You can not hold back your emotions, get angry, scream, laugh, cry bitterly and be loudly indignant. Do you think anyone likes such sincerity? Only your enemies enjoy watching this performance. Learning to manage emotions!
Sometimes, succumbing to emotions or allowing ourselves to be led by false feelings, we commit actions that we later repent of. At the same time, we make excuses that we have lost control over ourselves, so emotions have prevailed over reason. That is, we did not control our emotions, but they controlled us.
Is it really that bad? Perhaps there is nothing good in the lack of self-control. People who do not know how to control themselves, maintain self-control and subordinate their feelings to their will, as a rule, do not achieve success either in their personal lives or in the professional sphere.
They do not think about tomorrow, and their expenses often far exceed their income.
Unrestrained people flare up like a match during any quarrel, unable to stop in time and compromise, which earns them the reputation of a conflict person. At the same time, they also destroy their health: doctors claim that many diseases have a direct connection with such negative emotions as anger, etc. People who value their own peace and nerves prefer to avoid them.
People who are not used to limiting themselves spend too much free time in empty entertainment and useless conversations. If they make promises, they themselves are not sure whether they can fulfill them. It is not surprising that no matter what field they work in, they are rarely professionals in their field. And the reason for it all is lack of self-control.
A developed sense of self-control allows you to maintain a cool head, sober thoughts and understanding in any situation that feelings may turn out to be false and lead to a dead end.
There are also situations when we need to hide our emotions in our own interests. “Sometimes I am a fox, sometimes I am a lion,” said the French commander. “The secret... is to understand when to be one and when to be another!”
People who control themselves deserve respect and enjoy authority. On the other hand, many people think they are callous, heartless, “insensitive blockheads” and...incomprehensible. Much more understandable to us are those who from time to time “go all out,” “break down,” lose control of themselves and commit unpredictable acts! Looking at them, we also seem to ourselves not so weak. Moreover, becoming restrained and strong-willed is not so easy. So we reassure ourselves that the life of people who are guided by reason and not by feelings is joyless, and therefore unhappy.
That this is not the case is evidenced by an experiment conducted by psychologists, as a result of which they came to the conclusion: people who can overcome themselves and resist momentary temptation are more successful and happy than those who are unable to cope with emotions.
The experiment is named after Michel Walter, a psychologist from Stanford University. It is also known as the “marshmallow test” because one of its main “heroes” is an ordinary marshmallow.
The experiment, conducted in the 60s of the last century, involved 653 4-year-old children. They were taken one by one into a room where one marshmallow lay in a plate on the table. Each child was told that he could eat it now, but if he waited 15 minutes, he would get another one, and then he could eat both. Michel Walter would leave the child alone for a few minutes and then return. 70% of children ate one marshmallow before he returned, and only 30 waited for it and received a second one. It is curious that the same percentage was observed during a similar experiment in two other countries where it was conducted.
Michel Walter followed the fate of his students and after 15 years came to the conclusion that those who at one time did not succumb to the temptation to get “everything now”, but were able to control themselves, turned out to be more learnable and successful in their chosen areas of knowledge and interests. Thus, it was concluded that the ability to self-control significantly improves a person’s quality of life.
Isaac Pintosevich, who is called the “success coach,” argues that those who have no control over themselves and their actions should forget about efficiency forever.
How to learn to manage yourself
1. Let's remember the “marshmallow test”
30% of 4-year-old children already knew how. This character trait was inherited from them “by nature,” or this skill was instilled in them by their parents.
Someone said: “Don’t raise your children, they will still be like you. Educate yourself." Indeed, we want to see our children restrained, but we ourselves throw tantrums in front of their eyes. We tell them that they must cultivate willpower, but we ourselves show weakness. We remind them to be punctual and we are late for work every morning.
Therefore, we begin to learn to control ourselves by carefully analyzing our behavior and identifying “weak spots” - where exactly we allow ourselves to “unravel.”
2. Components of control
The aforementioned Yitzhak Pintosevich believes that in order for control to be effective, it must include 3 components:
- Be honest with yourself and have no illusions about yourself;
- You should control yourself systematically, and not occasionally;
- Control should be not only internal (when we control ourselves), but also external. For example, we promised to solve a problem within such and such a period. And, in order not to leave ourselves a loophole for retreat, we announce this among our colleagues. If we do not meet the stated time, we pay them a fine. The danger of losing a decent amount of money will serve as a good incentive not to be distracted by extraneous matters.
