When You Stop Controlling Your Emotion, It Fades

Whoever controls is because deep down they fear something. It is very common that when we feel some type of negative emotion, we want to suppress it as soon as possible. We have developed an atrocious fear of certain natural states such as anxiety or sadness and this leads us to try to control them, which only serves to increase their intensity.

Every emotion is useful and we would never have to fight against any of them, since we must feel them, understand them and listen to them. Only in this way, we can generate good strategies that lead us to successfully face the problems that arise.

It happens that sometimes negative emotions are too intense, long-lasting and frequent and at this point, it becomes tremendously difficult to accept them. But difficult does not mean impossible. The practice of acceptance will make us realize it.

Embracing emotion is letting it go

Accepting negative emotions does not mean resigning to them and having to suffer forever. None of us want to experience those unpleasant symptoms that some emotions bring with them.

But although we hate feeling like this, the truth is that it is impossible to feel calm, calm and happiness in every moment of our life. Sometimes we are going to feel bad and it is in our power that this state does not last. The reality, fortunately or unfortunately, is not always as we would like.

So let us accept reality, the world as it is and this includes also accepting our own body and its physiology. If we generate resistance to these physiological manifestations, then what we will obtain will be an increase in these manifestations. It is a vicious cycle that we have to break.

Let us make peace with our self, with our whole being and embrace what we are feeling. Let’s look those negative emotions in the eye and this will make them go away. Those feelings are like ghosts: they want to scare us and the more we cower and flee, the more force they take and even more they scare us.

Some steps to stop controlling

As we have discussed previously, practice is the essential key for us to become masters of acceptance. It is useless to know the theory if we do not practice daily.

Little by little we will begin to realize that negative emotions no longer permeate us so intensely or last as long. From there we can start working with negative thoughts, that is, with the messages that those emotions bring. You can start practicing acceptance with the following steps:

Make a space for emotion: when we let emotion be and be, we are giving it space to flow, without putting up dikes or barriers. This causes it to automatically begin to descend until it reaches normal levels, which is when we must begin to listen to what it has to say to us.

Talk to yourself with realistic arguments about emotion: instead of saying to ourselves things like “I have anxiety again, how weak I am!” or “This sadness is ruining my life!”, etc; start talking to you in a different way: “I have anxiety, but that hasn’t killed anyone, so I’ll let it be with me for the rest of the day.”

Finding a space to relax: our desire to be superhuman leads us to do many things at the same time: take care of the children, take the dog out, eat, go to work and that there is nothing pending, etc. How can anxiety not appear to tell us to stop at once? Take a break to relax, quit perfectionism and delegate tasks.

Talk to other people about your emotion: to accept that we feel negative emotions, you have to normalize them and a good strategy is to talk about it with our environment. Just as we can say that we are cold or hot, we can say that we feel anxiety.

Gradually practice acceptance: Don’t try to accept emotion in the middle of a panic attack. Start with mild and isolated sensations and little by little you will gain mastery.

Once you have managed to accept the negative emotion, once you have said in some way “okay, I know that you exist and that you have strength”, you can use its energy to your advantage. By channeling its power and spending it on what interests you – writing, for example – you will witness how little by little it disappears.