Mental Health: Three ways to control your emotions
Emotions are more than mental phenomena, they are also biological. They are influenced, and sometimes caused, by changes in hormone balance, changes in temperature, the food you eat, and so on. With the right knowledge, you could learn to influence the way you feel, free yourself from the tyranny of emotional states, and live a healthier and much more effective life. A life where you’re able to do what you need to do, despite how you feel about it, a life where clarity of thought isn’t affected by emotion, a life where anxiety and depression, are states that can be effectively managed rather than succumbed to.
To get you started, here are three things you can do to influence your emotional states:
- Recognize that it is human to feel emotion
We are emotional creatures, our feelings are ways of identifying what is happening within, which is a wonderful tool to have. However, we tend to mistake these events happening within for what is happening in the external world, and this is where our mistakes lie. Understanding that it is human to feel, and that our feelings have no bearing on what’s happening in the real world, allows us accept our emotions without letting them govern our decision making.
- Practice Cognitive Restructuring
The words we use to describe our emotional states are important. Words influence how we perceive the world, and we are always describing the world. One helpful way to deal with emotions using words is to reframe your experience of the emotion, e.g. when angry, rather than saying “I am angry,” it would be more helpful to say “I feel anger.” It’s a subtle shift, but where the former statement claims and identifies with the anger, the latter creates a recognition that the anger is a feeling that is separate from you. Also, questioning your emotions with a “so what?” takes the intensity out of them. For example you’re scared your boss will yell at you for not delivering on a project, asking yourself “so what if he yells at me?” helps you realize that getting yelled at is not that big of a deal, and does not merit the intensity of the fear you feel.
- Listen to music
The power of music over emotions is one that people still struggle to understand till this day. We’ve all had moments when we were either drowning in nostalgia, bubbling with energy, or overwhelmed with melancholy all because of a song, and thanks to today’s ease of accessing music, this power to influence is readily available. Listening to fast paced music when you’re emotionally tired helps you build motivation, listening to classical music, when you’re scatterbrained, or anxious, helps you relax and sort your thoughts and listening to nature sounds, e.g. raindrops can also induce a calming effect and help you focus. All in all, music can be a powerful tool in influencing your emotions, use it wisely.
