Emotion

From SenseThinkAct

EMOTION

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: Chronic Bad Feelings Many of our feelings are chronic, that is they make us feel less than brilliant about ourselves almost all the time. One tactic with chronic negative feelings is to DECIDE to pay no heed to them and to instead put our attention onto our present time life.

The mental phenomena of decision plays the major part in the direction and control of our attention. We need therefor to repeatedly make a decision that our nervousness, fear, embarassment, deprecation or whatever, is superficial and will not effect our intelligent choices of action. Written and daily repeated decisions will probably be necessary. They may be precise or general.

"I will not get depressed after contacting my mother - I lead my own life now".

"The manager will not intimidate me with his innuendos - I will speak my own mind confidently at all times".

"From this moment on I will be my true self at all times".

On top of this list what is good in your life and what you want out of life on a regular basis. This is best done as an oral exchange with a friend but writing a list is a good second best.

If a friend is depressed or otherwise sunk into negative feeling a good technique is to get them to review happy memories. This can be done in person, by phone or by email or letter. This may have to be done by asking questions about a range of subject areas that are likely to have happy memories attached. e.g. beach, sea, countryside, flowers, games, holiday, etc. It is useful if you know the persons special interests.

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: Dealing with Sudden Strong Feelings Other feelings may come on you suddenly and unexpectedly. You get angry and fly of the handle or you feel dominated and go quiet and submissive. These situation can reoccur quite often and it can still be surprising how strong the emotion is and how unexpected it feels.

A useful technique here is to temporarily take yourself outside the situation. Leave the cause of the upset. leave the room, walk into the garden. Go out the back gate and up a nearby hill. Take a cab to the airport - go as far as you need to escape the imposing feeling.

The take some time to think about what is real and what is unreal about the situation. Emotions often carry a sense of drama and importance. But if you can detach from them they can be seen as superficial and even sometimes largely illusory.

Then before returning imagine what your most powerful re-entry into the situation, which caused the upset, might be. Entertain yourself with this thought. It may help you not to again get snagged or brought down by what was getting to you.

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: Basic Peer Counselling It is useful to separate emotion from thinking and acting in everyday life. The way this can be done is to set up a special time and space to look at our emotions. A space in which negative emotions can be expressed without any consequences.

The simplest way this can be done is to set up a listening exchange with a friend. The roles of listening and speaking about how you feel are clearly agreed. The person listening should just listen and not proffer her opinions, advice, experiences or stories. The listening must be non-judgemental The length of time you are going to do it for is agreed. The place chosen is ideally a space were you will not be interrupted. You may also like to agree that the contents of what you say are to be strictly confidential - this allows to to say emotive expressions like "I could kill him when he does that" without fear it could get back to the person in question.

The longer you can set aside for this and the more regularly you do it the more profound the results can be. However even a ten minute session at the right time can be very useful. It is surprising how few people have ever experienced ten minutes of uninterrupted attention.

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: Intermediate Level Peer Counselling Having set up the basic relationship as above a few dynamics are worth knowing.

• It is useful to start and end on an up note. So both of you should start with something good that has happened and end with something each of you are looking forward to. Even simply pointing things our or asking questions of things in the room can what is needed. If a session has not got going and one person is still sunk in negative emotion then a prolonged series of such questions may be necessary. Leave time to do this.

• One of the commonest negative emotions is caused by lack of appreciation. Providing plenty of appreciation within the counseling session can do wonders. You can also encourage the person to appreciate themselves.

• The expression of emotions should be encouraged and calmly accepted and even appreciated. People fear they could get 'lost' in crying but in my experience in the last 25 years this has never been the case.

• A certain degree of physical closeness can help a lot. If the two people have the sort of relationship in which a hug is normal then this can be useful an times when the speaker is feeling vulnerable and could do with a reassuring hand.

• If a person speaks for some time without any emotional expression or colour in her voice you may have to go back to looking at positives. Where an emotional situation is stuck then considering the opposite to the situation can be useful. If there was no happy of safe times in your childhood a request to make up a story in which a child is safe and happy may bring floods of (healing) tears.

• Finally its all down to a caring attitude, time and experiment.

Note: The is no advance exercise because I think that advanced counseling really needs the guidance of an experienced teacher.

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: Acceptance Acceptance can be a good temporary strategy to survive a stressful or frustrating situation or find creative new directions. Particularly when your best efforts at life do not match your expectations. Things are all going wrong, you may seem to be losing control, there are too many demands on you.

Your expectations are at best a conceptual model which may be discarded or at least readjusted if it does not match up to reality. If you can go with the flow for a while, without giving up on yourself, things may start to improve.

Our attempts to overcome the limitations we inherited and grew up with, and to make the most of what abilities were left intact can be a joyful struggle. It is often when we can appreciate just how well we having been doing, when the whole picture of our situation is taken into account, that we can come an acceptance that allows us to progress. Sometimes the effort to progress creates stress that defeats its own objective. I'm suggesting that 'giving up' is a tool for temporary strategic use and not a lifestyle.

Appreciate your own struggles - make a list if needs be.

What would it be like to 'give up' on some things that are not giving you satisfaction?