3. We write down the main goals facing us on a sheet of paper and put (or hang) it in a visible place
Every day we monitor how far we have managed to move towards their implementation.
4. Putting our financial affairs in order
We keep our loans under control, remember if we have any debts that urgently need to be repaid, and balance debits with credits. Our emotional state is quite dependent on the state of our finances. Therefore, the less confusion and problems there are in this area, the less reason we will have to “lose our temper.”
5. Observe our reaction to events that evoke strong emotions in us and analyze whether they are worth our worries
We imagine the worst case scenario and understand that it is not as terrible as the consequences of our inadequate and thoughtless behavior.
6. We do everything the other way around
We are angry with a colleague, and we are tempted to say “a few kind words” to him. Instead, we smile welcomingly and give a compliment. If we were offended that another employee was sent to the conference instead of us, we should not be angry, but would be happy for him and wish him a happy journey.
Since the very morning we have been overcome by laziness, so we turn on the music and get down to some business. In a word, we act contrary to what our emotions tell us.
7. A famous phrase says: we cannot change our circumstances, but we can change our attitude towards them.
We are surrounded by different people, and not all of them are friendly and fair to us. We cannot be upset and indignant every time we encounter someone else's envy, anger, or rudeness. We need to come to terms with what we cannot influence.
8. The best assistant in mastering the science of self-control is meditation.
Just as physical exercise develops the body, meditation trains the mind. Through daily meditation sessions, you can learn to avoid negative emotions and not give in to passions that interfere with a sober view of circumstances and can destroy your life. With the help of meditation, a person immerses himself in a state of calm and achieves harmony with himself.
Each person is unique, and, accordingly, his character, temperament, and habits are unique. People who are highly emotional cannot hide their feelings, and sometimes this leads to undesirable consequences. This can cause quarrels with friends, a breakup with a loved one, problems in the family and at work. Such people often realize their problem and understand that they should not give vent to their emotions, but they cannot stop in time. So how can you learn to hide emotions or at least suppress them, if necessary? And is this possible?
How to learn to hide your emotions and feelings
The answer is yes. You just need to follow some fairly simple recommendations that will make your life much easier and help you improve your relationships with people around you.
You need to create a mental attitude that only insecure, complex people with low self-esteem are led by emotions. You need to clearly understand that a strong person will always be able to convince his interlocutor that he is right calmly, without shouting or excessive display of emotions.
You need to try to increase your self-esteem. To do this, you need to carefully analyze all your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your achievements and failures. Do not forget about impartiality and objectivity. In addition, the goals that you intend to achieve both in the near and distant future will give you self-confidence.
To learn to hide your emotions, try to treat the events that happen to you with humor. The ability to find something funny in the most ordinary situations, as well as the ability to sometimes laugh at yourself, will greatly help you. No one will argue that laughing is much better than causing a scandal.
Learn to look at yourself from the outside to some extent. Pay attention to the behavior of people who react just as violently as you to the events that happen to them. Believe me, you don't look any better in such situations.
Surely, if people thought about how unpresentable they look in moments of anger, they would try to restrain their emotions. This is especially true for women, because it is unlikely that any representative of the fair sex will want to look unsightly in the eyes of others.
We told you how to learn to hide your emotions. We sincerely hope that our advice will help you achieve true harmony both in your own inner world and in relationships with the people around you.
How to suppress your emotions and not show it
If emotions overtake you spontaneously, remember that in a situation of excessive emotional stress you cannot make any decisions (except in emergency situations, when we're talking about about your life). For the most part, recommendations on how to learn to hide emotions in this case are as follows:
- gather your thoughts and slowly count to ten;
- normalize your breathing by inhaling slowly through your nose and holding your breath for a while, then exhale slowly through your nose. While breathing this way, concentrate on your inner sensations;
- if the situation requires it, then apologize and leave the room to be alone;
- Cold water will help you come to your senses - wet your forehead, hands and temples;
- You can distance yourself from your experiences by looking at surrounding objects, trees or the sky, and if at the same time you silently describe their appearance, then very soon you will be able to switch from your emotions to the environment;
- Drink a glass of water very slowly and with concentration, concentrating on how you feel.
