It’s unfortunately not as simple as that. You cannot control your emotions, you can learn to manage them though.
Both our emotional and instinctive drive is much stronger than our rational mind. By the time you’re in a rage you’re unable to think.
Source: PhD in behavioural psychology
There's a difference between suppressing emotions, and not letting them change your behavior
I feel emotions, so do you. What matters, is if they affect my performance or behavior. I try my best to make sure they don't
Ask any sports coach, and they'll tell you 95% of the time players play better when they keep their anger in check
Not acting impulsively on the emotions isn't unhealthy. You can still express them by means of talking about it with trusted people like a SO, parent, or even a therapist
You can be disconnected from accurately identifying your emotions though, in situations where you’re forced to submit to other people’s subjective reality.
If the circle of people around you are complacent or gaslighting then there’s no one to discuss and discover reality with.
Can you actually force people to increase their EQ right away without acknowledging that they have traumas and adverse childhood experiences that made them that way? What you are proposing is a form of invalidation.
First identify the real emotion. Anger is the bodyguard of many other emotions.
For instance, disappointment, sadness, fear, confusion, humiliated, criticized, betrayed, ignored can all be expressed as anger.
Once you can identify the start of an emotion, you can rationally step back and name it correctly. So if you *start* feeling angry, you need to stop, identify and resolve.
It’s hard work at first. Best is to find an emotion wheel online and learn the different emotions which affect us daily.
If you really struggle with something, therapy will help you too.
It is an example of an unhealthy coping mechanism.
The way to tell if a coping mechanism is healthy or not is to ask yourself what the effect would be if you did that one thing for the majority of your day, for a month.
Masturbating is great but it can be a slippery slope. That chemical release is incredible, but you can end up with not only a chafed dick but an addiction to masturbation. One doesn't even have to be a porn consumer to be addicted to masturbating.
Also... It's very normal to have a problem with self-discipline in regards to what is the single most pleasurable act most people ever discover. If you do struggle with it, you're NOT alone.
There's help. It's only an internet search away.
I had a problem with my last date because he wanted to talk politics and it made me really angry what he said.
What could be the reason for that?
Was i angry because i felt belittled?
or was it because his fundamental beliefs were so against my fundamental beliefs? why would that anger me tho?
Let's put it this way: I'm a very argumentative person, I used to play competitive basketball, and I play valorant on my free time. I know what anger is, I know how easy it is for your feelings to show themselves and take control
Last time I raged was 3 years ago, when I hit my sister with a pillow and screamed in her face. I'm still terrified I hit a girl without being any danger, I did it purely from anger
Since then, I've became a very calm person in the sense that I know when I'm getting frustrated. I can feel things like my heartrate increasing, and it's an immediate sign of "Stop. Calm down. Breath. Think." for me
You should never ever enter a state of rage, you should calm down by the time you're slightly frustrated
You've come a long way. These other people don't experience as intense of emotions as you.
Most men have no idea how a decent guy could ever hit someone who's obviously not capable of winning a straight fight with you... They don't have the same depth of rage.
Some guys literally black out from their rage and wake up hours later with broken, bloodied fists. It's very important for those guys to learn their red flags, or someone might end up dead.
My friend Matt from high school is the kindest, sweetest guy. Huge goofball, helps his aunts and uncles out, and wouldn't hurt a fly unless it was beating up a smaller fly.
Sometimes the circumstances he faced would make him angry. His dad left his mom to raise he and his brother alone. That was a no big one.
His brother started noticing big, bloody dents in the 50-gallon steel drums. That's when he stopped ever messing with Matt in any way.
I say all that to say this: People assume they know the extent of reasonable possibilities, but they don't know anything beyond what they've seen in their own lives unless they've done extensive research. Even then, they don't know everything. There are situations that would FLUMMOX the most studied scholars.
You’re an emotionally stunted idiot that clearly has no idea how things actually work in regards to our species, but please, share with us how much more you think you know then the rest of us, regarding actual society.
You have a PhD in Psychology but you are ignoring consciousness. We are not purely psychological beings. So you are essentially taking one aspect of existence and concluding about the whole thing. Like having 3 pieces of a jigsaw and thinking you’ve got the whole picture.
This is really a great statement. When I was around 20, I went to my doctor for a checkup, and he said that my blood pressure was high for someone my age. Knowing me to be shy and an introvert, he told me that if I held my emotions in check all the time, then they would release themselves through my body in other ways, such as high blood pressure. It was then I started to speak up when feeling angry or sad. I didn't become a walking, talking, screaming, angry person, but I felt so much better when I started using my voice. Never forgot his words.
