Category: Mastering Emotions as Tools

Just to recap, in my last post, I discussed 5 functions of emotions.  What I have called functions are labelled as “aspects”, “values” or “purposes” of emotions by authors Michael A. Jawer and Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D. in their book  The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion   from which this list is taken.

The comments on each function are a combination of the two authors and my own take on the specific function being discussed.

6. The Motivational Function: Emotions are a barometer of needs unmet or goals unfulfilled.

This is the very essence of what emotions are.  They are motivators and, by evolutionary “design” prepare us for action and “propel us toward acceptance or rejection of whatever external reality (we) (are) encountering” (The authors).

7. The Ethical function: Emotions facilitate socially acceptable behavior and serve as a powerful reminder when one fails to live up to standards whether held internally or externally.

Emotions such as guilt, shame, pride, and embarrassment appear in our children around the ages of 2 1/2 to 3 1/2.  They appear once the child had the cognitive ability including memory capacity to conceive of himself as a separate being in time and space.  These emotions are called self-conscious emotions.

These emotions alert us to our views of ourselves and our behavior often in the context of our goals (pride), and how we measure up to internal and external standards (guilt, shame, embarrassment).

The message of embarrassment is that we have violated some standard.  The message of guilt is that we have done something wrong which we regret.  The message of shame is that there is something wrong with us as a person.

The ethical function of self-conscious emotions is to alert us to when we have crossed some internal or external line of appropriate behavior and to motivate us to take action to  correct the transgression.

8. The Developmental Function: Emotions are essential to personal development and self-actualization.

The authors note that emotions alert us that we are in the middle of a difficult situation so that we can learn from it much like a fever alerts us that we are fighting off an infection.

9. The Evolutionary Aspect: The emotional feedback loop, which involves the recognition of what we and our fellow individuals are feeling, is the driver of our species’ progress.

As I have noted in my books and my posts, emotions evolved to help us survive as a species.

The authors note that the emotional interaction between human beings      “(drives) our species’ rapid intellectual and cultural development”.

10. The Qualitative Function: In tandem with thinking, emotions determine the quality, value, and, ultimately, the meaning human beings place on their lives.

I teach an Introductory Philosophy Class and one of the topics I cover is what makes each individual unique.  One of the examples I discuss is a man who was very interactive, emotionally expressive and involved with his family and his surroundings.  Following a brain tumor, he was unable to experience emotions.  He would look at a picture of a man emaciated by hunger and note that he was looking at a “very skinny man”. Intellectually, he responded to the picture but he was devoid of emotion.

Emotions add color to our lives. Emotions allow us to experience  an interaction in addition to understanding it.  The technical term for these experiences is qualia.   A physical example of qualia is the difference between knowing about and seeing a red apple and experiencing the essence of a bright red apple.

Your emotions allow to experience many different aspects of an interaction. You go to a lecture. While I can video the lecture and record the content, what you take away from the lecture will be very different if you are bored than if you are excited.  This difference is entirely based on the emotions you experience.  This is qualia.

The authors quote Psychiatrist Elio Frattaroli who states, “The simple act of paying attention to your inner world, to the finely tuned layers and qualities of inner experiencing… crystallizes the core meanings of your life.” (citations noted in the book).

The qualia in your emotions creates your experience.

As I write this, we are entering into the 2024 “Holiday” Season.

And, while I am looking forward to the Holidays, I need to tell you, my readers, that this will the last season for TheEmotionsDoctor.com.

My first post was in February 2016 and we will go dark in February 2025. That is 9 years of posts designed to help you both understand all aspects of emotions and master your emotions to improve your life and your relationships.

I’m writing this now in case any of you might want to go to the Index tab in the upper Left corner and revisit any post you might find useful and, if you wish, copy it for your records.

I only ask that if you reprint a post, give me credit for it as in…

Oringinally posted by Ed Daube, PhD. The Emotions Doctor

That said, my last posts will be  reprints from 2017 covering the 10 functions of emotions because this is a very infrequently covered topic.

