Emotional Regulation Part One
Emotional Regulation Part One WHAT ARE EMOTIONS? Emotions are reactions that human beings experience in response to events or situations. The type of emotion a person experiences is determined by the circumstance that triggers the emotion. For instance, a person experiences joy when they receive good news. A person experiences fear when they are threatened. Emotions have a strong influence on our daily lives. We make decisions based on whether we are happy, angry, sad, bored, or frustrated. We choose activities and hobbies based on the emotions they incite. Understanding emotions can help us navigate life with greater ease and stability. In 1972, psychologist Paul Ekman suggested that there are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness. In 1999, Ekman expanded his list to include a number of other basic emotions, including embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement. Happiness: Many people strive for happiness, as it is a pleasant emotion accompanied by a sense of well-being and satisfaction. Happiness is often expressed by smiling or speaking in an upbeat tone of voice. Sadness: All of us experience sadness now and then. Someone might express sadness by crying, being quiet, and/or withdrawing from others. Types of sadness include grief, hopelessness and disappointment. Fear: Fear can increase heart rate, cause racing thoughts, or trigger the fight-or-flight response. It can be a reaction to actual or perceived threats. Some people enjoy the adrenaline rush that accompanies fear in the form of watching scary movies, riding roller coasters, or skydiving. Disgust: Disgust can be triggered by a physical experience, such as seeing or smelling rotting food, blood, or poor hygiene. Moral disgust may occur when someone sees another person doing something they find immoral or distasteful. Anger: Anger can be expressed with facial expressions like frowning, yelling, or violent behaviour. Anger can motivate you to make changes in your life, but you need to find a healthy outlet to express anger so it doesn’t cause harm to yourself or others. Surprise: Surprise can be pleasant or unpleasant. You might open your mouth or gasp when you’re surprised. Surprise, like fear, can trigger the fight-or-flight response. MASTERING YOUR EMOTIONAL SELF USING RATIONALITY You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirmswhat you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential. Like everyone, you think you are rational, but you are not. Rationality is not a power you are born with but one you acquire through training and practice. Rationality is then what you will value the most and that which will serve as your guide. Your first task is to look at those emotions that are continually infecting your ideas and decisions. Learn to question yourself: Why this anger or resentment? Where does this incessant need for attention come from? Under such scrutiny, your emotions will lose their hold on you. You will begin tothink for yourself instead of reacting to what others give you. Emotions tend to narrow the mind, making us focus on one or two ideas that satisfy our immediate desire for power or attention, ideas that usually backfire. Now, with a calm spirit, you can entertain a wide range of options and solutions. You will deliberate longer before acting and reassess your strategies. The voice will become clearer and clearer. When people besiege you with their endless dramas and petty emotions, you will resent the distraction and apply your rationality to think past them. Like an athlete continually getting stronger through training, your mind will become more flexible and resilient. Clear and calm, you will see answers and creative solutions that no one else can envision. Whenever anything goes wrong in our life, we naturally seek an explanation. To not find some cause for why our plans went awry, or why we faced sudden resistance to our ideas, would be deeply disturbing to us and intensify our pain. But in looking for a cause, our minds tend to revolve around the same types of explanations: someone or some group sabotaged me, perhaps out ofdislike; large antagonistic forces out there, such as the government or social conventions, hindered me; I received bad advice, or information was kept from me. Finally—if worse comes to worst— it was all bad luck and unfortunate circumstances. These explanations generally emphasize our helplessness. “What could I have done differently? How could I have possibly foreseen the nasty actions of X against me?” They are also somewhat vague. We usually can’t point to specific malicious actions of others. We can only suspect or imagine. These explanations tend to intensify our emotions—anger, frustration, depression—which we can then wallow in and feel bad for ourselves. Most significantly, our first reaction is to look outward for the cause. Yes, we might be responsible for some of what happened, but for the most part, other people and antagonistic forces tripped us up. This reaction is deeply ingrained in the human animal. In ancient times, it might have been the gods or evil spirits who were to blame. We of the present choose to call them other names. The truth, however, is very different from this. Certainly there are individuals and larger forces out there that continually have an effect on us, and there is much we cannot control in
Stress Management Part Three