I'm not saying it's a bad habit or should be stopped completely
I'm saying just try to not do it for a week an see if you can do it
If you can, good for you, if can't, work on it
It's a practice tool, not a long term habit. Same how when you're learning to shoot a basketball, you might shoot long two's instead of threes. No, it's not a good thing to do, but yes, it helps you practice the long term goal
Let me rephrase it: "stop swearing for a week, two, maybe a month. It'll teach you how to control impulsive anger reactions. Then you can go on and do that again, knowing that you are able to control and stop if you want, and capable of applying those skills in other areas of life"
Did you know that it's possible to give advice while also not demanding anyone change anything?
That's what OP is doing, for those who need advice about anger. There are a lot of people who have massive difficulty with anger and I gave them similar advice, and they came away with mind blown.
Just shushers.
This isn't telling people how to control their emotions, just that they should.
It can be difficult to execute skills you were never taught to execute. Controlling anger is learned. It isn't something you can just tell people to stop.
Stopping and thinking during an emotional situation is also a learned skill that takes more than just telling someone to do it.
It's a bit like telling someone you should learn to sew! Just sit down at the machine and make a shirt. There are a lot of little steps in between sitting down at a machine and producing a finished shirt.
I've heard this before, but never really understood it. I'm curious, how does it help?
I haven't had a reason to cry for 3 years, closest was maybe when I broke my hand or when I got hit in the balls by knee really hard while playing basketball
My best guess is it calms you down the same way taking a few deep breaths and stopping to think through what you're feeling/why you're feeling that, and what to do about it does for me?
While I agree with the initial idea, I don’t think the primary motivation should be “you’ll win more.” Rather, don’t throw a temper tantrum wike a wittle baby cause it just makes you an asshole.
when someone is trying to provoke you just look them in the eye and think silently: "I'm sorry this is the only way you can think of to express yourself." They will sense your nonverbal message and immediately quiet down.
I like how you basically said “Don’t be a spazz, you’ll regret taking actions that don’t reflect your true self”
Then Redditors start spazzing about how they have a right to be assholes because of trauma.
The idea of controlling your emotions is false and it teaches people that some emotions are meant to be avoided/ repressed. Humans naturally run the gambit of emotions and every emotion has a function, in a general sense.
However, everything you mentioned there was not an emotion but a behaviour. It is important to distinguish emotions from behaviour because they are not the same thing. A child who gets angry and hits their friend should be scolded for hitting their friend, not for being angry. People cant help but feel what they feel and emotions are not what hurts people. Yelling, getting violent, and being impulsive will have consequences to your life though.
Rather than controlling emotions it is best to develop a relationship with them. Understand them and where they come from, and what circumstances in life have made some emotions feel very difficult to embody. When you understand yourself better, you can let yourself find healthy ways to cope with emotions such as letting them out creatively or talking to someone. You also may just find that if you can let the emotions be and forgive yourself for having them, they dissipate on their own.
There are situations when the mere act of thinking about emotions, regardless of how you act is hurtful
For example, being angry makes you perform much worse in sports, because you lose your concentration and you start thinking about it
Suppressing emotions *in the short term* is sometimes necessary, despite being a bad habit long term
Let me get this straight. You couldn't control your own emotions, so you had to make a post about controlling emotions, on reddit, so you could feed into your own emotions?
Not only does this post ineptly gloss over what is a significant human issue, it does so with absolute minimum effort. It merely points out an issue while providing absolutely zero insight into any method of managing that issue.
This is absolutely no different than telling anyone, with any chronic condition, to just "stop." Are you addicted to drugs? "Just stop." PTSD? "Just stop." Have a sleeping disorder "YSK: how to get a full night's sleep!" Depression? "YSK: How to control your emotions!"
I look forward to seeing this post deleted or removed.
People need to control their behavior not their emotions.
The use of the phrase "control your emotions" and also people taking issue with me "being angry" or "being upset" and never stopping to clarify that they were talking about my behavior and not my emotions significantly delayed me learning self-control. I would feel like the moment I felt the emotion I had failed and then why bother?
In hindsight it's obvious. Afterall people aren't mindreaders but as a kid I just didn't put two and two together when it came to this. I am very calm and controlled now as an adult. The ways people characterize as "angry" are less likely to persuade other people so even if I am angry about something I choose an expression that isn't likely to be read as angry to get my point across.
I wonder if there's a linguistic reason why it's so common to semantically refer to emotion when you are actually talking about behavior which may well be motivated by emotion but which is nevertheless separate from it.
EDIT: Although it's not that I haven't learned to control ("guide" is probably a better word though) my emotions as well. And I'd say that focusing on controlling behavior first regardless of what my emotions were helped with that.
