Managing emotions - is it possible to control your feelings, techniques and exercises?

Managing emotions is an essential skill for every civilized person. Some, faced with the destructive effect of emotions in conflicts, consider them evil, strive to suppress, tightly control them, and even get rid of emotionality altogether. Have they achieved success? No, this path can only lead to neurosis, making emotional reactions inadequate to the real situation. It would be correct to accept emotional reactions as an integral mental phenomenon, without painting them in negative tones as something inherently bad or harmful.

The importance of the ability to manage emotions is explained by the fact that they are easy to stimulate, emotions have an impact on many processes, both in the personal and interpersonal reality of everyone, they are easily included and activate our behavior patterns. Emotion management is sometimes mistakenly understood as suppression, but this method of processing emotional reactions when abused is not only ineffective, but also extremely harmful.

Managing emotions involves the ability to engage them and give them direction—for example, to inspire oneself and others to take action. And today the question before us is no longer “how to get rid of emotions,” but “how to let go of your emotions.” We have learned to suppress ourselves and have lost the ability of natural self-expression, roughly cutting off reactions instead of competently transforming them, directing them, like a river in a different direction, sublimating them. Suppressed reactions are a common cause not only of a person’s mental problems, but also of many diseases that are psychosomatically closely related to experiences.

Is it possible to control emotions?

The degree of manifestation of emotional reactions depends not only on a person’s upbringing, but also on the characteristics of his temperament. Therefore, some believe that they will not be able to teach themselves to manage their experiences and feelings. This is not at all true - psychologists have developed ways to learn how to manage your emotions.

People think about managing their emotions after they have reacted to an event or have been told that their feelings are being too intense. They promise that next time they will think before they do or say anything. To fulfill it, you need not only desire, but also knowledge of how to control emotions.

Interesting. It is easier to monitor their emotional behavior for those people who have been taught this skill since childhood. They are taught not that they need to always be cool, but to understand when to show emotions, when to remain calm.

It is possible to master this art as an adult. What is emotion management in psychology? This is the ability to change the psychological state and degree of manifestation of feelings using special exercises. There are two options:

• weakening of emotional reactions;
• strengthening emotional reactions.

Most often, they learn to weaken; in some cases, strengthening of emotions is required. Sometimes this is done before a speech, meeting or negotiation to make it more successful. Therefore, before trying to control your feelings, you need to decide for what purpose you need to do this: negotiation, personal. Then select methods to manage emotions.

How to control your emotions

You should be prepared for the fact that you won’t be able to completely control your psychological state right away, because the habit of acting thoughtlessly and expressing your opinion has been formed for many years. Now you need to develop a new skill: monitor the severity of your reactions.

You should not assume that learning to manage emotions is possible only up to a certain age. A person must always improve himself; mastering such a skill relates to personal growth. How quickly an individual masters this skill depends on his determination, the chosen methodology and the regularity of the exercises.

Why do you need to control your emotions?

There are individuals who pride themselves on their emotionality. Creative people need a heightened perception of the world. In most cases, self-control of your feelings is the key to successful social interaction.

Development of intelligence - how you can improve your mental abilities

Why you need to master the art of controlling emotions:

1. You need to make important decisions, guided by a “cold” mind and being in a calm psychological state. When a person is in a stressful situation, it becomes more difficult to find optimal solutions. Psychologists advise you to stop being nervous and start analyzing.
2. Self-control of emotions helps improve the quality of social contacts. People will be happy to communicate more with those who know how to listen, empathize and not put their feelings above the feelings of others.

Important! Some people mistakenly believe that there is no need to deal with emotions when communicating with loved ones, because they should accept the person for who he is. This does not mean that the thoughtless display of emotions does not affect their psychological state. A person’s ability to manage feelings will show his care and respect for loved ones.

1. This skill will be useful for women during pregnancy. The emotional state of the mother affects the development of the child. If a woman wants her pregnancy to proceed without complications, she needs to remove irritability and excessive emotionality. During this period, the lady becomes especially receptive; this skill will allow her to maintain a relationship with her man.
2. Allows you to cope with stress faster. Self-control exercises teach you not to focus on negative manifestations. A person looks for ways to solve a problem, and does not engage in constant reflection and complaints to others.
3. Possession of self-control has a beneficial effect on the mental state and functioning of the nervous system.

Important! The ability to manage emotions does not mean completely suppressing them. It teaches their selective manifestation and more practical application.

