One of the most important skills we can master in life is the ability to manage our emotions and feelings.
The inability to manage and process emotions effectively is at the heart of the majority of mental health issues we face today.
Anxiety and depression happen when we get 'stuck' in high or low emotional states.
Addictions take hold when we rely exclusively on external sources to change the way we feel.
Over-eating becomes a problem when we use food to 'stuff our feelings down' because other options don't seem to be available to us.
If we want happy, successful relationships and true emotional intimacy, we need to be able to express our feelings - no matter how scary - and also be able to sit with the uncomfortable feelings of others.
If we want to achieve the goals we set for ourselves, we need to be able to push through a range of uncomfortable emotions - fear, anxiety, self doubt, guilt, frustration and perhaps shame - to get where we want to be in life.
But learning to deal with emotions and feelings effectively is not something we can learn overnight. Quite often, our brains have developed in ways that make it biologically very difficult to manage emotional states.
If you want to learn a little more about this, check out my video below on "Dealing with overwhelming emotions"
If you found this video interesting, or you struggle to manage your emotions, why not have a look through our schema pages or join our free face book group. Breaking the Patterns from the Past.
Our new online programme to heal the patterns from the past launches on Monday 14th May so if this is something that you might be interested in click here for more details
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the information in the video, so please feel free to leave a comment below.
I have just listened to this video, frequently pressing pause to make notes to refer back to.
It has been so helpful to me – concise yet so informative. I’ve spent a long time trawling through and printing off articles that may help me but this is the absolute best.
Christine starts by briefly explaining you why you probably have an over reactive emotional response to relatively minor situations in the first place. In my case I believe it was from my parents not being emotionally equipped themselves to recognise or pay any attention to my emotional needs or well being during my formative years (particularly teenage years which are the ones I can most easily recall)
Then we are told the effects of not having our early emotions recognised including biological responses on the brain.
Christine then talks us through how to recognise and methods to control the over reactive part of the brain. Hopefully in time this means we can respond in a calmer more appropriate way to everyday occurrences instead of letting our emotions unnecessarily overwhelm us.
The only things I personally find difficult are
1) the visualisation of the wave. I can look at something and name it etc but when it comes to visualising a wave when experiencing anxiety I find that hard to do – is there an alternative.
2) there is a balance to overreacting to emotions and ignoring them. I understand the need to calm down the amygdala response yet we do still need to address emotions and issues that make us feel appropriately upset, angry etc