Remember to prevent excessive tension; walks in the fresh air, creative activities, and interest clubs will help you prevent emotional overstrain.
How to suppress emotions when necessary
“You should have not gotten excited, restrained yourself, and then expressed your opinion” - we often use this phrase after a violent manifestation of emotions, both negative in quarrels and positive in joy for something. We often call this hint from our mind “hindsight.” And as life experience shows, reason is right. But why does this happen after emotional outbursts? And how to overcome emotions that often complicate our relationships with society.
Psychologists are of the opinion that expressing emotions is necessary. But in order to maintain a relationship with someone, it is often more beneficial for us to suppress emotions than to express them.
In everyday life, our wisdom is limited to advice that is aimed at combating emotional extremes. We often hear:
- in grief - “don’t kill yourself like that, everything will pass”,
- in joy - “don’t rejoice, so that you don’t have to cry”, in case of whims - “don’t be picky”,
- during apathy - “well, shake yourself up!”
And how can we learn to hide our emotions and maintain complete control over the outburst of emotions if, first of all, we lose the ability to manage our current state? Trying to cope with their emotional world, people delved into the mechanism of experiences and tried to use it more intelligently than nature. One of the systems aimed at regulating emotions is yoga gymnastics. Yogis developed a number of breathing and physical exercises that made it possible to get rid of emotional stress and partly from worries.
If you want to learn how to suppress emotions, you need to turn to yoga. Some elements of the yoga system were used to create the autogenic training method. Psychologists are sure that auto-training is one of the techniques that allows you to suppress emotions. Auto-training techniques are not as primitive as advice to keep yourself within the bounds of decency when you are ready to explode from a surge of emotions. The famous phrase: “I am calm, I am completely calm” is practically a balm for your tense nerves.
Another available method to suppress emotions is laughter therapy. When a person laughs, three times more air enters the lungs, which increases the amount of oxygen entering the blood, blood circulation improves, blood pressure decreases by calming the heart rate. During laughter, the production of endomorphin increases ( anti-stress substance), which leads to the release of the body from adrenaline (stress hormone).
Dancing and listening to music have a similar mechanism of action on the body. You can also easily “defuse” the situation with a cheerful smile or a sparkling joke.
Emotions are an essential part of our everyday life. Whether we laugh at a good joke or feel irritated while stuck in a traffic jam, the experiences we experience have a significant impact on our lives. In addition, our ability to control our emotions determines the light in which others perceive us.
If we laugh at a funny message from a friend during a business meeting, at best we will be looked at with pity. On the other hand, displaying anger is also often completely inappropriate and can lead to undesirable consequences. Fortunately, you can develop useful skills that will allow you to hide your emotions at the right time. Let's look at some of them.
- Learn to identify signs by which you can judge a change in your condition. If you feel like you're losing control, stop! Indeed, at such moments, people act more automatically, without much thought about the possible consequences. Learn to identify the signals that indicate the onset of such a state. For example, these could be physical signs - a clenched jaw, or a rush of blood to the face. Or you may notice that, as you lose control of yourself, thoughts come to you about quitting or divorcing your spouse. Having learned to pay attention to these signs in time, you will act more consciously next time, as well as apply other techniques to control emotions.
- Reduce the intensity of experiences. First of all, in order to hide your experiences from others, you need to learn to control them. Doing this in moments of high stress and still maintaining rational thinking is quite difficult. In order to assess the situation soberly, it is necessary to moderate the ardor a little. To do this, you can leave the room or go outside. Fresh air will help clear your thoughts and reduce emotions. Or try doing any monotonous activity. This could be drawing or knitting. The peculiarity of such classes is that they include repetitive movements that help you concentrate on the present moment.
- Understand what is important right now. When we are under stress, it is very important to understand what is truly important and what depends on our actions. For example, you have arrived for an important meeting. And suddenly you realize that when you closed the car doors, you left your keys in it. What is important at this moment - the meeting or the keys? The answer is obvious: you need to rush to the meeting, and you can deal with the keys later. It is necessary to determine priorities in time, as well as the range of possibilities, since learning to hide your emotions and feelings without these skills will also be very difficult.