Showing anger

Controlling your psychological state has a beneficial effect on all areas of life. A person’s actions should not be guided by emotions; he must make the right decisions himself, analyzing the situation and taking into account the feelings of the people around him.

Ways to control your condition

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Psychologists have developed algorithms for self-regulation of one’s condition. One of the popular ones is the system created by Dale Carnegie. The exercises he suggested are easy to do every day and are applicable in different situations. How to control your emotions:

1. You need to live one day at a time. Constantly expecting negative consequences, “winding up” yourself - all this has a destructive effect on the nervous system. You can’t live by constantly thinking about the past and future; you should focus on solving pressing problems.
2. Focusing on positive phenomena. It is human nature to return more to the negative aspects. This is wrong - it is necessary to strive for positive memories and attitudes to occupy a larger part. This will help you look at the problem from a different angle.
3. One of the important methods of psychocorrection is developing the ability to react correctly to failure. A person should prepare himself for the most unfavorable outcome, so that it does not come as a surprise, and choose ways to solve it.
4. You need to learn to accept what a person cannot change. This will save you stress, leaving you time and resources to deal with things that you can influence.
5. Psychologists advise making a rating of tasks for the day, especially if most of them need to be completed in one day. They start with the most important things, gradually moving on to solving other problems. This method allows you to effectively cope with a large number of cases.
6. Dale Carnegie taught his clients the importance of shifting from problems to other activities. When a person is depressed, psychologists recommend focusing on work or finding someone who needs help and surrounding them with care.
7. Negative emotions are destructive, leading to conflict and complications in relationships, especially resentment towards others. It will be more productive and better for your psychological state to distance yourself from unpleasant people and, if possible, avoid communicating with them.
8. Most people do good deeds in order to receive recognition. This setting is incorrect. You need to do good deeds without expecting anything in return except joy from the process itself. This will relieve the feeling of disappointment that sometimes arises when the response does not meet expectations. After all, a person received his reward after experiencing a feeling of joy.
9. An important lesson is to be able to find positive moments even in negative episodes of life. Having found them, a person can use them for his own benefit.
10. You need to share your emotions and feelings with your loved ones.

To effectively master this technique, it is recommended that you re-read these tips so that they remain in your memory. It is worth paying attention to the analysis of life situations in which one of the above methods of self-regulation of emotional state could be applied.

Choosing methods for self-control of emotions

Learning self-control requires constant practice. Having mastered all the practical techniques, a person will use them easily and naturally. Some companies organize special trainings.

Emotional intelligence and ways to develop it

“At the root of every strong emotion is a urge to action.
Managing this impulse is the essence of emotional intelligence.” Daniel Goleman writer, psychologist, science journalist (USA)

What is an emotion?

Emotion
(from the Latin
emoveo
- “shock”, “wave”) is a mental process of medium duration, reflecting a subjective evaluative attitude towards existing or possible situations and the objective world.

How does emotion arise?

1. First comes the stimulus from the outside world.
2. Then the processes responsible for emotion are launched in the subcortex of the brain.

Emotions are characterized by three components:

1. An experienced or conscious sensation in the psyche of an emotion.
2. Processes occurring in the nervous, endocrine, respiratory, digestive and other systems of the body.
3. Observable expressive complexes of emotions, including on the face.

Emotions are distinguished from other types of emotional processes: affects, feelings and moods. Like many other mental phenomena, emotions are understood differently by different authors, so the above definition can be considered neither accurate nor generally accepted. Remember that emotions and feelings are not the same thing. Although many psychologists consider these phenomena to be the same.

Theory of Basic Emotions

Basic emotions
are elementary emotions that are no longer split into anything, and are themselves components of other complex emotions.

Izard Carroll is an American psychologist. Specialist in human emotions. Author of the differential theory of emotions. In the analysis of emotions, he identified three levels:

1. Neurophysiological
2. Expressive
3. Subjective

Carroll described such fundamental emotions as interest, pleasure, surprise, disgust, anger, contempt, grief, shame, guilt, fear.
Paul Ekman is an American psychologist, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and an expert in the fields of emotion, interpersonal communication, psychology, and “lie detection.” Identified basic emotions: happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise, anger, fear.

