We experience feelings all the time, regardless of the situations and circumstances.

Often we find ourselves in emotionally challenging situations, and for various reasons, we don’t always show feelings. So stress and unpleasant sensations accumulate.

If you do not work with emotions, this can lead to excessive nervous tension and breakdowns. A person’s health depends on his thoughts and feelings. The brain and the body can store vivid traumatic events.

I would like to share some ways to deal with intense experiences for the benefit of the mind and body.

Many of you have probably noticed that emotions, especially negative ones, can accumulate and become an absolute natural disaster. For example, the morning didn’t start, and your favorite shirt was flooded with coffee. There were unimaginable traffic jams on the roads. These things are irritating, spreading from minor events and gradually developing into anger. So, at some point, a normally calm and restrained person can suddenly turn into an angry beast. And all this is because he has not formed the habit of doing his mental hygiene and responding to stressful factors in time.

How do you manage emotions for the benefit of the soul and body?

To neutralise the influence of solid experiences, you need to master a few basic things. The first and most important thing is to learn to understand and identify your feelings. The second is finding those forms and ways to help these feelings to live and “digest”.

It turns out that already at the first step, many people experience difficulties and can describe what is happening to them with just a few general words. But the better you begin to understand and label your feelings, the more accurately you will be able to pick up those tools that will help you maintain emotional balance.

As a small exercise, you can take a short break every day and try to understand what you are feeling at the moment or what feelings you experienced most recently.

Try asking yourself a few questions right now and see how varied and specific your answers are:

How do I feel right now? What do I feel?

What emotions have I experienced today and over the past few days?

By observing yourself in this simple way, you also contribute to learning how to manage your stress. You get the opportunity not only to determine how to cope with emotions but also to understand what measures need to be taken to neutralise the cause of their appearance. You can even start a special diary of emotions, which will help you know what is a source of stress and anxiety for you after a week of observation.

Below you will find a few more ways that help in managing emotions. For example, if your work involves a negative emotional load, then these stress management strategies may come in handy.

Controlling emotions with the body

One of the most straightforward and accessible techniques is deep breathing. If you feel that emotions are overwhelmed, just start breathing evenly and calmly, observing what you think and how your experiences are connected with the thoughts and sensations that arise in the body. If circumstances allow, you can go according to a specific algorithm. To do this, sit up straight and on each inhalation and exhalation, count to yourself to four. After a while, connect the movement: we inhale for four counts and slightly raise the left leg, exhale for four counts and lower the leg back. The same for the right leg.

In moments of anger, the so-called muscle release technique can come in handy. To fulfil it, you just need to clench your fists with all your might until there is no more strength left for this. After some time, the fingers will begin to relax on their own, and at the same time, tension will start to go away – as well as those emotions that caused it.

Working with emotions through the body, you can also connect intuition: in difficult times, someone wants to walk in the park or dance. For others, it is more helpful to listen to music and practice breathing. But to achieve success, it is essential to recognise your feelings in time and give them some kind of outlet, physically releasing the tension that has arisen.

Connecting the imagination

Imagination and imagery are often used in psychotherapy and can be very useful when it comes to coping with surging feelings. Just like breathing, these methods are always available and also very effective. For example, the “second pair of eyes” or “fly on the wall” technique is excellent. Imagine that a calm and slightly indifferent part of you has separated from you (or you have become a fly on the wall, which is completely uninvolved in what is happening). So, most of the attention belongs to an impartial observer: let events take their course and develop as they will. And a little more attention is directed to “registering” what and how influences your experiences, how they develop and in connection with what. Try to notice the details. For example, you are nervous in dialogue with a colleague. Then the fly says: “Yeah, you feel annoyed that you can’t explain your position in any way, you raise your voice, you breathe intermittently and often. What can you do to make it easier?”

If you have the time you can work with emotions according to a different model. Try to understand what is happening to you, what kind of emotions you are experiencing, and how you feel them in your body. Next, imagine that you feel anger (for example) as a dark grey lump in the solar plexus area. 

Now think about the feeling you want to experience instead, the name and what it looks like and create its image similarly. Suppose you want to replace anger with awareness and calmness; in your imagination, they look like a bright and light ball. Combine negative and positive images, and let the picture of calmness influence the picture of anger until you feel relief.

Finding suitable management methods and constantly replenishing your emotional resources are essential to maintaining internal balance. Regular exercise and proper nutrition help to effectively cope with various experiences, which strengthen your body at the physical level – for example, by supporting your hormonal system. Such preventive measures create an excellent basis so that you can easily find that magic “pill” that helps you live through any strong feelings without harming yourself and others at the right time.