Stress Management Part Three STAND IN YOUR POWER “When angry count to four; when very angry, swear.” —Mark Twain There are some times when letting out a swear word or two can be extremely cathartic and sometimes empowering, especially when it is used as a mechanism to release the energy of stress and when it doesn’t inflict harm on anyone. Being Powerful Many people think that being powerful means being aggressive, overbearing, dominating, or controlling. And because these qualities are viewed as negative, many people have contradicting feelings about what being powerful means. As a result, instead of standing in their power, many people give their power away, not wanting to be seen as too aggressive or rude. Standing in your power has nothing to do with how you treat people or whether you use force to get what you want. It refers to knowing who you are and standing by yourself and your beliefs.Power isn’t something that comes from external measures but from an internal process of growth, love, acceptance, and awareness. In short, rarely does anyone take your power away; rather, you give it away. Any time you believe you are not enough or do not have enough to manage adversity, you bring yourself closer to feeling powerless, whether it comes from incessant self-doubt and thoughts of being inadequate, feelings of being overwhelmed, worrying about what others may think, being upset that you are not being heard and have no voice, or feeling that you are not deserving of good or success. As long as you hold on to a “not enough” belief or thought, you sabotage your chances of standing in your own power. When you are not in your own power, you cannot fully honour yourself, what is important to you, who you truly are, what you truly want, what you are capable of accomplishing, or standing strong in your decisions. You are not solid in yourself, in your beliefs, or who you are. Giving your power away happens the minute you take care of someone else’s needs at your own expense. It happens when you do not say no and take on more than your plate can handle and when you let other people’s feelings matter more than yours. It happens when you are not mindful of how tired, sad, hungry, or lonely you might be and when you criticize yourself by “should-ing” on yourself. The “Should” Problem I bet you have never paid attention to how many times you say “should” during the course of a day, either directing that “should” toward someone and what they should have done or toward yourself. You may not realize this, but every time you “should” yourself, you put yourself down and shame yourself. Statements such as “I should have known better,” “I should have gotten a salad, not that burger,” “I should lose weight” or “I should have gone left instead of right” underline the notion that you are not enough and need to be ashamed for this. When you berate yourself like this, the stress response gets triggered, and with that comes other negative emotions,memories of feeling similarly in the past, and the associated physiological changes. Perhaps you can witness what should-ing yourself feels like and judge for yourself whether it gives a feeling of invincibility and expansiveness or smallness and contraction. Quieting the Inner Critic We all have an inner critic. For some of you, that critic is a loud voice that tries to convince you that you are not enough through the framework of negative emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. When you are running on empty, when your infrastructure is down, or when you are under a lot of stressand overwhelmed, your inner critic gets louder and louder, cutting you no slack. It doesn’t let you be human or make mistakes. It encourages you to sabotage yourself so that you continue not to take care or support yourself, and ultimately, it causes you to shame yourself and apologize for who you are. The key is to quiet the inner critic and choose to accept and love yourself instead. Making this choice helps you embark on the path of taking care of you, which lets you heal from hurts, get healthy, get fit, understand yourself better along with your needs and wants, communicate your beliefs and desires with clarity and conviction, and stay unapologetic for what you believe and who you are. Getting Clarity about What You Want Clarity is something you gain over time. For the most part, you often have to experience what you don’t want in order to realize what you do want. The problem is that most people ruminate on what they don’t want or don’t like, rather than focusing on the opposite. The more you hold on to a negative situation, the more you hold on to a negative belief or feeling, the more stress builds up in you—at some point, you explode. This happens when you think about a negative situation over and over again, tell the story repeatedly, or ruminate on it in any shapeor form. The more you focus on how something or someone makes you feel negative, the more you deplete yourself, the worse you become on what you want or deserve. The key is to acknowledge and honour the way you feel, understanding that your feelings are appropriate and reasonable, but they are not helping you feel good or remedy the situation. Then decide to change those feelings to ones that are positive, are more powerful, and actually serve your well-being. Stating your thoughts and wants out loud repetitively will further enhance your feeling of power. LAUGH AND LET GO “Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.” —Charlie Chaplin Why Laughter Eases Stress If you think about it, laughter is highly social and part of the human way of life that allows us to bond and get through difficult times. When you laugh, it is rare that others don’t laugh with you,
Stress Management Part Two