The theory of emotions, which emerged in 2014, is very simple, it describes only 4 emotions. When several people saw portraits of other people's facial expressions, they were given 6 basic emotions. The experiment revealed that many people do not see the differences between some emotions. Of the six emotions presented, four were read best:

1. joy
2. sadness
3. fear
4. anger

Based on four basic emotions, you can develop others; these will be some kind of add-ons.
Daniel Goleman: Emotional Intelligence. Why it may matter more than IQ

American psychologist Daniel Goleman argues that our emotions play a much larger role in achieving success at home and at work than is commonly believed. But what is “emotional intelligence”? Can it be measured? What is the difference between “ordinary” intelligence and “emotional” intelligence?

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What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence
, or
EQ
(English
emotional intelligence
) is the sum of a person’s skills and abilities to recognize emotions, understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people and their own, as well as the ability to manage their emotions and the emotions of other people in order to solve practical problems.

Emotional intellect

is one of the most popular concepts of the last decade. Experts from the World Economic Forum included it in the top 10 most important skills in 2021. On the Amazon.com website, for the query “emotional intelligence” you can find more than 6,000 links (for comparison, Ozon.ru provided only 138 products on the topic of “emotional intelligence” in March 2018). So it can be assumed that in Russia the topic is still only at the beginning of its development.

If emotional intelligence is not developed, it is very difficult for a person to recognize his emotions and read the state of other people.

Short story

In 1990, researchers John (Jack) Mayer and Peter Salovey published a short paper in a scientific journal called “Emotional Intelligence.”
In it, they described their idea of ​​what “emotional intelligence” is, substantiated why, in their opinion, we are talking about intelligence, and outlined the difference between social and emotional intelligence. In 1995, New York Times journalist Daniel Goleman released his famous best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and a half. Daniel Goleman is often called the author of the concept of “emotional intelligence,” but this is not entirely correct.

When the concept of emotional intelligence gained wide popularity, the Israeli psychologist Ruven Bar-On also decided to compete for the primacy of the topic. Legend has it that “in the first copy of his doctoral dissertation, which was submitted in 1985, Bar-On proposed a quantitative approach to creating an “EQ analogous to an IQ score.” However, people who saw that very first copy claim that there is no talk of anything like that. One way or another, little-known in Russia, Bar-On is one of the most authoritative experts in the field of emotional intelligence in the world.

Mayer-Salovey model

Model Ruvena Bar-On

Goleman model

All models have something in common with each other and contain basically the same components, but each of the psychologists brought something of their own.

What's good about emotional intelligence? To whom is it important?

EQ is based on four factors:

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-control
3. Empathy
4. Relationship management

A good leader will effectively cope with his responsibilities when his emotional intelligence reaches 85%.

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence Quotient

A person with high emotional intelligence:

• understands his emotions;
• knows what role feelings and emotions play in communicating with people;
• knows how to express his emotions in such a way as to establish and maintain friendly relationships with others;
• strives to learn and enrich his inner world;
• knows how to regulate their emotions;
• knows how to manage internal motivation and maintain the mindset to achieve goals.

A person with low EQ:

• conflicted;
• irritable;
• indecisive;
• strives to keep everything under control;
• subject to strong feelings of anger.

“It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of the heart over the head - it is the only way the two intersect.”

David R. Caruso is a psychologist, professor of psychology at Yale University (USA), management specialist and co-author of the concept of emotional intelligence.

There are no bad and good emotions. We need all emotions. Even fear, sadness and anger.

Phases of managing emotions:

1. Identification. Emotion recognition.
2. Understanding the cause of the emotion. What was its launch?
3. Intelligence will help you direct your emotion for your own good and make it useful.
4. Direct actions aimed at making the emotion useful. Using the Rules of the World - everything in the world should be useful. Since emotion is a resource, you need to use this resource.

When and who needs to develop emotional intelligence?

• When you realize that you are stuck in one emotion.
• When you step on the same rake, you constantly make the same mistake.
• When you are stuck in a certain cycle and do not move towards success, do not develop, and stagnate.
• When other people's lives are much more interesting than your life.

Sergey Shabanov, Alena Aleshina: Emotional intelligence. Russian practice

The concept of emotional intelligence came into use recently, in 1990, but during this time it has become an integral part of Western psychology. The book shows how to apply accumulated knowledge to Russian reality. We often talk about the mysterious Russian soul. Perhaps it is emotional intelligence that guides us more than IQ?

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How to develop emotional intelligence?