Enjoy

There is a book entitled: The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion  by Michael A. Jawer and Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D. in which the authors list 10 values of emotions.  The authors refer to these values as “purposes” or “aspects”.  I think a better term is function.

In this post, I discuss functions 1-5.  I will discuss functions 6-10 in my next post.

Disclaimer: The “functions” are taken from the book. The commentary is a combination of my take on the “function” and the authors.

1. The Self awareness Function: Emotions enable individuals to discriminate “us versus them”.

When we become aware of our own emotions and those of others, we can use the contrast between what we feel about a situation and what others feel to improve our sense of self and learn about how we are interpreting a situation.

Have you ever had the experience of sitting down to a meal, eating too much, and commenting, “I didn’t realize I was so hungry.”  In this example, you are “learning” about your own internal state by observing your own behavior.

When you experience an emotion and analyze the nature of the perceived threat, you can learn about your own values.

2. The Adaptational Function: Emotions enable the individual to react quickly and expeditiously to changes in his or her environment.

This was, and is, the basic function of emotions.  Emotions evolved as primitive threat detectors to help us survive as a species.  This is the “fast track” process I write about in my books and my posts.

3. The Collectivity Function: Emotions enable individuals to communicate something of importance to one another.

A very important function of emotions is to inform others about how you perceive a situation and give them the opportunity to respond accordingly.

The emotion of anger communicates that you are ready to go to war.  When we lived in caves, or even today, an angry face and body posture clearly says “Back off, I am a force to be reckoned with.”

In the process of mastering your emotions, awareness of this function of emotions lets you both read other people and use other’s reactions to you to help you determine how you want to effectively deal with the interaction in which you find yourself.

4. The Interpersonal Function: Emotions cement bonds between people, especially between parents and children.

The authors note and tone of voice are crucial to the healthy development of an infant.

You also experience this function of emotions when you tell your significant other or your kids that you love them. And, you can see how emotions work when people come together in times of emergencies, shared experiences of mourning or distress or joy. Ever watched a sporting event when the home team scores an important point?

5. The Continuity Function: Emotions are integral to memory and learning.

The authors note that memory and learning is strongly reinforced when accompanied by strong emotion.

There is a concept known a “flashbulb memories”.  A significant event occurs about which you have very strong emotions and the memory including everything about your situation at the time is solidly burned in.  For older readers, like myself, the Assassination of President Kennedy is such an event.  For younger readers, it might be the death of  Princes Diana.  For all of us the 2001 bombing of the the Twin Towers certainly qualifies.

The same phenomenon can occur whenever an event is accompanied by strong feelings.

Functions 6 -10 will be discussed in the next post.

In my last post, I introduced you to the 3M approach to feelings and discussed the first M: Management.  In this post, I will talk about the second and third M’s and conclude with how you can apply the 3M approach to the emotions of another person.

The second  M ==> Mindfulness

When you are mindful, you are present in, and aware of, the moment.

While we experience an emotion in the moment, our  perceptions of the situation we are facing may be absolutely accurate or may be impacted by extraneous or irrelevant information.  As these perceptions elicit our feelings, “irrelevant” information can lead to misunderstandings and misperceptions.

This irrelevant information can involve:

• any experiences we have had in the past which are similar to, but not the same as, our current situation,
• our tendency to project ourselves into some unwanted future,
• our tendency to overreact for a number of reasons or
• some ambiguity in the current situation.

When we talk about our “buttons” being pushed or “jumping to conclusions”,  we are referring to these three sources of misinformaiton.

Examples include:

• getting anxious (a future based emotion) because we didn’t do well in a previous interview and we react “as if” our next interview will turn out the same way
• getting angry (a present based emotion) because we misinterpret the actions of another as mistreatment without getting all the facts
• becoming jealous, without really understanding what is going on, because our spouse seems to be giving attention to someone else

Mindfulness says that you should stay in the moment and fully understand what is actually taking place before you “interpret”, “judge”, “draw conclusions about”, or take action concerning the perceived threat your feelings are telling you exists.