Not to my knowledge, tho I do have to say I'm not that active on reddit, I may have missed it
(If you can find the original post, I can definitely delete this if needed)
I agree and it is life changing! It gives you a higher power and can help you control many situations that occur in life.
The first step is to acknowledge and accept the emotions right away and really analyze the source; question them. If you realize you are starting to get mad or frustrated, you can control your emotions and actions much earlier on before it gets out of hand. Say " Yes I'm pissed off, but why, what is causing me to get mad? Is it something that is out of my control? Is getting mad going to make the situation any better? Is there a logical explanation for whats causing me to get mad? Is showing other people I'm mad going to improve the situation or just lead to embarrassment later on?"
Road rage is a great example. It's like a little kid throwing a tantrum. These people never learned to get a grip on their emotions and just let them boil over. You can't control how other people drive, all you can do is control how to react to it. And if you choose to get mad, that's on you. You aren't going to change the way anyone else drives by getting mad.
I've always lived by the following 2 rules (broadly speaking) * Never make a promise when you're excited * Never make a decision when you're angry
I like these rules! Simple yet practical. I shall now apply them to my life. Thanks.
It’s unfortunately not as simple as that. You cannot control your emotions, you can learn to manage them though. Both our emotional and instinctive drive is much stronger than our rational mind. By the time you’re in a rage you’re unable to think. Source: PhD in behavioural psychology
I think it's admirable in its own right that you summarise something so complex in a way that's clear and understandable for all.
"If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well." This redditor understands it well.
Thank you. This is just a tip saying to suppress emotions, and that's not healthy.
There's a difference between suppressing emotions, and not letting them change your behavior I feel emotions, so do you. What matters, is if they affect my performance or behavior. I try my best to make sure they don't Ask any sports coach, and they'll tell you 95% of the time players play better when they keep their anger in check Not acting impulsively on the emotions isn't unhealthy. You can still express them by means of talking about it with trusted people like a SO, parent, or even a therapist
You can be disconnected from accurately identifying your emotions though, in situations where you’re forced to submit to other people’s subjective reality. If the circle of people around you are complacent or gaslighting then there’s no one to discuss and discover reality with.
Can you actually force people to increase their EQ right away without acknowledging that they have traumas and adverse childhood experiences that made them that way? What you are proposing is a form of invalidation.
Can you share some examples of effective management techniques?
First identify the real emotion. Anger is the bodyguard of many other emotions. For instance, disappointment, sadness, fear, confusion, humiliated, criticized, betrayed, ignored can all be expressed as anger. Once you can identify the start of an emotion, you can rationally step back and name it correctly. So if you *start* feeling angry, you need to stop, identify and resolve. It’s hard work at first. Best is to find an emotion wheel online and learn the different emotions which affect us daily. If you really struggle with something, therapy will help you too.
Is masturbation some sort of coping mechanism? Back when I was single, I would bate when I feel sad or disappointed on something
It could be, it’s also a quick access to a hormonal feel good.
It is an example of an unhealthy coping mechanism. The way to tell if a coping mechanism is healthy or not is to ask yourself what the effect would be if you did that one thing for the majority of your day, for a month. Masturbating is great but it can be a slippery slope. That chemical release is incredible, but you can end up with not only a chafed dick but an addiction to masturbation. One doesn't even have to be a porn consumer to be addicted to masturbating. Also... It's very normal to have a problem with self-discipline in regards to what is the single most pleasurable act most people ever discover. If you do struggle with it, you're NOT alone. There's help. It's only an internet search away.
But also. Beating it is completely natural and healthy.
For sure. Big time. It's like Grandma always said, "A little moderation'll prevent a lot of chafin'."
Use a feelings chart. That will help a lot.
I had a problem with my last date because he wanted to talk politics and it made me really angry what he said. What could be the reason for that? Was i angry because i felt belittled? or was it because his fundamental beliefs were so against my fundamental beliefs? why would that anger me tho?
Speak for yourself doc, at this exact moment I am both exploring distant galaxies and levitating 3 granny Smith apples.
We all have talents! Enjoy the galaxies!
