Pearl When you encounter difficulty regulating your emotions, the first thing you should do is not to force yourself to calm down quickly, but to stop first and don't scold yourself for "why you can't even manage your emotions well." Many people are stuck in an endless cycle of emotions and cannot get out of them. The essence is not that the emotions themselves are difficult to digest, but because they are first self-denied by "I can't even control my emotions", which first drags down most of their strength.
There is actually quite a quarrel about emotion regulation on the Internet these days. One group says to quickly "change your mind in a positive way" and turn any negative emotion into a good thing. The other group says that you should "lye completely flat" and do nothing to wait for the emotion to flow away. Many friends around me have tried these two methods. Either they suppress themselves until they have a tight chest and a headache when they forcefully change their thoughts, or they become more and more aggrieved when they lie down.
Last month, I met a young girl who works as an e-commerce operator. She went through the Double Eleven sales for 22 consecutive days and only slept three or four hours a day. On the last day when she came home from get off work, she kicked the cat litter box with her feet. The cat that she had owned for two years jumped up and scratched the back of her hand. She squatted in the hallway and cried. While crying, she kept scolding herself, "Isn't it a big deal? It's useless." As a result, the more she scolded, the harder she cried. In the end, she was gasping for breath and sat on the ground for two hours without standing up. Later, she tried a very simple method. The next time she had another collapse, she touched her chest and said to herself, "Oh, I feel so wronged right now. I have endured it for so long. It's so hard." In just three to five minutes, the air that was stuck in her chest cleared up on its own.
In fact, this is not chicken soup for the soul. You will understand if you think of your emotions as overflowing porridge on the stove. You will either rush to cover the lid and press hard, and the porridge will be all over the stove, or you will stand aside and wait for it to boil dry. In the end, the pot will burn out. Instead, it is better to reach out and turn down the fire first. This action of turning off the fire is to first let go of the judgment of right and wrong of the emotion and admit "I am just uncomfortable right now." This is enough. When I was learning mindfulness therapy before, my teacher mentioned the concept of "cognitive dissociation." To put it bluntly, it is simple. It means to separate "I am an emotionally unstable waste" from "I am experiencing an uncomfortable emotion right now." The former is a knife stabbing oneself, while the latter is just an objective fact. The fact itself is not lethal, and the self-attack attached to it is the most hurtful.
When your emotions really hit your throat, you don’t need to find any complicated adjustment methods. Just touch something cold, such as an iced Coke can, the glass on the window sill, or even an egg just taken out of the refrigerator. The moment your fingertips touch the coolness, your attention will naturally be brought back to the present moment from the messy thoughts in your mind. Most of the time, you can relax in 10 seconds. To be honest, no one requires you to be the master of your emotions. Letting it run wild occasionally is better than holding it in and releasing a big bomb, right?
