NOTE: The information in this blog also applies to anxiety and depression.
Online Therapy to Control Emotions! Do This First!
First, feel happy now. Now feel sad. 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.
Perhaps 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 are like waves. They’re stirred up by something we experience, remain for a while, and resolve when what stirred them up stops.
Emotions happen to you. You neither choose to experience them nor stop them on demand.
You cannot control your emotions. When you try to control your emotions, you dysregulate them in one of two ways.
How Not to Control Your Emotions #1
If you think you control your emotions by fighting them, fleeing from them, giving into them, or trying to talk yourself out of feeling them, think again. You’re probably just resisting them ir totally giving into them.
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, anxious feelings, and depressed feelings to mention a few.
Dismissing emotions is not an effective way of regulating your emotions. It’s one way of emotion dysregulation.
How Not to Control Your Emotions #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 real 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 you ruminate on memories of experiences that stirred up your anger, fear, or sadness you feed and sustain those emotions. You keep those emotions stirred up long after the experience that stirred them up is over.
Healthy Emotion Control
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 defend your innocence.