Stress Management – Taming Stressful Emotions
Does Stress Send Your Emotions Over the Edge?
What do you do when stress sends your emotions out of control? When emotions erupt despite your best intentions, don’t panic. There is no need to heap judgements on your head for being emotionally distraught, on top of the already trying situation.
Whether you are raging, hurt and tearful, or just wildly frustrated, when your emotions are running you, you need strategies to help regain balance. The following tips for getting back into balance are simple. They can support you in moving back to “calm enough” to handle the situation.
Practice in Your Imagination
Using these tips in the midst of an emotional outburst is not always easy. If you are prone to emotional flare-ups, practice these in your imagination now so you’ll be prepared with two or three strategies when tensions are high.
- Breathe. Take several slow, deep breaths. Focus on your process of breathing. Feel your lungs expanding and your abdomen moving.
- Tell yourself, “Relax. This will turn out all right.” Talk to yourself rationally about the situation.
- Remind yourself that it’s okay to feel upset or angry. It’s part of being human.
- Remember you have choices. Tell yourself, “I can choose to be calm now,” or “I am ready to be calm now. I am choosing personal peace again.”
- Look for anything positive or humorous in the upsetting situation. Once, in the middle of a tearful argument, my husband mooned me. I laughed so hard I forgot to be upset.
- Mentally step aside and look at yourself reacting emotionally. Look at yourself choosing different responses. Look at yourself doing something different this time.
- Count. Focus your mind on numbers. If counting to ten doesn’t do it, count to 100 or 500.
- Give yourself a time out. Walk away from the situation or argument. Lie down or go for a walk.
- Focus on how you can learn and grow from this experience. At the very least, your emotions are providing feedback about your life. They may be showing exactly what you don’t want in your life any longer.
- Accept what is so. If you generally avoid emotions (anger or tears), but this outburst sneaked up on you, you may feel better after the release of negative energy. For the future, learn ways to acknowledge and address your feelings when they are smaller, not volcanic!
Tender Observation
Observe yourself and your emotions with loving kindness to achieve the stress management that you desire. Treat yourself tenderly even as your seek ways to improve. You can be in the middle of an argument or a tearful outburst and remind yourself, “This is human, this is a natural part of learning and growing.” Keep doing your best and focus on the positive and you will regain your poise and harmony and learn to manage stress more easily.
Note: If stress sends your emotions out of bounds such that you get aggressive or violent, or if you engage in name calling and excessive blaming of others, you may want to seek professional help for managing your emotions or the high levels of stress in your life.
For more stress reduction tips, sign up for my free newsletter, 17 Simple Stress Solutions, at http://www.powerofpersonalpeace.com/optin.htm Check out my articles on success, less stress, and my Ask Dr. Ilenya advice column at my blog, http://lovingyoursuccess.blogspot.com
Dr. Ilenya Marrin is a personal peace coach, spiritual counselor, inspirational speaker and author of ebooks The Power of Personal Peace: Reducing Stress by Loving Yourself from the Inside Out and 77 Loving Steps for Success.
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