As I watched my dog trotting off with the anaesthetist to have a tumour removed from her leg, I was overwhelmed with emotions. Knowing that she would wake up in the surgery room without familiar faces and not knowing what had happened to her, I felt such a strong wave of guilt, emptiness and despair. How could I protect my friend and companion from the pain and confusion? And it all starts with managing emotions such that I don’t overwhelm her. 

Of course, she would see me twenty minutes later as I was clearly waiting outside the operation room and would walk with her to the post-recovery ICU room. Nevertheless,  how to manage emotions is hard especially when you’re responsible for another being. Although, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. 

Why We Need Emotions 

I see many people who assume that data and logic are how they make decisions. Strange as this might sound, we need emotions to make rational decisions. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio demonstrated this by studying people with impaired emotional centres in their brains. Interestingly, they struggle to make decisions and lead a wise life. 

Emotions don’t just impact our decision making but also how we pay attention, how we learn and problem solve. If we don’t know how to manage emotions, we’ll never be able to change and learn new habits or behaviours. Moreover, rather than trying to suppress or ignore negative emotions, we can learn to appreciate that they are powerful messengers telling us to do something different. 

It’s worth noting that managing emotions is not the same as managing feelings. Emotions come from the body and are triggered unconsciously either by the internal workings of the body or by external stimuli. For instance, you could be having bad digestion that triggers frustration. Alternatively, someone cuts in from of you in a queue and the rage suddenly flashes up. 

On the flip side, feelings are the thoughts and stories we attribute to emotions. Feelings come from the mind and give emotions importance. The mind is adept at taking us into parallel universes or into the future and the past. In my case, as I waited outside the surgery room, I was imagining all the terrible things that could happen whilst my dog was on the operating table. There’s no need for this extra suffering and managing feelings involves getting to know your thoughts and managing them with various techniques. 

Various Techniques for How to Manage Emotions and Feelings

People often come to me as a coach because they want something fixed although few of them think it has anything to do with how to manage emotions. Perhaps they want happier relationships or to be more confident in life. Whatever it is, it often comes down to managing emotions. Only by understanding emotions can we truly see our behaviours and how they impact others around us and essentially, our ‘problems’.

I’m not talking about terrifying problems like living in a war zone. No, I’m talking about problems with people and the constant anxiety and stress most people live with. Of course it’s understandable that people get frustrated with others or that we’re hard on ourselves. After all, our behaviours and habits are usually learnt in childhood and it takes a certain amount of work to change our belief statements as well as our habits. And then managing emotions of course. 

Managing feelings means observing your thoughts. When something happens, do you create a story that the world is against you? If your friend doesn’t call you as much as you’d like, do they hate you or are they perhaps caught up with their own problems? 

Once you’ve noticed your thoughts and how they impact your emotions, you can start reframing your thoughts with, for example, this worksheet. Be curious about alternative options. No, that man in the street wasn’t sending death stares; he was overwhelmed by some bad news he’s just received. 

A 3-step process for managing emotions: 

You also need to know how to manage emotions so that you don’t even give your mind a chance to turn them into overwhelming stories. As you might imagine, this takes practice and patience but with time, you’ll start appreciating how often our emotions are constantly changing all the time. Moreover, emotions don’t have to define you as they are simply the body’s messengers, although, no one can convince you of this. You have to learn how to manage emotions for yourself. No one can do it for you. It’s an experiential practice such that one day you wake up and realise that this all makes sense. 

How to manage emotions starts with these practices: 

1- Feel and pause

Whether you’re solving a problem at work or learning about your emotions, it always starts with observing the current state. One useful tool is the 3Ps from mindfulness techniques. You first Pause, then be Present before you Proceed mindfully. 

The idea is to stop everything, notice your feet on the floor and your breath as you bring yourself into this moment only. That’s when you check in with your body and note what emotions are going on. So, do you feel anxious butterflies in your stomach or tense frustration in your shoulders? Whatever it is, simply notice and breathe into it as you accept it and let it go. At that point, you can also check in with your values and the type of person you aspire to be. Do you want to let that anger or anxiety dictate your next action? 

2- Self-reflection for managing emotions

Any form of self-reflection, whether through journaling, talking into a recorder or contemplation, is a powerful technique for managing emotions. That’s because the very act of speaking or writing about your emotions helps you process them more effectively. 

Managing feelings is also easier with self-reflection. Essentially, you’re observing how your mind takes your emotions and turns them into stories, usually about yourself such that you feel even worse. By writing about your stories, you learn about the habits of your mind and then you can challenge and rewrite them. 

3- Express your emotions 

There’s nothing worse than bottling up emotions. Practising mindfulness and meditation will help you let them go but until we are experts at seeing emotions as just messengers to let go, it can help to express them healthily. Then managing feelings also becomes easier because you don’t have emotions on which to build a story anymore. 

Sometimes that means talking to someone about them. Other times, it could mean playing tennis or any other sport. The idea is to release the tension. Yoga is another great practice to get the negative emotions flowing out of you. Yet another option is gardening or walking in Nature. Nature itself has a cathartic impact on us and lets us forget our emotions because of the awe and beauty around us. 

How Are You Going to Manage Your Sanity? 

Strong negative emotions can sometimes make you feel like you’re going mad or that you can’t keep holding onto this life. We’ve all been there at some point. With practice though, things do get easier for managing feelings. Start by observing your emotions and either journaling or talking about them. Practice self-reflection and be curious about this body-mind connection that can amplify emotions. In the end, all we have is the present and it’s an impressive anchor to ground us. Living in the present helps emotions pass on because there is no space for them in the present. Only the mind takes them to other planes and other possibilities. Then again, a life without emotions would feel empty and soulless. 

“Life without emotions would be as calm as death, like a world without weather.” Dan Millman