Do This
First, emote on demand. Feel happy now. Feel sad now. Now feel terrified, now surprised. How did you do feeling different emotions on demand? Unless you’ve been trained in the Stanislav method of acting, you probably can’t emote on demand.
Maybe you know the experience of feeling scared or angry and having someone tell you, “Stop worrying. Calm down. There’s nothing to be upset about.” You probably didn’t say, “Wow. Thanks for telling me that. I’m calm now.”
Why can’t you emote on demand? Why can’t you stop feeling emotions on demand? Because that’s not how emotions work. Emotions happen to us. We neither choose to experience them nor stop them on demand.
Emotions are like waves. They’re stirred up by something we experience, wash over us, and resolve. They rise up inside us, remain for a while, and pass if nothing keeps them stirred up.
What I’m saying is that you cannot control your emotions. Stop trying to do so. When you try to control your emotions you end up dysregulating them in one of two ways.
Emotion Dysregulation #1
If you think you control your emotions by stuffing, suppressing, dismissing, or distracting yourself from them, think again. You’re probably just controlling your behavior and refusing to outwardly express your emotions.
For example, when you feel sad and tell yourself you shouldn’t feel sad, you dismiss your sadness and restrict your outward expression of it. That’s controlling your physical response, not your emotion.
Dismissing your emotions only makes you unaware of their continued effects on you. Effects of mentally dismissed emotions include headaches, digestive problems, tense muscles, high blood pressure, disturbed sleep, anxiety, and depression to mention a few.
Face it. Dismissing emotions is not an effective way of regulating your emotions. It’s one way of emotion dysregulation.
Emotions Dysregulation #2
Another way of dysregulating your emotions is by feeding them. You feed your emotions by ruminating on the experience that stirred them up. For example, someone falsely accuses you of stealing something and you feel angry about it. The culprit is discovered, and the experience is over…or is it? Not if you keep replaying the memory of being falsely accused.
When you keep replaying the memory of what happened in your mind you’re ruminating. Cows digest their food by ruminating. It’s great for cows but not for us humans.
When we humans ruminate on memories of experiences that stirred up our anger, fear, or sadness we feed and sustain those emotions. We keep those emotions stirred up long after the experience that stirred them up is over.
Healthy Emotion Regulation
Life-affirming emotion regulation looks like this: You experience being falsely accused of stealing something and feel angry. Anger is the emotion that informs you that you’ve been wronged. You accept your anger, fully feel it, and validate that you’re allowed to feel anger when you’re falsely accused of wrongdoing. Your anger also fuels your response to being wronged. For example, it fuels your response to stand up to your accuser and defending your innocence.
Since anger only informs you about being wronged and fuels your response, you’re safe expressing it. Anger doesn’t determine what you say or do in response. You do. You choose what you say and do.
After you respond and the experience comes to an end, your anger naturally resolves. It remains resolved if you move forward with your life without ruminating on what happened. When you ruminate on what happened, you keep your anger stirred up by your thoughts, not by anything you’re experiencing firsthand.
In sum, you regulate your emotions in a healthy way when you fully feel them and act in life-affirming ways while you feel them. As you do, your emotions naturally resolve.
So, stop trying to control your emotions. Trust them. Go with them and allow them to naturally resolve.