When you are mindful, you ask questions about what is going on, you gain the information you need to decide what actions you will take, and you reserve to yourself the option of choosing what you will do.

The third M ==> Mastery

The anger mastery cycle, which applies to all emotions including anger, can be downloaded from this website and involves the third M or Mastery of the feeling.  Mastering an emotion picks up where Managing one’s emotion ends.  Once you have lowered your arousal, you can remain mindful, or in the moment, and assess or validate the threat you perceive exists.

The process of assessment involves:

• gathering information about what is happening by asking questions,
• learning, through perspective taking, about the process and intent of the other person with whom you are interacting,  and
• evaluating your own perceptions. This assumes that you are psychologically open to the possibility that you might be wrong in your initial assessment. (Not an easy task.)

Assessment sets you up to make a decision about how valid your emotion is and how you want to respond to what is happening.

If the perceived threat is genuine, mastering your emotion dictates that you use all the energy the emotion provides to develop and execute a plan to eliminate the threat.

If the perceived threat is not genuine but is due to a misperception of what is happening, mastering the emotion dictates that you change your behavior and change the thoughts which are giving rise to the feeling.  This will result in the feeling changing.

Or, you can choose to let the feeling diminish and go away by ignoring it.

The same three M’s can also be applied when you are dealing with someone else who is directing their emotions at you. The process involves lowering your own arousal (managing) so that you don’t react and escalate the interaction (This can also result in the other person “powering down” somewhat.), remaining mindful so that you gather information about how the other person perceives you as a threat (mindfulness), and mastering their emotions by assessing how they see what is going on. You can then adaptively respond to their perceptions (if they are open to this) by acknowledging or validating their emotion, apologizing (if appropriate), or suggesting a resolution.

You can also choose to leave the situation.

I have a whole chapter on dealing with someone who is angry with you in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

In previous posts, I have talked about the Emotions as Tools Model which

• takes all the mystery out of the topic of feelings  (Remember that the words emotion and feeling are interchangeable.),
• reminds you that you can learn how to use your feelings to improve your life and your relationships in the same way that you learn to use your computer or TV remote (gain knowledge about the tool and practice), and
• ultimately, gives you back control of your life.

In this post, i would like to give you a quick way to remember and implement the Emotions as Tools Model: The 3M approach to feelings.

As you continue to learn more about the message of each emotion, how your body informs you about a feeling by the way you experience each feeling in your body (your physical correlates), and the thoughts which both inform you about how you perceive your surroundings and which elicit each emotion, you can break the emotional process into three steps, each of which begins with the letter M.  The three steps involve Management, Mindfulness and Mastery.

The 3M approach works both for your own feelings and when you are interacting with the emotions of another person directed at you.

The ultimate goal is to master your emotion so that you can strategically apply it to any situation in which you find yourself.

I will talk about the first M in this post and the second and third M in my next post.

The first M ==> Management

The emotional cycle is always working and begins with the process by which we all unconsciously and continuously scan our surroundings for any threat. This process is hard-wired in our brains and is a primordial survival mechanism that allowed us to survive as a species when we lived in caves.  Once a threat is perceived, the Amygdala (emotional center in the brain) sends a fast track message to the Thalamus to prepare the body to fight, flee, or freeze (the fight or flight response).  At the same time, a slower message goes to the cerebral cortex (the executive part of the brain) which allows us to make a decision about the threat.

We become aware of an emotion in one (or both) of two ways.

One the one hand, we need to learn to identify how our bodies react emotionally.  In my books, I call this one’s physical correlates.  Secondly, we should learn to identify the thoughts which accompany and elicit each emotion.

As soon as you become aware of an emotion, you should begin to manage that emotion. The process of managing one’s emotion involves lowering your arousal level.

There are at least two reasons you want to do this.

The first is so that you can take a physical step back from the “threat”. This is the establishment of physical space.

