This week I will wrap this series by talking about satisfying your emotion responses with an appropriate reaction. First you need to do a reality check to see if the emotion is justified.
For example, let’s say you’ve had an overwhelming day and are exhausted when you get home from work. Your child asks if you can go play catch in the yard and you yell, “Can’t you give me a minute to get in the door?”
A reality check will confirm that while you responded with anger – then probably felt guilty because you treated your child unfairly (which IS an appropriate emotion in this case) – it wasn’t really anger you were feeling. Nothing was unfair about that situation. You were feeling stressed – the day having gotten out of your control. Many people use anger as a default expression of emotion, when that’s not what they may be actually feeling.
The way to satisfy the emotion of stress is to explore your workday and see how you can better lighten your load, not respond in anger to your child. If you are lonely, call a friend. If you are bored, find something new to challenge yourself.
Once you’ve correctly identified the emotion, determined the cause, then you can decide what it is that you need to do to satisfy it.
I’m Roberta Fernandez, a Board Certified Hypnotist and Certified Trainer at The FARE Hypnosis Center, helping you take back control by unlocking the power of your mind to reach your goals of any kind.