Nobody likes lingering emotions haunting their mind long after the initial incident happened. You may have agreed to forgive and let go but… why are you still feeling so emotional about it???
Below are some tips to help cleanse the mind and body of unwanted emotions:
Recognize/Address Emotions
Start to notice when you feel a particular emotion and call it out. A simple statement such as, “I am feeling sad” will suffice. Notice that you aren’t sad, you are just FEELING sad. There is a huge difference and your words have power so choose them carefully.
It’s also important to make your emotions important. Care about them. Treat your emotions as you would a small child by showing compassion and understanding to yourself.
Remember that keeping a mood journal can really help increase emotional awareness. to read more about emotional intelligence, read this blog.
Listen to your emotions and the messages they are trying to send.
As I’ve shared, emotions are messengers. They are here to tell you something. Get quiet and listen. Play the I Wonder Game. For example, you may notice you are feeling sad. Ask yourself, “I wonder why I’m feeling sad.” Your response might be, “I’m feeling sad because my friends went out and didn’t ask me to go along.” Follow that up with another “I wonder” question. You might say, “I wonder why it makes me feel sad that my friends didn’t ask me to go along?”. Your response might be, “It makes me feel sad because I think that they don’t like me or they don’t think I’m fun.” Keep going until you get to the root cause of your feeling – the core message.
It might be that because of events, or trauma, that happened in your past, you have a deep need to feel important to others significant. Once you’ve realized this, you can find other ways to feel significant without depending on others.
Stress Management
Stress management techniques calm the overactive nervous system, clear the mind, and mitigate the effects of unbridled stress. In fact, with regular practice, you can even change your response patterns to stress. Things that once seemed to be of life-or-death importance will no longer seem so consequential. Evidence-based stress management techniques include: yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and deep breathing. For more tips on managing stress, read this blog.
Acknowledge and validate our emotions.
Understand how you could feel them. Know that it’s perfectly normal to
have emotions. You aren’t “dramatic” or “sensitive”. You’re human. Too often we tend to feel bad for expressing certain emotions simply because of how we were treated when we did in the past.
You could choose to numb but this is your opportunity not to. When we numb, we numb all emotions, not just the bad ones. This means if we aren’t
willing to feel real pain then we also can’t feel real joy. Instead, sit with your emotions and feel them all. It won’t always be pleasant but it will be worth it.
Gratitude
Focusing on the positives instead of the negatives increases well being and happiness, and interferes with the tendency to ruminate (or repeatedly reminiscing on traumas or blunders). Journaling can also help manage the symptoms of depression, without all the potential side effects of anti-depressants.
Prime Your Mind For Success
An emotional hygiene practice basically consists of you establishing a morning routine that serves as a fortification against the daily stress attack. It could be a prayer, a meditative practice, a motivational speech, an inspiring quote, or whatever you need to envelop your mind in positivity so that you are ready for anything that comes your way.
Sleep
About 40 percent of Americans are sleep deprived. The average amount of sleep per night is 6.8 hours, but healthcare professionals recommend 8 or more hours per night for optimal mental and physical functioning. The consistency of sleep and sleep quality matters. Sleeping in on the weekends may interfere with wellbeing. As difficult as it may be, it is best to keep the same schedule during the week and on the weekends. Due to our circadian rhythm (or internal clock), 8 hours of sleep between the hours of 11 pm and 7 am is much better than 10 hours of sleep between the hours of 3 am and 1 pm.
Do the Small Things
You may have heard that romance is more about frequent, small gestures of love than grand, infrequent gestures. In the same way, wellbeing – particularly emotional wellbeing – is in the small details of life. After your boss yells at you, do you take a few deep breaths or continue to ruminate on the traumatic incident? Emotional clarity and health is in the details.
Battle Rumination Head On
If you find yourself reliving the same event over and over, discipline your mind. Journal, vent to someone, or simply replace the negative thought with positivity. Don’t passively allow traumatic events to rule your mind. I usually give myself a 10 minute window to allow a particular thought or memory to invade my mind before I force myself to ignore it. It really is a habit to think positive thoughts. It will become easier to think positive with practice.
Protect Yourself
Forgiveness is vital to wellbeing. But forgiving is not the same as forgetting. Remember triggers of past traumas and actively avoid them – whether they are people or events. Protect yourself from emotional vampires, who suck your positive energy and emotional resources. Stay away from events that are associated with trauma. For instance, a young woman who was raped at a frat party might decide to avoid similar situations in the future.
How to Deal with the Emotions of Others
Sometimes we get overwhelmed with emotions because of the company we keep or the environment we work or live in. Although it’s important that you create an emotional connection with others, especially your clients, and that you seek to understand their emotions. Remember, emotions are the key to our beliefs which means they’re the key to transformation. Below is a six-step process to dealing with the emotions of others.
- Become aware of their emotions. Watch their body language. If you’re not already, start to observe and get in
tune with other people’s emotions. Start becoming aware of their feelings. - Care about the other person’s emotions by seeing them as important and valid. Don’t negate them or
automatically assume that they shouldn’t feel that way. Let them feel how they need to feel in that moment,
regardless of whether or not you think its appropriate. - Listen emphatically to the other person’s emotions and try to understand how they feel and why they might feel
that way. - Acknowledge and validate their emotions. You aren’t saying their emotions are correct. You are just letting them know it’s ok to feel that way. You might say to a client, “I could see how you might feel that way and that must not feel good.”
- Allow the person to fully experience their emotions and feel how they need to feel for however long they need to experience and feel them. Be there for support and love and let it be ok if the other person doesn’t want that.
- Allow the other person to respond however they choose. You can offer new ways to look at the
problem/solution or not.
And while we’re on the topic, it’s important to know and understand that no one overreacts. They react exactly how they feel they should react given the situation and the circumstances. Remember that everything you are
experiencing at any given moment is what’s right for you in that moment.
Now, that being said, you do have to hold yourself accountable for your actions. So while you can feel the way you need to feel, you must also be responsible for how you choose to respond. Fortunately, after reading this blog, you have an entire arsenal of techniques to help you not only manage difficult emotions, but to cleanse your mind of them once and for all.
I hope this helps. If you need assistance working through difficult emotions then my Mind-Body Mastery Course can help. It will show you how incorporate some of the tools and habits outlined in this blog so you can improve your mental and physical health in 8 weeks! Click here for more details.
In Good Health,
Amber Stewart BS,
Holistic Nutritionist
Certified Master Life Coach
CTNC Mental Health Specialist
Hi! My name is Amber and I’m a Body Goals Builder, Master Life Coach, Certified Health Coach, CTNC Mental Health Specialist, Stress Alchemist & Fear Conqueror
For 11 years, I worked as a personal trainer, helping people reach their fitness goals in the gym. But I kept noticing that many people weren’t reaching them simply because they were using exercise as an escape to “sweat out” their life problems instead of addressing them at their core.
After realizing that I was doing the same thing in my life, I developed a simple 4 step Stress Alchemy framework to help me overcome roadblocks in all areas of my life and now I coach others on how to do the same.
At the STEW Project, we are maximizing our living potential by Simply Taking an Emphasis on Wellness.