Stress Management Part Two DEFEAT DISTRESS WITH LOVE “Where there is anger there is always pain underneath.” —Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now Without suffering or pain, there exists little reason for rage. If you think about a four-year-old girl who is hurt, how does she react? Does she cry out or have a tantrum, or does she talk her way out of whatever she is feeling, find reason, and use her words wisely to express herself? When you are triggered and distressed, you become like this four-year-old child, where reason, rationale, and compassion get thrown out the window because the stress response sends signals to higher brain centres like the prefrontal cortex to shut down, while signalling lower, more primitivebrain centres such as the amygdala to take over. As the amygdala is activated, negative emotions escalate as hurtful and negative memories are brought forward, signalling the stress response to fire more strongly. Tunnel vision takes over and eventually what may have started out as a bit ofstress transforms into raging distress. Trying to stop this process once it starts is akin to trying to stop a shiver when you are freezing cold, which is close to impossible. It is possible to get control over the stress response, shift out of this negative state, and access your higher mind, rationale, and sense of calm. It may take a little work to get there, but it’s possible, especially if you learn to heal old wounds with a lot of love. The Memories That Trigger Distress Though it is rare that your life is actually being threatened, your brain does not usually distinguish between real or imagined threats. If a threat is perceived to be severe, the amygdala is activated to take over, and fear and fear-related behaviours take precedence over your rational brain andthinking abilities. If the threat is perceived to be mild, the amygdala will work alongside higher brain centres, which influence the amygdala to fire less strongly, thus provoking a weaker stress response with less associated negative emotions, which allows for better access to calm and rational thinking and behaviours. In other words, when you perceive that a threat is mild and not life-threatening, you are better able to motivate sound action without losing your cool. The problem lies in the fact that much of the time you are not aware that you perceive a given stress as life-threatening or severe because it is your unconscious mind (not conscious) via your memory bank that is feeling threatened. In such a case, your brain will remember an old memory of being hurt, and a threat that is minor in reality is perceived by the brain as severe. The prefrontal cortex and other higher brain centres shut down, causing the stress response to charge faster and stronger, despite your knowing better. Most of your memories, especially the ones that are associated with strong emotions, aren’t necessarily accurate but are associated with assumptions and beliefs that you developed during the course of your life. Different situations can bring these memories forward as well as the associatedassumptions, beliefs, and behaviours. A stressful situation might trigger a painful memory, which propels negative assumptions and beliefs that eventually lead to a pattern of behaviour. Thebehaviour may be explosive in nature, one of avoidance, passive aggressiveness, abusive (to Self or others), and so forth. The deeper or more hurtful the memory, the easier it is to trigger the automatic response. Painful memories can also be brought forward when a situation is barely even stressful because you are not taking care of yourself or you feel vulnerable or physically ill. This can happen when you are sleep-deprived, full of toxic chemicals (from food or alcohol) that create negative physiology in your body, in financial distress, overwhelmed with life’s responsibilities, having difficulties in a relationship or work, or experiencing any other sort of stress that leads you feeling more victim than victor. The point here is that as long as you are feeling victimized, or you consciously or unconsciously uphold a belief that you are victimized, distress will play a major role in your life. And believe it or not, one way to correct this problem is by having compassion for yourself. Love Stimulates Happy Memories and Reward Love induces a positive sense of reward filled with peace, balance, pleasure, and well-being. Feeling loved stimulates your memories of being happy and content. When in the state of love, your brain pulls from your positive memory bank propagating attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that are positive and well-intentioned. Your positive memory bank, like the negative, also brings forward memories, emotions, and conclusions from your past, but they are all positive. Rather than feeding you stories of negativity, victimization, and suffering, your positive memories provide you with memories of being happy, feeling good, and stories of your success. Tapping into Love You don’t have to actually fall in love with someone to make this work. In fact, love is a physiological state that can be tapped into in a variety of ways that often have nothing to do with anyone else. You can, for instance, use your imagination to focus on the experience of being loved by someone you adore, by the universe, or by an imaginary being. Love, or the physiological state of love, can be accessed through meditation, the practice of compassion, gratitude, mindfulness, spending time in nature, volunteering, other self-care practices (like healthy eating and exercise), spirituality or spiritual activities, social support, and spending time with pets. RESTRUCTURE YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE “It is wise to direct your anger towards problems—not people; to focus your energies on answers—not excuses.” —William Arthur Ward If you haven’t figured it out yet, your brain is not separate from your body and neither are separate from your environment. This means that what you put in your body, do with your body, and surround yourself with in your life will affect how you feel, how you think, how you perceive yourself in your world—enough
