Control your emotions so you can trust them to help you

Have you ever got really worked up about something and then done or said something that you later bitterly regretted? Did you wonder what came over you? Or why you couldn't control your emotions? Have you noticed that this sort of situation is more likely to occur with certain kinds of emotions, such as anger, or jealousy? Have you begun to worry about how often it happens?

Understanding emotions and emotional control

Everybody has emotions. Emotions are chemical signals fired off by your nervous system in response to what's going on around you. They let you know how you feel about things - happy, angry, sad, excited, jealous. Whatever it is. And they don't lie. These instant, instinctive responses of your body to the world are always truthful. But not always right!

The evolution and purpose of emotions - keeping you safe

Why have we evolved emotional responses? Well, the flow of these chemicals through your body, triggered by events and situations around you, gets you doing something. You'll notice that the word 'emotion' contains the word 'motion', that is, movement. Emotions are there to induce action.

Basic survival depends on being able to recognise and respond to a threat. If our lives are threatened, we need to fight, or run away. This is our most fundamental emotional response - our 'fight or flight' mechanism. It sends a rush of adrenaline around the body, raises your heart rate, stops your digestion, makes your palms sweat. It's quite uncomfortable, but very effective - in the right circumstances.

Too much emotion overwhelms your judgement

Emotional arousal, in pursuit of its goal of getting you into action, also has an apparently counter-productive effect. If the level of arousal goes beyond a certain point, you literally can't think straight. The neo-cortex (basically, the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking), is a relatively new development in human evolution. The amygdale, which is the driver of emotional responses, is much 'older'.

In a crisis situation, when the amygdale identifies a 'threat' and triggers an emotional response, it will cut off the neo-cortex and operate at a purely emotional level. In this state, you will see everything in very black-and-white, all-or-nothing terms. You will be absolutely certain of the 'rightness' of your position, and nobody attempting to 'reason' with you will get anywhere. Sound familiar?

Why the neo-cortex gets sidelined by emotion

At first sight, it's a puzzle why our inbuilt defence mechanism shuts down thinking capacity in a crisis. Surely this is when we need it most? But in the primitive life or death situations in which this mechanism evolved, 'thinking about things' would not be very useful. Snap decisions and instant action are what is called for.

So if the amygdale senses a threat to life, it shuts down all other processes (appetite, digestion, sex drive, immune system - and thinking) and focuses on immediate survival.

Primitive emotional responses don't match the times

And now you're wondering what's the matter with your amygdale. Nobody is threatening your life, are they? (I hope!) The good news is that your amygdale is functioning just as it should. But the world in which it is functioning is now very different. There may not be a sabre-toothed tiger waiting to pounce on you, but if your boss is about to haul you over the coals, you may feel just like your ancestor suddenly seeing the tiger.

What's happening is that your amygdale is responding to the sense of threat. It's a primitive mechanism, and can't distinguish one type of threat from another. It's just threat. To distinguish between threats, and respond appropriately, you need your neo-cortex, with its reasoning powers.

But how do you prevent your neo-cortex from being put out of action by emotion?

How to put your neo-cortex in control of your emotions

Emotions are a very valuable part of being human, and enrich our lives immensely. Without them, we would be dull robots indeed. But they can run away with us unless we learn to keep them in check. A happy balance between reason and emotion can be struck by learning how to calm down emotional arousal. This allows you to have your feelings and still be able to think clearly.

Using hypnosis to create a new 'template' for controlling emotion

Hypnotic relaxation is your fastest route to calming down all kinds of emotional arousal. Control your emotions will allow you to experience and master the art of deep relaxation - which will automatically reduce arousal.

Control your emotions gives you the tools you need to become the 'master of your ship' - able to access all the drive and energy you need to take action, but also able to determine just what action is really appropriate calmly and objectively. You will build up a new instinctive template for response to crisis and challenge which makes the best use of your emotional responses.

Download Control your emotions and take charge.