How to Manage your Reactions with the help of NLP

Conflicts and discussions are part of people's lives as the social beings that we are. We live and socialize with people who have their own perception of the world and what happens in it, and this means that, when trying to reach agreements, we clash and arguments arise.

An argument or conflict is not bad in itself. What happens is that there are people who, being inside it, cannot control their emotional state of anger, rage and even rage, and they let themselves be carried away by it, losing their power of decision. This is when the emotion gets out of control and shows itself in the form of shouting, offensive words and, in some cases, even physical harm.

In most cases, these people, after finishing the emotional hijacking, are aware of their reaction and feel bad. They perceive that There is something that activates that reaction and that they cannot control, but the truth is that there are different techniques and ways to channel an uncontrolled emotional state. In this article we want to talk to you about one in particular of Neurolinguistic Programming: the 6 steps to freedom.

Triggers are not the excuse

One of the clearest examples of uncontrolled emotional kidnapping that then leaves the person experiencing it with a burden of guilt are arguments with children. For example, that case in which the parent insists on his or her son or daughter to clean up the room and ends up yelling for him or her to do so after several failed requests. After the conflict, the vast majority of parents feel bad about the way they reacted.

You may think that there is no other reaction to that situation, especially when fatigue and other day-to-day worries accumulate, but there is. One of the many things that NLP teaches is that Each one of us is responsible for what happens in us and about others and we can choose how to react to certain situations..

That a child ignores cleaning up the room is neither good nor bad. Value is given by each of us and, in many cases, the patterns learned over years cause us to react as we believe we have to.

With NLP we can change these patterns and achieve the ability to choose to determine how we want to react and what emotional state we want to adopt in certain situations. It is important to understand that our mood directly influences our thoughts, and these influence our actions.

• Related article: "Emotional management: 10 keys to master your emotions"

The 6 steps to freedom

This NLP tool is extremely effective for working with emotional kidnapping in conflict situations. There are 6 simple steps that allow the individual stop being a robot and slave to your emotions by learning, first, to identify them, and second, to manage them according to your decision.

Step 1: Recognize the trigger

It consists of observing in the body the signal that indicates that the emotional kidnapping is going to arrive. This step may be the most complicated, but it is key to stopping the lack of control.

Taking into account the example of the situation of the father or mother who reacts by shouting to the son or daughter's inaction to clean up the room, the parent may feel before 'exploding' pressure in the chest or pit of the stomach, his breathing becomes agitated, a wave of rage invades him and rises through his body to his head... That is the clue. Detect what it feels like and stop there to go to step two.

• You may be interested: "What is impulsiveness? Its causes and effects on behavior

Step 2: Stop automatic reply

When the trigger is detected, you must physically stop and take a deep breath.. What is sought with this step is to stop unconscious action.

Step 3: Ask yourself

Once you have breathed, you have to ask yourself what emotional state you really want to have. Do you want to scream and get agitated or do you want to have a calmer feeling to deal with the situation in a different way?

Step 4: Establish and recognize that state

Once the emotion that one wants to feel has been identified, the person must think about a moment in which the one who has felt that emotion, the calm in this example, which could be, perhaps, walking through the field. In this case You have to try to mentally put yourself in that situation.: what you do on the walk, what you see, what you hear and even what you feel.

This step seeks to really bring that calm physically to the body.

• Related article: "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): principles and characteristics"

Step 5: Name it

Yes, it consists of naming that emotion so that it becomes stronger and anchors.

6. Back to the present

Return to the here and now and act from the new emotion and see how the situation changes. Could the chosen calm make the father or mother capable of approaching and reasoning with their child in another way to achieve the goal of picking up?

The key to internalizing these 6 steps is to continually work on them in situations where emotional kidnapping occurs., so that, in the long term, it becomes an almost automatic process in which the mind itself is capable of attracting the emotion that is needed and desired to the tense situation.

NLP to know yourself better

In our school this powerful tool of the 6 steps to freedom is studied along with many others and the great fundamentals of Neurolinguistic Programming in our Practitioner in NLP. With this, individuals improve their quality of life by improving self-knowledge and the way they work on their own emotions, thoughts and actions.

That is why learning Neurolinguistic Programming is not only recommended for people who already work in human help and accompaniment such as coaches, psychologists or therapists of various kinds, but can be helpful for any individual who wants to know themselves better and have more options and freedom in The life of her.