7 Steps Towards Emotional Balance And Dealing With Difficult Emotions
All your emotions are necessary. Each emotion provides valuable information about you, which is why it is so important to pay attention to how you feel. Seeing how you are doing on an emotional level is very important. Being aware of your emotional state is vital to achieving emotional balance and well-being.
With that said, it’s not always easy to pay attention to yourself and find out what’s going on. This is especially true in emotionally difficult and painful situations. The kind of situation that causes suffering and fear is like a monster waiting to catch you.
These situations give rise to doubt, stress, fear, expectations and uncertainty. Not knowing what to do or how to react paralyzes you. So often this type of situation catches you in a spiral of suffering and apathy.
What can be done when these situations become unsustainable? How should you react when you feel annihilated, at the end of the road? How can one deal with these negative emotions that hold a prisoner?
Psychiatrist and psychology professor Vicente Simon has carefully researched and investigated Buddhist psychology. He came up with a procedure that can help us in these situations: the seven steps towards emotional balance.
This is a series of exercises designed to alleviate suffering, avoid psychological harm from emotional shock, and prevent inappropriate actions that could harm others. These are the seven steps towards emotional balance.
When you hear bad news, get into an argument or feel disappointed, the first step is to stop. When you feel intense and unpleasant emotions bubbling up, you need to stop. Take a moment to focus all your attention on the emotional movement that takes place inside.
It will not be easy at first. It’s normal. Preventing a process that has been on autopilot for several is difficult. This is because it goes against what you have done before. Emotions, in fact, usually cause you to act abruptly and thoughtlessly.
So instead of suffering an emotional explosion, you need to stop, give yourself time to reflect and evaluate what is happening internally.
If you do, you can stop your autopilot. Then it will be possible to answer in a different way than you normally do. With that said , it is important to practice, as you are not guaranteed to succeed initially. To help yourself, try to practice in a place that makes you calm and relaxed.
After pressing pause, the next step is to breathe. You can achieve emotional balance by paying attention to your breathing. Notice the parts of the body where emotions show up.
At times when you feel hyperactive or stressed, it is important to breathe deeply. Deep breathing will help you relax and reconnect with yourself. The goal is to take ten deep breaths per minute. You may not succeed right away, because when you are upset you can take up to 30 breaths per minute. The important thing is to practice and focus on it.
When, on the other hand, you experience difficult emotions, you may notice that your heart beats faster. You may also feel pressure on your chest or tension in your stomach. Whatever the case , it is important not to try to avoid these physical sensations.
Emotions often speak to you through your body. It’s about finding out who they are and calming them down through your breathing. If you breathe and relax, you can reduce the physical sensations that emotions bring.
This step consists of getting to know the feeling on an experiential rather than intellectual level. In other words, to feel the feeling and everything that comes with it as a direct experience. It can, for example, be how the feeling is expressed physically.
Next, imagine or observe which situation or situations trigger the feeling. Is it a specific person or maybe a thought? Or a memory you have? The key is to find out the source of the feeling and observe all its related aspects.
Then we have to identify what feeling you are dealing with if you want to achieve emotional balance. In other words, give it a name. Is it anger, sadness, envy or maybe fear? Some researchers believe that when you give your feeling a name, it loses its power.
To further identify the feeling, one must also ask oneself several exploratory questions. Ask yourself how this feeling would manifest itself, what necessity it hides and what it motivates you to do.
This step consists of accepting the feeling without judging. And not only that, but also to let the feeling be, without suppressing or opposing it.
This will not be fun in the beginning. After all, some of these feelings are unpleasant. But it is important to get to know it and to be able to handle it later. So be a spectator of the rejection that the experience evokes in you. Neutrally observe the attempts to escape from the situation and defend yourself.
But most important of all is to do nothing. Let the feeling express itself as it is. In this way, you can give the feeling space and acknowledge it as part of you to find emotional balance.
In the middle of this deep process, do not forget to take care of yourself. In these seven steps, you deal with things that can hurt you, weigh you down and overwhelm you. During all this, you also need to connect with the part of yourself that is whole and healthy.
Get to know the part of you that works through affection and love. If you do not take care of yourself, you will damage the strength you need to achieve emotional balance and well-being.
It can be difficult to embrace and treat yourself with love. If you find it difficult, go to the people who are always by your side. Find people who are always willing to help you. They will make it easier for you to relieve stress and anxiety.
At this point, the strength of the feeling should decrease, slowly but surely. It will let you separate yourself from it. By doing so, you can differentiate between yourself and the feeling. You are not your feeling, you are just home to it for a while.
It is important to realize that you will only be able to let go of the feeling if you omit it from your internal dialogue. You can not force the feeling to disappear. You have to let it dissolve on its own. From this point of view, a key strategy to limit the power of emotion is to realize that you are not emotion. The feeling is not you.
When the emotional storm is over, the final step toward emotional balance is deciding whether to take action. If the situation requires an answer, you are now in a better position to do so. From a peaceful place and by connecting with your doubts and desires, it will be easier to act.
If an immediate response is not required, it is best to wait until the feeling loses its intensity; do not act until you understand its message.
As you can see , a difficult feeling can be transformed. With time and attention, it can become peace and quiet. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza put it perfectly: “A feeling that is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct perception of it.”
Being present for your emotions is the key that opens the door to emotional balance. It is an exercise that requires time and skill. But if you succeed in mastering it, it will help you deal with difficulties and problems in daily life. It will not only improve your relationship with yourself, but also with others.
References
Simón, Vicente. (2014), Learn to practice mindfulness , Barcelona.