Step one

The first and most important thing is to develop the skill of awareness of your emotions.
Despite the fact that this skill usually looks the least interesting, it is hardly possible to control anything without being aware of your actions. That is why, first of all, it is important to learn to understand at each moment of time (if necessary) what I am feeling now, that is, what emotion I am experiencing. This is not so easy to do, since there are a number of objective difficulties. For training, it is advisable to start tracking your emotional state every day at a certain time; for this, you can set reminders on your phone with the question “How are you feeling?” or keep a diary of emotions in which you will write down the results of your work every day. Throughout the day, track what emotions you experience, what caused these emotions, track the general background of your mood.

At the time you choose, record the facts: what are the strongest emotions you remember today, at what moments they arose. Write down what sensations arose in your body while experiencing these emotions, what thoughts came to you at that moment? Any emotion is a release of a certain hormone. Therefore, it is important to track where sensations originate in the body.

Record your observations in free form or in a table:

Step two

Improving skills in understanding other people's emotions. To do this, you can pay attention to the nonverbal behavior of another person and develop empathy skills. If communication occurs with a loved one, you can check the correctness of your guesses by asking: “How are you feeling?” or making the assumption: “I think you’re upset about something right now.”

Practice “Mute TV”

Turn on some feature film that you haven’t watched yet and turn off the sound.
Watch a movie for some time, observing the characters’ gestures, facial expressions, location in space and thinking about what emotions they are experiencing now. This is a very exciting process. If you don't really like watching feature films this way, watch some TV debates or news. Watch a fragment of a familiar film and a fragment of an unfamiliar one with the sound turned off. What is the difference in the observation process? Does knowing the plot hinder or help you compare “nonverbalities” with emotions? Compare films of different genres. What are the similarities and differences between nonverbal behavior across cultures? Watch a movie with famous actors and some cheap TV series. Compare the nonverbal expressions of actors with real people in some reporting program.

Practice “Public Transport”

This game has an additional bonus. To watch silent television, you must have time, a television or computer, and the consent of relatives to use it. And when you are on public transport, you have free time, which can be occupied with useful activities. Therefore, when you are tired of the newspaper you bought for a trip on the subway, or the book you took on the train or plane runs out, you can switch to this game. How do these people feel? If you see a couple, what kind of relationship are they in? If someone tells someone something, is the story funny or sad?

Step three

Managing your emotions.
Important! Do not confuse managing emotions and controlling them, suppressing them. Often the only way of managing that we master perfectly is to suppress our emotions. However, emotions cannot be suppressed forever; they will either break through in another situation (which is called “accumulated”), or will manifest themselves against a psychosomatic background (for example, a headache will begin). Young children are often told: “Boys don’t cry,” “Good girls don’t do that,” etc. Therefore, many of us are accustomed to suppressing our emotions in order to fit into society. There are other ways to manage your emotions. We know many of them: breathe, walk, do some physical activity. One of the effective ways to manage your emotions is verbalization - describing your state out loud: “I’m a little worried, anxious, feeling slightly irritated,” etc. You can not only change the intensity of a negative emotion, but also replace it with another, more positive one.

Practice “Body Methods”

Choose a body-based method for managing emotions that can be used in almost any situation. For example, imperceptibly clench and unclench your fists. Stand on your tiptoes several times. Get up, walk a little and sit down again. Practice using it at least once an hour.

Practice "Problems"

Write a list of problems that are relevant to you.
Remember the maximum number of problems (note: at first some difficulties may arise, and then the process will begin - we know how to look for problems). Now reframe these problems into goals. Make sure to formulate goals positively, that is, without using the particle “not”, as well as the words “quit”, “stop”, “stop”. Formulate your goals as specifically as possible, and be sure to determine the time frame by which you plan to achieve them. Notice how your emotional state has changed compared to when you started.

Step four

Managing other people's emotions. This includes a whole range of skills associated with the ability to calm another person if he is very angry, afraid or upset, as well as the ability, on the contrary, to “infect” other people with positive emotions.

Practice “Emotional motivators in my company”

Think about it and write down what you can do to maintain a constant atmosphere of drive, excitement and enthusiasm in your company.