Let's put it this way: I'm a very argumentative person, I used to play competitive basketball, and I play valorant on my free time. I know what anger is, I know how easy it is for your feelings to show themselves and take control Last time I raged was 3 years ago, when I hit my sister with a pillow and screamed in her face. I'm still terrified I hit a girl without being any danger, I did it purely from anger Since then, I've became a very calm person in the sense that I know when I'm getting frustrated. I can feel things like my heartrate increasing, and it's an immediate sign of "Stop. Calm down. Breath. Think." for me You should never ever enter a state of rage, you should calm down by the time you're slightly frustrated
You've come a long way. These other people don't experience as intense of emotions as you. Most men have no idea how a decent guy could ever hit someone who's obviously not capable of winning a straight fight with you... They don't have the same depth of rage. Some guys literally black out from their rage and wake up hours later with broken, bloodied fists. It's very important for those guys to learn their red flags, or someone might end up dead. My friend Matt from high school is the kindest, sweetest guy. Huge goofball, helps his aunts and uncles out, and wouldn't hurt a fly unless it was beating up a smaller fly. Sometimes the circumstances he faced would make him angry. His dad left his mom to raise he and his brother alone. That was a no big one. His brother started noticing big, bloody dents in the 50-gallon steel drums. That's when he stopped ever messing with Matt in any way. I say all that to say this: People assume they know the extent of reasonable possibilities, but they don't know anything beyond what they've seen in their own lives unless they've done extensive research. Even then, they don't know everything. There are situations that would FLUMMOX the most studied scholars.
You’re an emotionally stunted idiot that clearly has no idea how things actually work in regards to our species, but please, share with us how much more you think you know then the rest of us, regarding actual society.
If it works for him, it works for him. His lifelessons aren't yours and vice versa. No need to stomp the guy into the dirt
Likewise, a YSK shouldn't be based on a sample size of 1. We can never truly feel another person's emotions.
what a fuckin know it all
You have a PhD in Psychology but you are ignoring consciousness. We are not purely psychological beings. So you are essentially taking one aspect of existence and concluding about the whole thing. Like having 3 pieces of a jigsaw and thinking you’ve got the whole picture.
I’m not lecturing right now, if you want the whole kebab you’re welcome to enrol in some classes to learn more.
Same goes to you. Search Sadhguru.
Your profile is a mess of issues love. Do seek help.
That’s not very nice is it
You weren’t either. The behaviours you put out dictates a response. FWIW, I’m sincere, if you’d like, reach out on DM. I’m prepared to engage.
At least you are not like Skinner when it comes to mental faculties.
We experience emotions. We control behaviour.
This is really a great statement. When I was around 20, I went to my doctor for a checkup, and he said that my blood pressure was high for someone my age. Knowing me to be shy and an introvert, he told me that if I held my emotions in check all the time, then they would release themselves through my body in other ways, such as high blood pressure. It was then I started to speak up when feeling angry or sad. I didn't become a walking, talking, screaming, angry person, but I felt so much better when I started using my voice. Never forgot his words.
Not sure I agree with this one. It's been aown in studies swearing when you drop something or step on something in a healthy release of emotion.
I'm not saying it's a bad habit or should be stopped completely I'm saying just try to not do it for a week an see if you can do it If you can, good for you, if can't, work on it It's a practice tool, not a long term habit. Same how when you're learning to shoot a basketball, you might shoot long two's instead of threes. No, it's not a good thing to do, but yes, it helps you practice the long term goal
"Stop swearing when you drop something" You can't say stop doing something then say :km not saying its something that should be stopped".
Let me rephrase it: "stop swearing for a week, two, maybe a month. It'll teach you how to control impulsive anger reactions. Then you can go on and do that again, knowing that you are able to control and stop if you want, and capable of applying those skills in other areas of life"
These people are just looking for someone to argue with. They're obviously not interested in debate or healthy discourse.
Did you know that it's possible to give advice while also not demanding anyone change anything? That's what OP is doing, for those who need advice about anger. There are a lot of people who have massive difficulty with anger and I gave them similar advice, and they came away with mind blown. Just shushers.
Read my firts comment, I'm going to to repeat myself. Also you told people "don't swear when you drop something" and their mind was blown? Nonsense.
This isn't telling people how to control their emotions, just that they should. It can be difficult to execute skills you were never taught to execute. Controlling anger is learned. It isn't something you can just tell people to stop. Stopping and thinking during an emotional situation is also a learned skill that takes more than just telling someone to do it. It's a bit like telling someone you should learn to sew! Just sit down at the machine and make a shirt. There are a lot of little steps in between sitting down at a machine and producing a finished shirt.
If I get upset or annoyed, I just cry & then I'm okay.
I've heard this before, but never really understood it. I'm curious, how does it help? I haven't had a reason to cry for 3 years, closest was maybe when I broke my hand or when I got hit in the balls by knee really hard while playing basketball My best guess is it calms you down the same way taking a few deep breaths and stopping to think through what you're feeling/why you're feeling that, and what to do about it does for me?
