Emotional awareness: managing emotions during confinement

The management of emotions is our great workhorse, especially during these days our freedom has been restricted.

The pandemic hits our customs and mobilizes us to create new routines. It is normal that we feel intense and disparate emotions and, without realizing it, we let ourselves be carried away by them. Here we will see some keys to learn how to handle them.

• Related article: "What is emotional intelligence?"

Managing emotions when confined at home

Being able to identify, name what we are feeling, will help us regain control of our mind. We cannot control external factors, but we can control the relationship with our emotions. Allowing ourselves to feel them, experience them and let them go without being trapped or negatively conditioning our relationships. Without hurting ourselves, or anything, or anyone.

In these moments in which coexistence is closer, managing them properly becomes more important, so we must try to avoid conflicts and not add a greater dose of tension.

Throughout my work as a psychologist and my experience as a meditator (for years), I have synthesized five steps grouped into two phases, which help us to improve the management of our world emotional. They are

steps aimed at living the direct experience of the emotion from the beginning until it disappears. They allow us to investigate where we need to work more closely and observe our trends. Identify those that condition us and prevent us from proper management.

In my sessions I accompany patients to travel this path as an internal resource so that they learn to manage their emotions in a healthier way. Mindfulness at every step allows them to get to know each other better, progressively release the knots of conflict. Each movement needs a deep look to make explicit what is moving at the unconscious level and move towards a more complete and friendly life. Let's see this journey in a synthesized way.

1. Awareness

Emotions are an energy, which unfolds for a cause. They emerge, develop, physically resonate in our body, and then fade away. They can be deep, gross or subtle, kind or hurtful. Sometimes there is a main emotion and other secondary ones; a more emergent and a deeper one. Anyway, whatever it is, they have an impact on us and not always controllable.

The first step is to become aware of what we feel. Connect with our heart to free it from the emotions that trap it. Go unfolding that awareness in each movement of the process.

1.1. Realize that something is happening

We must open an internal space to connect with what moves inside: stop and feel ourselves. If we are very distracted and busy, the emotion may be growing internally and acting disproportionately before any stimulus that triggers it.

An involuntary thought can arise in our mind and cause us to sweat, racing heart or restlessness, leading to uncontrolled anxiety. We can be angry and find out when they get our attention, because we change the tone of voice, without even being aware.

Recognizing that emerging energy is the first step to not being dominated by the situation without realizing it.. Consciously inhabiting our body and feeling it will help us to recognize that something is emerging.

1.2. Identify the problem

Once we recognize that something is manifesting it is necessary to stop, observe and give it a name. We can be angry because we are scared of being sad and we express it with anger. Anger can set your plans in motion and manifest itself in aggressive, uncontrolled behavior, hurtful words, or other more subtle, no less painful compartments.

If we identify the emotion, it will be easier to deal with it: "I am scared, angry and upset about what is happening." Feelings of frustration or fear can develop fueling that anger. Uncertainty, lack of freedom, change generate insecurity and fear. Expressing it, narrating it, making sense of it with the word, will release a great unnecessary burden and help us to start the next step.

1.3. Accept what we feel

If we have identified what we feel, now we have to accept it, embrace it without going back: not deny it, or minimize it, or repress it... We have to be honest and bold to explore real-life, without sweeteners or additives.

Pain is inevitable, but there is a plus of suffering that we can decide whether to add or not. Accepting emotion means opening ourselves to it. Feel it in our body. The conscious connection with it facilitates its release. Identifying the heat of anger or the pressure in the chest of anguish allows us to give space to those sensations from the center of our heart outwards.

Sometimes we get stuck here because we don't accept. We do not like our reality and we enter into conflict. We feed obsessive thoughts. We waste our energy and damage our body. We eat compulsively to silence our anguish or we become lethargic with our mobile phones rereading absurd memes to deviate from reality. Accepting represents looking with affection, respecting and welcoming what opens in us to be able to let it go in the next phase.

2. Self-regulation

Emotions are manifestations of our mind. They unfold driven by thoughts or tendencies that we have been incorporating throughout our lives. They have a journey, an intensity and then they spontaneously dissolve, if we allow it. The body has the ability to regulate itself and return to its homeostatic balance naturally. One of the qualities of the mind is its spaciousness.

Taking into account these two premises, emotions have no interest in staying with us. We are the ones who retain them, blocking and solidifying (with pain, discomfort or illness) their manifestation. We need to keep moving forward to self-regulate.

2.1. Release

Once we have accepted the emotion we need to let it go. Do not retain it, nor feed it back, nor hide it. It's easy to get wrapped up in thoughts and get caught like flies in honey. We rescue memories, reproaches, we fantasize about misfortunes or thoughts tinged with pain, fear or any other color.

We accommodate the emotion in our mind, without giving ourselves other options and we solidify its sensations in our body, giving rise to aches and pains and in the long term, diseases. Learning to let go is learning to live lightly. Browse our minds and surf with the waves.

Once we let go of our emotions, we can see that they leave us behind. Like the aroma that remains when you empty a perfume bottle. If we are willing to move forward, we can go one step further. The most difficult and interesting.

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2.2. Transform

After thoroughly experiencing our emotions with more or less intensity, we can continue to advance with other resources to enrich ourselves with the experience.

On the one hand, identify the most recurring emotions and explore our own "antidotes": choose the path that leads us to well-being and counteract the one that leads us to dive into suffering and anchor ourselves in it.

For the other, observing our mind and how each emotion unfolds we can distill that nectar that underlies each process. For example, we could convert an emotion such as pride, which distances us from others, into self-love, improving our self-esteem. Envy, which fosters resentment and bitterness, in joy shared by the successes of others. The uncertainty in recreating resources to learn to live in the present.

Concluding

The interesting thing about this process is that it is not limited to being a discharge or a more or less intense experience of our emotional world. She allows us to explore each step in depth and to enter into an intimate connection with ourselves: what moves us inside; identify our wounds; what is repeated over and over again; know the emotions that arise more easily or unmask the trigger to be able to deactivate it.

We tend to be very reactive to external phenomena. If we respond when the conscious process has not finished, it is easy to do so from a place that hurts us or others. If we are becoming aware, our mind will gradually soften and emotions will leave less of a mark. Like writing on water. We will be more understanding, creative and thoughtful in our responses.

The reality that we are having to live is not easy. We need to maintain a center of serenity to counteract difficulties. Allowing ourselves to feel our vulnerability without being swept up in anxiety, fear, or frustration.

Learning to know each other, to be kind to us, is a first step. Request the help of a specialized psychologist to accompany us on the path of self-knowledge and management of our kaleidoscope emotional, it can give us the opportunity to travel a new path in the way of relating to ourselves, with others and with our environment.