Managing emotions

Few folks from my generation had the good fortune of learning about the existence of emotional intelligence and the importance of emotions. This often made our life very difficult and most of us had to develop coping mechanisms to survive the upheaval emotions caused on us throughout our lives. Yet, this sad reality doesn’t mean that there’s no remedial help available. 

Of course we all know what feelings are, but are often taken by surprise when emotions invade us and don’t always know how to manage them. The first order of business is to learn how to identify our feeling as they show up. Doing this helps us know what’s going on with our minds and help us chose a way to respond, especially when it involves other people. 

We’re not talking about easy and positive feelings, but tough ones, like anger, jealousy or sadness among many others. So the big job is to learn how to pay attention to these feelings, and this takes some practice; here are a few tips: 

First, we must pay attention and notice our feelings when they erupt and name them. To start, just notice how we feel as emotions start to bubble. We should name them to ourselves. For instance, we might say, "I feel proud" after I have tuned up all the family skis or "I feel disappointed" when my grandson can’t ski with me because his equipment isn’t ready yet, or "I feel happy" when the family got together for Thanksgiving dinner. 

A good idea would be to track one emotion during an entire day, any emotion, like joy, for instance and notice how often we feel it. Each time, make a mental note or write it down grading the feeling as mild, medium, or strong. Let’s also identify all emotions that come to us, find a fitting name for them and be on the look-out for new ones. 

Also, let’s ask ourselves, how many meanings we have for "angry" for example? We might feel annoyed, mad, irate, or fuming... Ideally, we should take a few minutes each day to write about how we feel and why; this would bring us even closer to our emotions. 

Another path to explore would be to start looking for emotions in art, songs, or movies. How did the artists express these feelings. How did they make us feel? The more we become aware of our emotions, the deeper we’ll begin to know ourselves better and understand the people around us. 

Noticing and talking about feelings is a healthy way to express them and release them, instead of letting them building up inside us…