The second reason is to give you some psychological distance between you and the “threat”. This psychological space gives you the opportunity to respond rather than react to the threat.

The Amygdala “assumes” that all perceived threats are genuine and will kill us. While this was true when we lived in caves or roamed the Savannah, it isn’t necessarily true now.  Indeed, being stuck in rush hour traffic or being given the “one-finger salute” may be exasperating but is not fatal.  While we have evolved as a species, the Amygdala has (at least in this aspect) not evolved. The Amygdala just reacts and prepares our bodies to take action.  Our bodies being prepared for action is experienced as heightened arousal, muscle tension, and other physical correlates.

When you are energized and ready for action, you are more likely to react to the perceived threat.  While this may be okay if the threat is genuine, if there is no threat, you may do something you might later regret. Lowering your arousal reduces the likelihood that you will react.

There are a variety of ways you can lower your arousal.  You can take a deep breath. You can learn relaxation techniques.  You can remind yourself to slow down.  Taking a physical step backwards can act as a reminder to “take a breath”.

While the process of managing an emotion applies to all of the “threat detector” emotions, the field of “anger management” specifically has tended to focus on the process of management as a desired end result. Because I believe that one can go beyond managing one’s anger to mastering one’s anger (the third M), I tend to take issue with many anger management approaches.  I talk about this in my second book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

Once you have lowered your arousal, you can continue the process of emotional mastery by assessing the nature of the threat.  In order to do this you must be “mindful”.  Mindfulness is the second M.

As I noted above, I will discuss the second M in more detail in my next post.  And, of course, I will finish up with the third M– Mastery.

See you, then.

In my last post, I talked about the importance of maintaining flexibility in choosing how you respond to and express your emotions as you work through the process of mastering them as tools.

The process of mastering your emotions begins with the ability to know and label the specific emotion you are experiencing and continues through the actions you take that are consistent with and appropriate to that specific emotion.

So….How do you know what emotion you are experiencing?

I address this issue in my book Emotions as Tools: A Self Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings.   I also provide checklists which will help you identify your feelings.

That being said, let me give you enough information about how to identify your feelings so at least you can get started.

Physical signs: 

Typically, your first indicator that you are experiencing an emotion will be physical changes in your body.

This could include muscles tightening, a sense of warmth, your body preparing to go to war (fight), run (flight), or stiffen (freeze).

That your body is your first indicator follows from the subconscious element of the emotional process which involves your subconscious (and continuous)  scanning of your surroundings for any threat and your brain preparing your body (again subconsciously) to deal with the perceived threat.

This is the primitive part of the emotional process which has existed in humans since we lived in caves and which evolved to help us survive as a species.  This part of the emotional process is very fast and automatic which, by the way, you would want it to be if you were about to be eaten by a saber toothed tiger.

The problem, however, for all of us today, is that this primitive emotional process continues to function unchanged in us just as it did in our cave dwelling ancestors.  This rapid reaction is the reason that many people feel controlled by their emotions, they view emotions as beyond their comprehension, and they blame their emotions for the inappropriate behavior they display when they experience an emotion.

None of these “assumptions” about emotions are true.

1. You are NOT controlled by your emotions eventhough your initial reaction is subconscious.
2. You can comprehend your emotions by reading my book, checking out the index tab to all my posts by scrolling to the top of this page or tapping into any number of resources available to you on the internet.
3. The actions you take or your response  to your emotions are always your choice.  Your emotions do prepare you for a response but do NOT force you do anything.

Cognitive signs.

The “modern” component of the emotional process involves the thoughts you have about the threat your scans have perceived and your body has alerted you to through its physical reaction.

You might be more sensitive to changes in your thinking than you are to changes in your body.

If you are, you will become aware of “threat-based” thoughts which are preparing you to engage with the threat (indicative of anger), getting you all worked up over something that could occur in the future (indicative of anxiety), or, perhaps, alerting you to a situation that has immediate and unavoidable potential to do you great harm (fear).

