makes you aware of the beginning of the chain reaction.  When you contact the source of your emotions, they are easier to control.   It’s easy to do with a bit of practice, you’ll be a mindfulness expert.

We have a complete training module on this skill, including seated and walking Mindfulness.  Try it, and you’ll see how good it feels to be aware of what’s going on in your mind.

You’ll discover cues that point to the source of our feelings.  Knowing what situations, people, or things trigger reactions will give you the power to keep them from spiraling out of control.

“When you remain angry with another person, you give away your emotional control to that person each time you think of him or her. You allow him or her to control your emotions at long distances. By not forgiving, you allow that person to run your emotional life, exactly as if he or she were right there with you and the situation was occurring all over again.” — Brian Tracy

Taking Control of Your Emotions

Dealing with intense negative emotions requires you to stop the downward spiral as soon as possible.  Controlling your breath through peripheral vision techniques puts you back in control of your emotional equilibrium.  It stops runaway emotional reactions.

If you practice mindfulness, you’ll be able to intercede sooner and be more successful more often.  Whether you are mindful or not, the process of regaining control is still the same.  The answer to managing your emotional response is in your breath, eyes, and body.

1) Manage the Breath

The moment you discover how you are reacting emotionally, take a deep breath slowly with a count of 3 or 4.  Focus your attention on breathing—breathe in for a count of 3 or 4.  Then, breathe out for a count of 3 or 4.  Inhale and exhale slowly.  This simple activity will calm your active mind moving you back to emotional equilibrium.

Keep up this breathing rhythm until you have control of your feelings.  Breathing is the first primary tactic for controlling the release of those hormones that allow our feelings to take control.  Learning to control our breath is the first step in dealing with intense negative emotions.

2) Manage Visual Input

Another thing that can help you gain control is through your eyes.  If you can close your eyes, that will help.  Shutting off external stimuli enables you to focus on breathing.  However, there are times when it’s impractical to close your eyes.  Don’t close your eyes while driving a vehicle or operating equipment.

If you can’t close your eyes, the next best thing is shifting your gaze into peripheral vision.  If you cannot shut your eyes or change into peripheral vision, look down if possible.  The last option is to blink your eyes.  Be sure to keep breathing with any of these optical control methods.

The eyes are the windows of the soul.  They are also valuable devices that we can use to control our sympathetic nervous system using peripheral vision to suspend our transition from the parasympathetic nervous system to the sympathetic nervous system.

The latter is the primitive emergency system that kicks in a host of hormones like adrenalin to boost our physical capabilities and shut off pain stimuli.  But, many of these hormones aren’t healthy for the higher thinking centers of the brain, so it simply cuts off blood flow to these areas of thinking.  So, although we can react quickly with strength, we are doing so without the help of the higher thinking functions necessary to assess a rapidly changing situation.

That’s why martial artists train to maintain control of their higher brain functions.  It’s an internal battle against the fear of conflict.  Those who win the internal conflict are more likely to win the external struggle.  You can use this same strategy to maintain control rather than succumb to negative emotions.

3) Bring Awareness to the Body

The third tactic is to bring your attention to your posture.  This tactic also helps move our awareness away from the feelings causing the pain.  A self-hug is another good way to intervene.  Wrap both your arms around yourself.  Use your arms to feel your breath.

If you are standing, it can help to shift your weight to one foot.  Focusing on balancing also helps the mind to breathe the emotional chain reaction.

4) Remove Yourself From The Stimulus When Possible

If the source of your feelings is a stimulus you can remove, then do so.  Simple as it seems, it’s often hard to do.  If you are in a conversation with someone, you can always ask to take a 5-minute break or continue your discussion later.

We can often remove the stimulus, like something we see on TV or the internet, but we can continue down the slope of negativity.  The mind fixates on issues, holding us hostage to negative emotions.  That’s when you need to employ the tactics of breath, ocular control, and bringing attention to the body.

Practice Body, Mind, and Spirit Integration

The best way to integrate is to become “grounded.”  Grounding is a measurable connection between objects.  We want to connect body, mind, and spirit.  When we accomplish this, we are in tune with our intuition, thoughts, and emotions.

When we are in balance, none of the elements of the Ego dominate.  So, as we become more in harmony, we are less likely to be influenced by negative emotions.  It doesn’t mean you stop feeling them.  It means you can feel them without losing control.

Many great grounding exercises will help you maintain emotional equilibrium.  Here are our recommendations:

• • Beginning Meditation
  • Mindfulness Meditation
  • Forest Bathing
  • Tree Grounding Exercise
  • Self-Care Techniques
  • Automatic Writing
  • Martial Arts Like Tai Key or Tai Chi

Grounding Techniques for Anger, Anxiety, and Depression

The tactics outlined above will help ground us no matter which emotional roller-coaster you are on.  Some emotions creep up on us, while others come on immediately.  Anger and fear are often almost simultaneous to the stimulus.  So, if you aren’t in a state of mindfulness, it’s easy to lose control and spiral out of control.

Emotions like depression build over time.  Again, if you aren’t mindful, you don’t even recognize that you are in an unhealthy mindset.   You experience the effects but don’t connect them with the underlying issues.

Grounding helps us gain the perspective we need to deal with the issues.  Unfortunately, some physicians medicate people for long periods, numbing them to negative and positive emotions.  So, grounding exercises may not be the complete answer to anger, anxiety, and depression, but it is a tool you can use with proper counsel and medication.

Practicing grounding techniques is one way to develop a daily mindfulness practice that provides a basis for addressing underlying issues.  Let’s dissect a popular form of mindfulness called Tai Chi.  When you practice this technique, you’ll need to focus on the body and breath while engaging peripheral vision.

Do you see how Tai Chi incorporates all three tactics for handling our emotions.?   You can use this same strategy to create your own form of moving meditation.  Practicing Tai Chi is a way of dealing with intense negative emotions.

When you encounter ideas that conflict with your belief system, this can also trigger feelings of fear or anger.  The stimulus is an idea that conflicts with your worldview.  This kind of collision happens when we explore.

One way to explore our inner world is through comparative analysis.  It’s a structured method of comparative religious study based on the scientific model.  We learned early on that this kind of research can trigger the fight, flight or freeze reaction.  When this happens, accurate analysis is impossible.  So, we integrate regular “emotional checks” to ensure everyone involved with research isn’t suffering from adverse emotional reactions.

In Conclusion

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