You can learn to take your emotional temperature and deal with your emotions.

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I regret every action I took when uncontrollable emotions enslaved me.

Last week, someone standing behind me in a supermarket said something awful to me and I stood there, powerless and hurt. I wanted to smack this stranger who watched me with a sneer in his eyes. The burning feeling to lash out was so strong I had to focus on my clenched hands to unclench them.

Even after I counted 1 to 5 and unclenched my five fingers, my face still burned.

“Next…” the cashier called out. Time to pay for my groceries and get the hell out.

But no. When I put my groceries on the cashier stand, it came to me: the perfect knock-out verbal punch. I turned back to the stranger and hurled a lethal slingshot retort just in time.

I felt terrible afterward.

Whenever emotions get the better of me and I react, it made me feel worse instead of better.

I want to know how to deal with emotions.

Don’t you?

If you are someone who doesn’t know how to deal with emotions, this article is for you.

Table of contents:

• . If you give your emotions a minute, they are like the wind that sweeps around your ear.
• . A metaphor can help us close the gate on emotions before they get the better of us.
• . Children do not bottle up their emotions.
• . What one American psychologist presented as a method in the mid-1950s can help us deal with our emotions.

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If you give your emotions a minute, they are like the wind that sweeps around your ear.

Here’s something I’ve learned…

Difficult emotions will not remain with you for long. Like a cloud leaving its space for a clear sky, your difficult emotions will pass through.

What you need to do is to let them – by not interfering in the process.

A metaphor can help us close the gate on emotions before they get the better of us.

Steven Stein and Howard Book, in their wonderful book, The EQ Edge, describe a metaphor that can help us deal with our emotions.

Imagine an impulse gate that swings open and closed between emotions and behaviors/actions. If the gate is working properly, emotions get stacked up on one side for a while.

The impulse gate puts them on hold.

How wonderful.

Now, you don’t explode at someone when emotions smack you on your chest. Instead, you take a minute or two to imagine one of those swinging gates. You imagine putting your anger, irritation, outrage, and any emotion urging you to take lethal action in one side of the swinging gate. As long as the gate you are imagining perfectly works, it will hold your emotions in one side.

By imagining this metaphor, I’m not asking you to deny the existence of these emotions.

You’re aware of them.

But you don’t do much about them right away.

Frustration, hostility, destructiveness, and a host of other potentially wounding emotions are left to cool their heels.

Your emotions have got nowhere to go; they can’t get through the gate and be acted upon.

Isn’t that a cool way to cool our emotions?

Speaking of cooling our emotions, have you observed how children deal with their emotions?

They are our best teachers.

Children do not bottle up their emotions.

Have you ever seen children beating the crap out of each other over a silly thing like the right to play the new game first? I am talking shoving, flailing arms, and hammer fists. One second a child is fighting with his best friend with flailing arms, the next second they are giggling and telling each other they are best friends.

Children do not plot all day to take action on emotions that made them uncomfortable. They cry if they need to. They give themselves the opportunity to process their emotions, without judging themselves.

In time, they get up and move on.

Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

And one last way that can help you deal with emotions…

What one American psychologist presented as a method in the mid-1950s can help us deal with our emotions.

Dr. Albert Ellis, the father of rational emotive behavior theory, believed you can modify and change your emotions by means of logical and deductive reasoning, instead of allowing your emotions to get the better of you.

This is important because being rational is the one thing we are not when uncomfortable emotions hit our hearts.

Dr. Albert has the ABCDE method to help you deal with emotions before they get the better of you.

Allow me to explain what the letters – ABCDE – represent and how you can use them.

A simple example: your partner did not buy the lemons you asked for from the supermarket and you are outraged.

A – Represents the incident – the activating event.

Your partner not buying the lemons you asked for is an incident that leads to outrage.

B – Represents beliefs. Because he did not buy the lemons you asked, you start damaging self-talk with yourself. These beliefs are irrational. But you clutch them tight to your chest. He does not care about our relationship. Clearly, he did not buy the lemons deliberately.

C – Represents consequences. You act. You let your irrational beliefs take you on a road where your irrational beliefs drive the car and you sit at the back.

For example, you explode at your partner because he has not bought the lemons you asked for. You pout for a week because you believe your partner has deliberately hurt you.

D – Represents disproving your irrational beliefs. You debate, dispute, and discard these self-defeating beliefs that give rise to your Cs (consequences).

Example:

Where is the proof?

Has your partner deliberately forgotten something you asked before?

Are there alternative, more logical explanations to explain the activating event (your partner not buying the lemons you asked for)?

Maybe the supermarket was out of lemon stock.

Have you asked him?

If someone asked you for advice about this scenario, what might you say that could help alter your perspective? Surely, you would advise a friend she has become irrational and remind her how much her partner loves her. Why wouldn’t you do the same for yourself?

These questions help you to disprove your irrational beliefs.

E – Represents how debating, disputing, and discarding your irrational beliefs have shifted your understanding and beliefs about the activating event, your feelings, and behaviors.

What has the ABCDE method got to do with emotions?

Most of the time, our emotions get the better of us because we start believing something right after an incident.

That something may or may not be true.

But to our irrational mind, that’s is irrelevant.

Instead of blindly leaping from an incident to taking action, we can take a minute to disprove our beliefs. We can allow more rational and adaptive beliefs to emerge. We can address our self-defeating belief system. We can shift our Cs to more effective, adaptive feelings, and behaviors.

Isn’t that what we want?

To never become irrational because we are leaping from A (an incident) to C (consequences)?

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Takeaway:

Emotions are a vital part of our everyday lives. Whether someone has sent you a nasty comment on social media or your partner has not squeezed out the water from the kitchen sponge, the emotions you feel can significantly affect your well-being. You can start practicing one or more of the above lessons to deal with your emotions.

Emotions do not have to ruin your life. You can learn to take your emotional temperature and deal with your emotions.

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