- Study body language. Most of the experiences become obvious to others through posture, gestures, facial expressions and other signs. Therefore, having mastered the features with which the body expresses different emotions, you will be able to hide those that you deem necessary. If you need to hide your anxiety, avoid nervous movements, try to relax your whole body. Facial expressions play a special role in expressing emotions. If you want to hide anger or irritation, relax your facial muscles: do not tense your eyebrows, nose, or jaw. Once you have perfected your craft, people will be completely unable to discern what passions are truly bubbling within you.
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- Remove yourself from the situation. This is absolutely necessary when you need to hide your emotions and feelings. The easiest way is to recall happy memories. Think about the moments you spent with your loved ones. This will help you mentally move into the past from the anxious or stressful environment in which you are currently located.
- Change the meaning you attach to a certain situation. The more you practice the methods described above, the less “catchy” difficult situations will be for you. You may even find something good about them in terms of the lessons they can teach and the skills they can help you develop. To change the meaning of the situation, repeat to yourself, for example, the following phrase: “This is not a problem.” The more often you do this, the faster your subconscious mind will be able to believe that this really is not a problem.
In everyday life, conflict situations often occur between people due to differences in temperament. This is due, first of all, to a person’s excessive emotionality and lack of self-control. emotions? How to “get the upper hand” over your own feelings and thoughts during a conflict? Psychology provides answers to these questions.
Why do you need self-control?
Restraint and self-control are something that many people lack. This is achieved over time, constantly training and improving skills. Self-control helps to achieve a lot, and the least of this list is inner peace of mind. How to learn to control your emotions and at the same time prevent intrapersonal conflict? Understand that this is necessary and gain agreement with your own “I”.
Control over emotions prevents the conflict situation from worsening and allows you to find someone with completely opposite personalities. To a greater extent, self-control is necessary to establish relationships with people, no matter business partners or relatives, children, lovers.
The influence of negative emotions on life
Breakdowns and scandals, in which negative energy is released, have a detrimental effect not only on the people around them, but also on the instigator of conflict situations. How to learn to restrain your negative emotions? Try to avoid conflicts and not succumb to provocations from other people.
Negative emotions destroy harmonious relationships in the family and interfere with normal personal development and career growth. After all, few people want to cooperate/communicate/live with a person who does not control himself and starts a large-scale scandal at every opportunity. For example, if a woman cannot control herself and constantly finds fault with her man, which leads to serious quarrels, then he will soon leave her.
In raising children, it is also important to restrain yourself and not give free rein to negative emotions. The child will feel every word said by the parent in the heat of anger, and will subsequently remember this moment for the rest of his life. Psychology helps to understand how to learn to restrain emotions and prevent their manifestation in communication with children and loved ones.
Negative emotions also have a great impact on business and work activities. A team always consists of people of different temperaments, therefore self-control plays an important role here: negativity can spill out at any moment when a person is put under pressure and required to do overwhelming work. And instead of the usual dialogue where the parties can reach a consensus, a scandal develops. How to learn to control your emotions in the workplace? Do not react to employee provocations, try to start a casual conversation, agree with your superiors in everything, even if the assigned tasks are difficult to complete.
Suppression of emotions
Constantly restraining yourself within certain limits and preventing the release of negativity is not a panacea. Suppressing accumulates negativity, and therefore increases the risk of developing psychological diseases. Negativity must be periodically “thrown out” somewhere, but in such a way that the feelings of other people are not harmed. How to learn to restrain emotions, but without harm to your inner world? Go in for sports, because during training a person spends all his internal resources, and the negativity quickly goes away.
Wrestling, boxing, and hand-to-hand combat are suitable for releasing negative energy. It is important here that a person mentally wants to give vent to his emotions, then he will feel relief and he will not want to take it out on anyone. However, it is worth considering that everything should be in moderation, and overwork during training can provoke a new influx of negativity.
Two ways to control your emotions:
- Do you dislike a person so much that you are ready to destroy him? Do this, but, of course, not in the literal sense of the word. At the moment when you feel uncomfortable communicating with him, mentally do whatever you want with this person.
- Draw a person you hate and write down on a piece of paper next to the image the problems that appeared in your life thanks to him. Burn the sheet and mentally put an end to your relationship with this person.