You can learn to acknowledge these thoughts, accept their initial message as possible, question the extent to which these thoughts match what is happening to you, and choose whether to act on the thoughts or change them to match your situation.

By the way, if your thoughts alert you to an eminent threat and you are feelings fear, my suggestion is to escape the situation and assess it later.  An example would be a stranger in an elevator who looks “okay” but elicits an uncomfortable feeling in you.  Trust your “gut” and take the next elevator.  Whether he is or is not a threat is irrelevant.

This process of assessing your thoughts is what mastering your emotions  as strategic tools is all about.

How to express emotions

• Use “I” language

I language sounds like this… I am angry about your comments you made to me.  I found what you said to be inappropriate.  What exactly did you mean by what you said?”

There are several elements in the above statement…

I am angry about your comments you made to me.

This person labels the feeling (anger) and takes full responsibility for the feeling.

I found what you said to be inappropriate.

This clearly states this individual’s perception and does not place any blame.

• Ask “What” in your question, NOT “Why”.

What exactly did you mean by what you said/did?

This question starts with “what” which is designed to focus on the other person’s intent/behavior and not “why” which often elicits an excuse.

This question also leaves open the possibility that the questioner might have misunderstood or misinterpreted what was said.

Finally, this question gives the other person a chance to explain, apologize for, or even change the comment that was made.

• Stay focused on the feeling and the issue which elicited the feeling.

Don’t introduce information which is not directly relevant to the situation you are addressing. What happened last week or last year is not relevant here unless the actions of the other person is representative of an ongoing and unresolved issue.

• Acknowledge that you might have misunderstood and ask for clarification.

Note: Recall that an important part of being flexible is being open to the possibility that your initial assessment of your situation was incorrect.

• If appropriate, apologize for any misunderstanding.

This is not saying you are wrong.

This is not negating your feelings.

If you are wrong, acknowledge this directly and apologize.

• Be congruent.

non-verbals should match verbals

• Remember the concept of escalation

Start with the lowest amount of energy needed to accurately reflect what you are feeling. This is being assertive.

You can always increase the level of aggressiveness if you need to.

In my last post, I noted the 5 steps of mastering emotions…

Mastering your emotions involves five steps.

1. self-awareness
2. manage your own arousal
3. understand the message of each emotion
4. assess the match between your emotion and the situation in which you find yourself
5. choose an adaptive response

In a recent article in the February 2024 issue of Psychology Today entitled To Manage Overload, Think More Flexibly by Ellie Xu and Darby Saxbe, Ph.D., the authors discussed the concept of emotion regulation flexibility.

Prior to this article, I had not encountered the concept although the idea of emotion regulation flexibility is very consistent with the emotional mastery process as you will see.

The concept of flexibility (in the context of mastering your emotions) adds additional understanding to steps 4 and 5 of the emotional mastery process.

Being flexible in mastering your emotions means that you are..

• open to the possibility that  you might be misinterpreting what is going on in your situation. This is Step #4 and involves perception and self-awareness.

and

• open to and able to implement a variety of strategies which will adaptively deal with and manage the situation in which you find yourself. This is Step #5 and involves both knowledge and capability.

So, Step #4, which calls upon you to  assess the match between the emotion you are experiencing and your situation, gives you the opportunity to determine the appropriateness of the emotion.

An emotion is appropriate when it accurately reflects what is actually happening in your situation.

An emotion is inappropriate to the extent that it reflects what you are experiencing but not what is happening.  In other words, you have misperceived the other person, their actions, or the situation.

Notice that I did not say validity.  

The reason for this is that I believe ALL emotions are valid in that they …

a. are representative of how you are perceiving your situation

b .they communicate to you information you can use to decide how you want to act

c. they can be assessed to determine the extent to which they accurately match what is happening to you and your initial perception of your situation.

In my last post, I listed the questions you need to ask in order to make as assessment of the appropriateness of the emotion. In order for you to even ask these questions, you have to accept the possibility that you might be wrong.

It is important to note that the focus of assessment also includes the possibility that you are correct in your assessment.

