Don't let your emotions consume you
Anger, anxiety, sadness, stress, fear, jealousy, etc.
These negative emotions are natural and it’s okay to embrace these emotions sometimes.
We’re only human. In fact, we need a bit of these emotions in our lives as we use it somewhat like a survival tool.
What I mean is for example,
Stress
Stress is related to your cortisol level and in simple terms, cortisol at good levels can help improve your memory.Whenever you had exams, were you that kid in class who left it till the last few days to study?
Yea, you.
That’s because you were probably feeling no stress at the beginning; thinking the exam days were still far away.
When it came closer to your exam day, you probably started to develop a sense of stress. This stress is necessary to motivate you to study.
When you feel a sense of control over your situation, you’ll know the stress level is
just nice and your cortisol level is just right.
BUT if (in this scenario) you left your studying to be done wayyyy too close to your exam day, that stress level you experience, is BAD. That’s when you lose control of your situation.
YES, it does increase your cortisol level even more at that point,
But NO, it won’t help improve your memory at this level.
When you are on that high dose of cortisol level, you’ll start forgetting things and you will have difficulty trying to remember new things!
Fear and anxiety
It’s also okay to be scared sometimes!We need a bit of this to protect us by warning us from any potential danger.
When we are scared, we are aware of danger, and only then, we would think up all these different scenarios and how we are going to deal with it.
These emotions prepare us.
Well those were just two examples as to why we may sometimes need to embrace negative emotions.. and I think you get the idea now
Managing your emotions
I know. It feels good sometimes, shouting your anger away and crying your sadness dry.But won’t it feel better to not be THAT MUCH affected?
“YOU MAKE ME ANGRY!”
“He made me sad”
“She pisses me off so much!”
DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
Well, I’m guilty of it too.
Ok honestly, I sometimes still let my emotions get the best of me.
To make my explanation easier, I’ll base it solely on Anger.
As much as anger may seem to be an interpersonal event or a response to something outside of us, it most often is an intrapersonal event: we make ourselves angry.
We often blame others for the way we feel.
We try to locate the source of anger OUTSIDE of us. “YOU irritate me.”
Don’t do that.
STEP 1: OWN IT.
Admit it. Admit the anger belongs to you.
You are your own person and you own your own feelings. Don’t blame anyone else for the way you feel. Don’t let anything outside of you have power over you.
STEP 2: ACCEPT IT & MOVE ON.
This is not to say whatever happened is acceptable.
It just means that you know shit happens all the time- It’s inevitable. We may not be able to control some things that happen in our life, but what we can control is our response.