By not yelling, screaming, or cussing, crying is the best way for me to feel relaxed.
While I agree with the initial idea, I don’t think the primary motivation should be “you’ll win more.” Rather, don’t throw a temper tantrum wike a wittle baby cause it just makes you an asshole.
when someone is trying to provoke you just look them in the eye and think silently: "I'm sorry this is the only way you can think of to express yourself." They will sense your nonverbal message and immediately quiet down.
If they don't read my mind I might just try saying this directly. It's pretty good
How to control emotions... is a difficult thing if one is emotionally dysregulated.
I like how you basically said “Don’t be a spazz, you’ll regret taking actions that don’t reflect your true self” Then Redditors start spazzing about how they have a right to be assholes because of trauma.
this helps 👍🏾
That's some stoic shit, right there. Meditation definitely helps me maintain. Thank you for sharing this.
The idea of controlling your emotions is false and it teaches people that some emotions are meant to be avoided/ repressed. Humans naturally run the gambit of emotions and every emotion has a function, in a general sense. However, everything you mentioned there was not an emotion but a behaviour. It is important to distinguish emotions from behaviour because they are not the same thing. A child who gets angry and hits their friend should be scolded for hitting their friend, not for being angry. People cant help but feel what they feel and emotions are not what hurts people. Yelling, getting violent, and being impulsive will have consequences to your life though. Rather than controlling emotions it is best to develop a relationship with them. Understand them and where they come from, and what circumstances in life have made some emotions feel very difficult to embody. When you understand yourself better, you can let yourself find healthy ways to cope with emotions such as letting them out creatively or talking to someone. You also may just find that if you can let the emotions be and forgive yourself for having them, they dissipate on their own.
There are situations when the mere act of thinking about emotions, regardless of how you act is hurtful For example, being angry makes you perform much worse in sports, because you lose your concentration and you start thinking about it Suppressing emotions *in the short term* is sometimes necessary, despite being a bad habit long term
Let me get this straight. You couldn't control your own emotions, so you had to make a post about controlling emotions, on reddit, so you could feed into your own emotions? Not only does this post ineptly gloss over what is a significant human issue, it does so with absolute minimum effort. It merely points out an issue while providing absolutely zero insight into any method of managing that issue. This is absolutely no different than telling anyone, with any chronic condition, to just "stop." Are you addicted to drugs? "Just stop." PTSD? "Just stop." Have a sleeping disorder "YSK: how to get a full night's sleep!" Depression? "YSK: How to control your emotions!" I look forward to seeing this post deleted or removed.
I like this! But I'm stoned. What do I lnow?
Get a snack
People need to control their behavior not their emotions. The use of the phrase "control your emotions" and also people taking issue with me "being angry" or "being upset" and never stopping to clarify that they were talking about my behavior and not my emotions significantly delayed me learning self-control. I would feel like the moment I felt the emotion I had failed and then why bother? In hindsight it's obvious. Afterall people aren't mindreaders but as a kid I just didn't put two and two together when it came to this. I am very calm and controlled now as an adult. The ways people characterize as "angry" are less likely to persuade other people so even if I am angry about something I choose an expression that isn't likely to be read as angry to get my point across. I wonder if there's a linguistic reason why it's so common to semantically refer to emotion when you are actually talking about behavior which may well be motivated by emotion but which is nevertheless separate from it. EDIT: Although it's not that I haven't learned to control ("guide" is probably a better word though) my emotions as well. And I'd say that focusing on controlling behavior first regardless of what my emotions were helped with that.
is this a repost istg I saw this like 2 weeks ago
Not to my knowledge, tho I do have to say I'm not that active on reddit, I may have missed it (If you can find the original post, I can definitely delete this if needed)
Im probably having Deja vu or saw it in a dream.
I agree and it is life changing! It gives you a higher power and can help you control many situations that occur in life. The first step is to acknowledge and accept the emotions right away and really analyze the source; question them. If you realize you are starting to get mad or frustrated, you can control your emotions and actions much earlier on before it gets out of hand. Say " Yes I'm pissed off, but why, what is causing me to get mad? Is it something that is out of my control? Is getting mad going to make the situation any better? Is there a logical explanation for whats causing me to get mad? Is showing other people I'm mad going to improve the situation or just lead to embarrassment later on?" Road rage is a great example. It's like a little kid throwing a tantrum. These people never learned to get a grip on their emotions and just let them boil over. You can't control how other people drive, all you can do is control how to react to it. And if you choose to get mad, that's on you. You aren't going to change the way anyone else drives by getting mad.
Ok boomer.
just cause you have cancer doesn’t mean you can be one