That being said, viewing yourself as wrong is often difficult especially if you are emotionally aroused and your ego is invested in the situation.

This is why Step #2 is so critical and why you have to practice the emotional mastery process before you find yourself in an emotionally aroused, high intensity, potentially precarious situation.

It is why you rehearse your very important speech before you get up in front of your influential audience. Master the skill sets before you need to implement them.

Again, I am focussing here on remaining flexible in mastering your emotions so that you have access to and can implement the strategies your emotions are communicating to you that may be necessary to adaptively deal with the situation in which you find yourself.

Once you have successfully completed Step #4 and assessed the appropriateness of the emotion you initially experienced, you will move on to Step#5 which involves choosing an adaptive response.

In my last post, I noted that if your emotion did not match your situation, you could seek out new information  which would allow you to change your perception and, subsequently, your emotion. This involves reappraising the the situation.

Reappraisal is an emotion-focussed strategy and, can be very effective.

Another emotion-focussed strategy which I did not mention in my last post but have discussed in other posts is suppression.

Suppression involves purposefully minimizing the outward display of the emotion. Hence, you are still experiencing the emotion but only you know it.

When I wrote my second book Beyond Anger Management I included a chapter on Professional Women and Anger and addressed the issue, which existed then and exists now, that women, when they express appropriate anger, are often maligned, negatively labelled or punished. I suggested a passive approach in which they did not express their anger but used the energy of the anger to develop an intervention which would correct the situation but not subject them to unwanted negative consequences.  I did not label it as such at the time but I was describing the process of emotional suppression. In this situation, suppression is adaptive.

If, however, you are suppressing an emotion because you do not understand the emotion or are attempting to avoid it, this may involve repression or denial and could be maladaptive.

Being  flexible in mastering your emotions might involve a somewhat different approach: a strategy aimed at the situation.

In this case, you decide that your emotion is appropriate, you are in a situation which is a “threat” and that change is needed. You continue to honor the situation and the emotion which drew your attention to that situation and you seek to change the situation to eliminate the threat.

Examples of actions you might take include avoidance in which you do not put yourself in the threatening situation (You turn down the date or offer.), you escape the situation (You leave.), or you alter the situation (You compromise or make a deal and, thereby, change the nature of the situation.).

Setting a personal goal of Maintaining your emotional flexibility means…

• that you are aware of, and preemptively practice the 5 steps of emotional mastery and
• that you are sufficiently self-aware and self-secure so that you are open to the possibility that you might be wrong in your assessment of your situation and also that you can accept the possibility that you might be correct in your assessment despite input from others to the contrary.
• that you have a toolbox of available for dealing with different situations so that you can use the correct tool to master the situation and facilitate an adaptive resolution of the conflict, stressor, or threat that your emotions have alerted you to and prepared you to deal with.

Both self-control and effectively interacting with others require you to master your emotions as strategic tools.

This is a bold statement that you might find odd for at least two reasons:

1. While everyone talks about managing emotions, few authors talk about mastering emotions. (Mastering one’s emotions includes and goes beyond managing one’s emotions.)
2. Emotions are critical components in successfully dealing with issues that primarily involve you (self-control) and with issues that involve others (relationships).

Anger as an example

Many articles have been written about managing the emotion of anger. In these articles, the authors tend to view anger as a “negative” emotion which must be controlled so that it doesn’t explode in unwanted, often destructive, behavior. Managing anger involves calming down (lowering your level of arousal), forcefully controlling your anger, or preventing it from being expressed by distracting yourself in some fashion.

There are at least three problems with this approach to anger.

The first is that anger is labelled as a “negative” feeling.

There is no such thing as a negative emotion as all emotions are adaptive and have evolved to provide you with actionable information about the world around you.

Secondly, in spite of the questionable practice of misrepresenting inappropriate behavior as an “anger problem”, anger is never the main issue. Anger is just a feeling. How one chooses to deal with his anger is always the “problem”.

This choice places responsibility on the person not the emotion.