Stress Management Part One
Stress Management Part One THE CHOICE TO KNOW YOUR VALUE You have a choice of whether or not you blow up or bliss out, whether you let your stress control you and weaken you or use it to become more powerful and happy. It is up to you to decide if you want to seek value outside of yourself and continuously feel disappointed and lacking, or work toward knowing your own value from within. It is up to you to decide if you want to be stuck waiting for happiness to come or choose to be happy because, ultimately, using stress to your advantage, you can be. Know that stress itself is natural and necessary in that it motivates you to take action when some sort of threat to your state of balance is present. The problem is that when stress triggers negative emotions, the negative emotions can overwhelm you and short-circuit your brain and your higherintellectual reasoning, causing you to fall into behaviours that are often hurtful to others or to yourself. The deeper your hurts, the stronger your negative emotions, and the bigger the negative reaction will be. Trying to stop the reaction is often close to impossible, like trying to stop a shiverwhen it is cold outside. What if you were to start looking at stress differently? What if you were to realize that any time you are feeling stressed or distressed, which is stress associated with a negative emotion, you are actually receiving a warning signal that you are running on empty and you need to refuel? If you were to start approaching distress differently, by reacting less strongly or not at all for that matter, you would give yourself the opportunity to heal any part of you that feels broken. The less broken you then feel, the more whole you become. The more whole you are, the less triggered and distressed you will be. You have more balance within yourself and your life. You feel good, and inevitably, you are a lot happier. A happier and more whole you is a more successful you. In Search of Happy Though most people claim they want to be healthy, the truth is, everyone just wants to be happy. Everyone wants to feel good. The problem is that most people believe that happiness comes from outside factors. Why does this happen? Because inherently, people do not possess a core belief that they are enough and have the ability to create happy with or without the things they seek. They constantly look outside of themselves for happiness—looking for more wealth, a perfect partner, a perfect family, and so forth—not realizing that nothing will ever be enough and no one and nothing can be exactly what they need them to be. The harder they seek, the more disappointed they become, and the harder it seems to achieve happiness. Think about your own life. Perhaps you are married and you are constantly angry with your spouse for not understanding you or for simply not taking out the trash. Perhaps you are single and you believe that if only you had a partner, you would be happy. Or maybe you think you will be happier if you had more money, a different president, a new boss, or a world where everyone was pleasant and courteous. Whatever it is you seek, you don’t have it now, which makes you feel lacking andwill exist forever feeling you are not enough. Fast forward to everyday life, and someone cuts you off in traffic, is rude to you on the phone, is taking too long in the checkout line, or just isn’t listening to you when you are talking, or … boom! You lose it. Surprised? Is it surprising that you blow up when life throws you a curveball when you are already feeling out of balance and unhappy? Freedom Is Bliss The key is to find what you are seeking within yourself, rather than outside of yourself, and to fix the “not enough” syndrome. The more whole and balanced you are, the less triggered you will be, and the more likely you will find your bliss. Do you remember a time when you felt bliss? All you need to do is think back to a time when you felt free, without worries, on top of the world, happy, at peace. Maybe you were on vacation. Or maybe you were five years old playing in the mud. Or perhaps it was the moment you fell in love. Bliss. You have felt it before. You know you have. And since you have felt it before, it is definitely possible to feel it again. The path to attaining bliss is freedom. I am not referring to the freedom that comes in the form of no responsibility to others or to yourself, but the freedom that comes from not being attached—to things, to people, to your emotions, or to your suffering. This kind of freedom involves letting go of the things, beliefs, or ideas you think determine your value and your happiness. It’s the sort of freedom you get when you feel good because you choose to, not because you are waiting for something or someone else to make it so. When you are not attached to your expectations, negative stories, or beliefs about how life is supposed to be, you get freedom. With this freedom, you gethappiness. Happiness lies in your ability to focus on feeling good and feeling bliss in ways that you create yourself. This is not to say that the aim is for you to deny or squelch other feelings; rather, the goal is for you to learn to be unattached to negative feelings and suffering, to be less controlled by themso that you can heal and feel free. When you feel free, negative people and situations simply don’t bother you as much. This article, which has been divided into three parts, will teach specific tools to help you hone in on the cause
Positive Thinking
