Emotions; Techniques to Manage High Emotion

It's easy to recommend to someone who is emotionally charged  "don't overreact " or "think before you speak," but difficult to do.  Learn how to truly get control of your emotions with this easy NLP technique. ​

We all have our triggers and can related to times in our lives when emotions have run high. A time when you are really upset with a loved one because they have hurt you or do not understand your point of view. 

Once you notice you have been triggered you will notice some physiological responses (heart rate goes up, breathing changes, or muscles tensing). 

Your emotions trigger negative thoughts and fears and you begin saying what you are thinking and feeling and in unfavourable manner. 

Neuro Linguistic Programing techniques prove that when we can re-connect with the experience we can work with and easy shift all of our associated emotions and patterns and can easily replace these patterns with more desired actions. Our minds are remarkable machines that have much more control over our thoughts, feelings and actions then we tend to give credit for. 

The next time you notice these thoughts, feelings and physiological responses occur you may want to try the following technique:

1) When a person becomes emotionally charged their rational mind is not fuctioning properly. Therefore the first step is to neutralize the heightened emotions. Reflect on a time you had an argument Dissociate yourself from the experience. Richard Bandler and John Grinder often talk about looking at yourself from a third perceptual position as if you are watching yourself in a movie. Take a quick moment to remind yourself that each of you may be acting out negatively but with all negative behaviour there is a positive intention behind that behaviour. 

2) Desired outcome- take yourself quickly to a perfect desired state of mind you want to be in. If you could fast forward to the end how would you be thinking, feeling and what would you see once all was resolved and everyone was satisfied. 

3) Place the desired outcome like a small postage stamp in the corner of your image in your mind. Think of how your body, emotions and thoughts shift just before you are about to get upset. 

4) SWISH- You are quickly going to switch the main image of "about to be upset" with the small postage stamp to your left. Making the image of "about to be upset" go into the small stamp and drift off and the image of the positive outcome. Imagine it making a whoosh sound as it zips into place. At first, you'll probably do this slowly, taking a few seconds to complete the SWISH. Complete this swish process 5-7 times. 

5) Test- Now try and use the limiting thought or belief again. Notice how it has shifted and how you have to challenge yourself to think of what the orginial undesired response was like. You notice how neutral you feel. 

Then when you are having a similar argument with a person you will notice that you are not quick to have those old negative emotional triggers. You are able to stop and think about how you want to manage the disagreement that is occuring. 

This new state you have created will help you take some time to notice each side of the problem, ask the person questions about things that are not clear, listen and allow the person to say their side of the story, acknowledge your part in the situation and make plans as to how to best resolve the sitaution.   
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Lisa Woykin 
Family Counsellor & Hypnotherapist