Thirdly, managing one’s anger is implied as the only (or best) way to deal with this often very strong emotion.

From an anger mastery perspective, managing one’s anger is only the beginning of the process of adaptively dealing with anger.Teaching someone who has an “anger problem” to manage his (or her) anger is one goal of treatment. It is not the ultimate measure of success.

Note:  An analogous assessment could be made for many other emotions.

Mastering Emotions

Few articles talk about managing or mastering all emotions (including anger). It seems a bit ridiculous to think about managing your excitement or mastering your guilt or your anxiety.

But, this is exactly what I am suggesting!

When you master all your emotions, you integrate these important sources of valuable information into your life and in so doing add meaning to and enrich your interactions with your surroundings.

Mastering your emotions involves five steps.

1. self-awareness
2. manage your own arousal
3. understand the message of each emotion
4. assess the match between your emotion and the situation in which you find yourself
5. choose an adaptive response

Step 1: Self-awareness

In order to master your emotions, it is important for you to be aware of how that emotion physically presents itself in your body. In other words, where and how do you experience each emotion. What part of your body tenses, feels warm, or begins to churn when you feel angry, anxious, upset, guilty, ashamed, and so forth?

You may not be aware at this point of how your body reacts to each emotion but you can become familiar with your body by observing what you feel the next time you experience the emotion you want to learn to master.

In Chapter 4 of my Amazon best selling book Emotions as Tools: Control Your Life not Your Feelings, I have included checklists to help you identify how your body specifically reacts. Choose an emotion and use the tables to monitor your body.

Step 2: Managing Your Own Arousal

Once you become aware of your initial emotional reaction, it is important to lower your physical arousal so that you don’t immediately take an action (react) following the emotion.

Ultimately, you want to respond to your situation.

Lowering your arousal level does not “come naturally” and must be learned. You do this by teaching yourself to take a step back from the situation and taking a deep breath (or 2). The step-back gives you some physical distance and the deep breath gives you some psychological distance from the situation.

Think about the last time you got excited and “caught up in the moment”. You might have purchased something you later realized you didn’t need or said (or did) something you later regretted.

Whether the emotion is excitement about a new adventure or “shiny object” or anger regarding the violation of an important value, stepping back from the situation and taking a breath will give you an opportunity to adaptively deal with what comes next.

Step 3: Understanding the message of each emotion

Each emotion communicates a different message to you based on how you initially perceive your situation. Understanding this message enables you to assess your initial evaluation of what is happening. Your emotions are always valid as they represent your initial (often unconscious) evaluation of your situation. However, the emotion may not be accurate as you might have misinterpreted another person’s actions or intent. Or, you might have reacted to what is going on based on your own past experiences, current levels of stress, wishful thinking, and so forth.

Step 4: Assessing the match between your emotion and the situation in which you find yourself.

Once you have tuned into the emotion you are experiencing and understand what that emotion communicates to you about how you are viewing your situation, you can take a physical and psychological step back from the situation and attempt to assess the degree to which your reality matches your perception.

You do this by asking yourself questions such as:

*Have I misunderstood what is going on here?

*Is there another point of view that I am missing?                                             (Note that this question involves  the process of perspective taking in which you attempt to see your situation from the point of view of the person(s) with whom you are interacting in your situation.)

*What evidence is there to support my perceptions?

Based on your assessment, you are ready to move on to the next step.

Step 5: Choose an adaptive response.

The fifth step is to choose an adaptive response to the situation. An adaptiveresponse is an intervention which helps you improve your situation.

If you believe your emotion matches the situation than you will choose a response that utilizes the energy of the emotion as motivation to manage the situation.

This is mastering your emotion.

If you believe that your emotion does not match the situation, than you might choose to change your perception by asking for clarification or additional input from others with whom you are interacting. When you change your perception, you change your emotion.

This response is also mastering your emotion.

Mastering your emotions opens up opportunities to be more effective in your relationships with others and  improve your own life by helping you become more effective in meeting the goals you set.