Practice “Emotional Balance”

Choose some personal or business relationships that are meaningful to you.
For personal relationships, it is enough to remember a period from several days to a week; for business relationships, it is better to take a longer period - one or two months. Divide the sheet in half with a vertical line, mark the left column as “+”, and the right column as “-”. Write down in the left column all your actions that, in your opinion, improved the state of your account (those actions that improved your partner’s mood), in the right column - those that worsened it. See how you have impacted your emotional balance in this relationship over this period. Have you managed to improve it or at least maintain it at the same level? Or is the number of actions in the right column becoming depressingly prevalent?

If you're one of those people who only has a bunch of great actions in the left column, ask yourself if you're throwing the balance off balance there, too. Are you giving too much to your partners and asking too little in return?

In both cases, it is worth drawing up an action plan that will help you maintain balance in a more or less equilibrium state. It is useful to carry out such an analysis for yourself at least once a month for the most significant figures and “accounts” and once every few months for people important to you.

Bonus tip

Be sure to watch the cartoon “Puzzle” if you haven’t seen it yet. Get a lot of impressions and learn how emotions arise.

Holding Emotions

How to make a girl fall in love with you - psychological techniques and advice

The ability to keep feelings under control is a real art, because unexpressed reactions can cause psychosomatic diseases. It is important to find a balance between expressing emotions and controlling them. If you constantly suppress your feelings and do not express your opinion, a person may become dissatisfied, and others will not know about his psychological state.

Finding a balance between expressing and controlling emotions

When expressing emotions, you need to respect the boundary so as not to go beyond the boundaries and not create a conflict situation. Therefore, it is important to learn how to control attacks of anger and other negative reactions. It is necessary to express your opinion tactfully, without hurting the feelings of others. At the same time, you should speak firmly so that people respect the other point of view.

Reactionary thoughts

Most of the emotions that we experience appear as a result of the appearance of some stimulus. This could be a certain person, situation, image, behavior of other people, or one’s own psychological state. All this can be an irritant for you, that is, something that invades your personal comfort and makes you feel uncomfortable. To get rid of this condition, we react (usually in a negative way) to it in the hope that it will go away. However, this strategy almost never works.

The fact is that any irritation swings the pendulum of your emotions and the emotions of another person. Your irritated response leads to irritation of the interlocutor, which in turn forces him to “raise the stakes.” In this situation, someone must show wisdom and extinguish passions, otherwise everything will get out of control.

By the way, we will return to the image of a pendulum more than once in our lessons, because this is an excellent metaphor for indicating that emotions have the ability to increase their intensity.

When we experience the action of a stimulus, reactionary thoughts flash through our heads, whether we are aware of them or not. It is these thoughts that prompt us to escalate the conflict and lose our temper. To train yourself not to react instinctively, learn one simple rule: between the action of a stimulus and the reaction to it, there is a small gap, during which you can tune in to the correct perception of the situation. Practice this exercise every day. Whenever you feel triggered by a word or situation, remember that you can choose how to respond to it. This requires discipline, self-control and awareness. If you train yourself not to give in to reactionary thoughts (usually generalizations or feelings of resentment), you will notice the benefits this brings.

What does psychology say?

Psychologists advise not to hold back your emotions, but not to throw them out on others. There are other ways to learn to control and restrain your emotions that are productive:

• projecting feelings onto a piece of paper;
• use of anti-stress coloring books;
• a good way to relieve stress is to play sports or work associated with physical activity;
• watching your favorite movie or reading a book;
• relaxation accompanied by suitable music or an audiobook.

Psychologists advise finding a hobby so that a person has something to do that brings him pleasure. Experts recommend sharing your experiences with loved ones (wife, husband, parents, friends), who can provide not only moral support, but also give practical advice.

The meaning of a person's emotional state

Certain responses can serve as an incentive for people to take action. Your emotional state affects relationships with others, so for successful socialization you need to be able to subtly sense the mood of your interlocutor.

Communication with a psychologist

Strong manifestations of feelings inspire creative people to create their masterpieces. A person becomes more receptive to the world around him. Therefore, it is impossible to completely suppress feelings and not express your thoughts.

Controlling emotions is not only the key to successful communication. A person learns to monitor his facial expressions, gestures, behavior, begins to better understand the inner world of others and create a favorable environment. Self-correction teaches you to concentrate on solving important problems and pleasant emotions. Managing your thoughts, experiences and other manifestations of feelings is one of the sections of mental hygiene.

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“Ways to regulate emotional states. What can you do on your own?

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“Ways to regulate emotional states. What can you do on your own?