Prevention
How to learn to restrain emotions? Psychology gives the following answer to this question: to control your feelings and emotions, prevention is necessary, in other words - emotional hygiene. Like the human body, his soul also needs hygiene and disease prevention. To do this, you need to protect yourself from communicating with people who cause hostility, and also, if possible, avoid conflicts.
Prevention is the most gentle and optimal way to control emotions. It does not require additional human training or specialist intervention. Preventive measures allow you to protect yourself from negativity and nervous breakdowns for a long time.
The main thing is that it helps you gain control over your emotions - over your own life. When a person is satisfied with everything in his home, work, relationships, and he understands that at any moment he can influence all this and adjust it to himself, then it is easier for him to restrain the manifestation of negative emotions. There are a number of preventive rules that help manage your own feelings and thoughts. How to learn to control your emotions and manage yourself? Follow simple rules.
Unfinished business and debts
Complete all planned tasks in a short time, do not leave the work unfinished - this can cause delays in terms of deadlines, causing negative emotions. Also, “tails” can be reproached, pointing out your incompetence.
In financial terms, try to avoid late payments and debts - this is exhausting and prevents you from achieving your goal. Understanding that you have not repaid a debt to someone causes negativity and helplessness in the face of current circumstances.
The absence of debts, both financial and otherwise, allows you to fully spend your own energy resources and strength, directing them to the realization of desires. A sense of duty, on the contrary, is an obstacle to mastering self-control and achieving success. How to learn to restrain emotions and control yourself? Eliminate debts in a timely manner.
Cosiness
Create a comfortable workplace for yourself, equip your home to your own taste. Both at work and at home, with your family, you should feel comfortable - nothing should cause irritation or any other negative emotions.
Time planning
Try to make smart plans for the day, strive to ensure that you have a little more time and resources to complete your tasks than you need. This will avoid the negativity associated with a constant lack of time and worries about the lack of finances, energy and strength for work.
Communication and Workflow
Avoid contacts with unpleasant people who waste your personal time. Especially with individuals who are called “energy vampires” - they take up not only your time, but also your energy. If possible, try not to interact with overly temperamental people, since any incorrect remark directed in their direction can provoke a scandal. How to restrain your emotions in relationships with other people? Be polite, do not exceed your authority, and do not overreact to criticism.
If your job brings you nothing but negative emotions, then you should think about changing your job. Earning money to the detriment of your soul and feelings, sooner or later, will lead to a breakdown and disorder of mental balance.
Marking boundaries
Mentally create a list of things and actions that cause you negative emotions. Draw an invisible line, a line that no one, even the closest person, should cross. Create a set of rules that restrict people from communicating with you. Those who truly love, appreciate and respect you will accept such demands, and those who resist these attitudes should not be in your environment. To communicate with strangers, develop a special system that will avoid violating your boundaries and creating conflict situations.
Physical activity and self-reflection
Playing sports will bring not only physical health, but also mental balance. Spend 30 minutes to 1 hour a day on sports, and your body will quickly cope with negative emotions.
At the same time, analyze everything that happens to you during the day. Ask yourself questions about whether you acted correctly in a given situation, whether you communicated with the right people, whether you had enough time to complete the work. This will help not only to understand yourself, but also in the future to eradicate communication with unnecessary people who cause negativity. your own emotions, thoughts and goals allows you to fully develop self-control.
Positive emotions and prioritization
Develop the ability to switch from negative emotions to positive ones, try to see the positive sides in any situation. How to learn to control emotions in relationships with family and strangers? Be more positive, and this will help you overcome your own temper.
The right goal is a great help in achieving self-control. When you are on the verge of a surge of negative emotions, imagine that as soon as you stop being nervous and paying attention to provocations, your dreams will begin to come true. You should choose only realistic, achievable goals.
Environment
Take a close look at the people around you. Is there any benefit from communicating with them? Do they bring you happiness, warmth and kindness, do they make you happy? If not, then the answer is obvious; you urgently need to change your social circle, switch to individuals who bring positive emotions. Of course, it’s impossible to do this in the workplace, but at least limit yourself from communicating with such people outside the work space.
In addition to changing your environment, expanding your social circle will help you develop self-control. This will give you new opportunities, knowledge and a positive charge for a long time.
