Identifying an Emotion

The key step involved in managing changes in mood involves being aware of the feelings you have in terms of:

  • what they are
  • when they happen
  • how bad they are making you feel

The more you notice your emotions in the moments they occur, the better you will be able to deal with them in the future.

Mindfully Managing Emotions

Difficult emotions are said to arise because we cannot deal with acceptance. This could be acceptance about ourselves, a situation or the emotion we are feeling. Because we do not accept it, we tend to want to avoid them which create secondary problems such as anger, depression, anxiety etc.

Using mindfulness strategies will help with acceptance, where you just label it for what it is – whether we like it or we don’t. This can be done with practice with the acronym RAIN:

  • Recognize the Emotion: Label the Emotion you are experiencing.
  • Accept the Emotion: just accept you are experiencing this emotion.
  • Investigate the bodily sensations that this emotion is causing. Just notice these sensations, and try not to give in to them.
  • Non-identify or don’t identify with the emotional experience. They are just a series of reactions and sensations from your body. You are not defined by these, just affected by them.

Try this technique every time you encounter an emotion that is hard to experience.This can help you step outside your body, look at the emotion and its affect on you, all awhile making the experience of the emotion less painful.

Strategies to Prevent Escalation

Intense emotions are often so powerful that labelling them does not always do the trick. This section includes some strategies for getting your mood to a point where it is helpful and manageable.

The following are a list of strategies you could use:

Breathing: The simplest way to change your mood is by changing your breathing. Just taking a moment and focusing on your breathing can prevent a series of negative events that cause stress.

  • Focus on your breathing: is it shallow, deep or slow.
  • Breath in so you can feel your stomach rising. If your shoulders rise as you breathe, relax them.
  • Continue breathing in and count to three. Exhale at the count of three and continue this process for 2 minutes.

Exercise: exercise can channel the physical restlessness and reduce body tension, anxiety, and fatigue, whilst also improving self-esteem and self-confidence. In this instance it is better to do aerobic exercise, as these increases the endorphin levels in the brain to increase positive mood states. Examples include:

  • Walking
  • Jogging or Running
  • Tennis
  • Swimming
  • Cycling
  • Yoga or Pilates

Music: music has the ability to manipulate feelings where each song’s lyrics or rhythm create particular feelings within us. Motivation can be stirred, sadness and laughter, or any other emotions could arise. You can use music to control or create your own moods.[

  • Think about the emotion that you are feeling, and brainstorm what kinds of music could alter your emotion to something positive.
  • Listen to this until the emotion subsides.

Laughter: when you laugh, muscles are tightened, held for a moment and then relaxed. This process of tensing and relaxing creates a calmer physical state. Breathing also becomes deeper, and more diaphragmatic. Overall it makes it hard to focus on the bad aspects of an event when you can find the humour in it. Therefore if you find something stressful, watch a funny movie, talk to someone you find funny, or just try and find the funny side of the problem.

Visualisation: your imagination can help overcome feelings of frustration and replace them with a calm feeling.

  • Settle into a comfortable seat. Screen out all distractions.
  • Close your eyes.
  • Generate a relaxing scene or memory.
  • Use all of your senses: see, smell, touch parts of the scene.
  • Scan your body for any muscle tension and let go.[
  • Take a few deep breaths and open your eyes

Whilst you are feeling an intense emotion, try one of these activities.