Positive Thinking Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else. —HENRY WARD BEECHER ARISTOTLE, perhaps the greatest philosopher of all time, studied the human condition more extensively than any other man in history. He concluded that the ultimate goal of human life and endeavour was happiness. He said that every act a person takes is aimed at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it. You want to get a good job. Why? To earn more money. Why? To be able to provide for your family and enjoy a good lifestyle. Why? To achieve personal and financial security. Why? So you can be happy. The True Measure The true measure of how successful you are in life is how happy you are—most of the time. If you are wealthy, famous, or powerful but you are not happy, you have failed in your primary responsibility to yourself as a human being. Every human act is aimed at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it. This does not mean that every act leads to happiness. Many people make a complete mess of their lives attempting to achieve happiness and often end up unhappier and more dissatisfied thanthey would have been if they had done nothing. The positive emotions of love, joy, peace, excitement, success, and the feeling that you are fulfilling your complete potential are what everyone aims at almost all the time. What Successful People Do Successful people practice positive thinking most of the time. As a result, they are happier, more genial, more popular and derive more real pleasure from life than the average person. The opposite of positive thinking is negative thinking. Negative thinkers tend to be hostile and suspicious. They are distrustful of others, and they expect negative things to happen to them most of the time. They have negative personalities and are highly critical of both themselves and the people around them. No matter what happens, they are seldom satisfied for any period of time. Life to them is a series of problems and difficulties over which they feel they have little control and about which there is nothing they can do. When I began asking the question, “Why are some people more successful and happy than others,” I started studying the contrast and difference between positive emotions and negative emotions. What I found changed my life forever. The Great Discovery What I discovered is that everyone wants to be happy, however he defines it. The main obstacle between each person and the happiness that he desires is negative emotions. Negative emotions lie at the root of virtually all problems in human life. If there was some way that you could eliminate negative emotions, you could wipe out most of the problems of mankind. There is a way to do this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you eliminate negative emotions, your mind automatically fills with positive emotions. When you eliminate negative emotions, you become a fully functioning person. When you eliminate negative emotions, you become capable of fulfilling your full potential. The main job of life, then, is to eliminate negative emotions. One Thought at a Time Your mind can only hold one thought at a time—positive or negative. But if you don’t deliberately hold a positive thought or emotion, a negative thought or emotion will tend to fill your mind, at least at the beginning. Negative thoughts tend to be easy and automatic, the default setting of the brain for most people. Thinking positively actually requires effort and determination until it becomes a habitual response to life and circumstances. Fortunately, you can become a purely positive thinker through learning and practice. The starting point of eliminating negative emotions is to understand where they come from in the first place. The good news is that no child is born with any fears or negative emotions. All fears and negative emotions must be taught to the growing child in his or her formative years. And because negative emotions are learned, they can be unlearned. Because negative emotions are habitual ways of responding and reacting to people and situations, they can be replaced with constructive habits of responding and reacting. This is very much a matter of choice. Abraham Lincoln said, “Most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” The New born Child Children are born with two wonderful characteristics, fearlessness and spontaneity. The new born child is completely fearless. The growing child will touch, try, or taste anything, however dangerous. Parents have to spend the first few years of the child’s life preventing the child from killing himself or herself. The child is also born spontaneous. He or she laughs, cries, pees, poops, and expresses himself or herself without limit or constraint, twenty-four hours a day. A child has no concern about the reactions and responses of others. He or she simply does not care. Fears of Failure and Criticism At a young age, because of mistakes that parents make, children begin to develop the two main fears of adult life, the fear of failure and the fear of criticism. When parents, in an attempt to restrain or constrain the child’s behaviour, tell the child, “No! Stop that! Don’t do that! Get away from there!” and, even worse, physically punish the child for fearlessly exploring his or her world, the child soon develops the belief that he or she is small and incompetent. Soon the child refrains from reaching out and trying new things. He or she starts to say “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” when confronted with anything new or different. This feeling of “I can’t” soon turns into the fear of failure. As adults, it becomes a preoccupation with loss or poverty. Adults fear the loss of money and time, the loss of security and approval, the