Do this amazingly simple thing to stop losing control

Who pushed your buttons and caused you to lose emotional control today? Who made you so angry that you said or did something that later you wondered — what was I thinking??

Was it your spouse or partner? Your kids? Your boss or someone else at work? Maybe a complete stranger while shopping?

When you lose emotional control — by saying or doing something in the heat of an emotional moment that later you regret — you give up your power to effectively think and act on your own behalf.

For that brief moment or series of moments, you feel powerless over your thoughts, feelings, your body, or your ability to control any part of what’s happening to you..

The emotional flooding in your brain and body causes a shift in your brain states and a glitch in your central nervous system.

The emotions can be overwhelming.

You feel emotions in your body first. When emotionally dysregulated — in just a few seconds — your heart will begin to race, your body perspires, you feel muscle tension and other body sensations start changing.

Once your body sensations begin to change due to the emotional charge, then your thoughts begin to race. These quick, automatic thoughts become distorted and disconnected from what’s actually happening to you.

It’s your automatic distorted thoughts that will now combine with your body’s reactions to create the emotional escalation that you’re feeling. Your angry thoughts are the number one reason you’re losing control.

When angry, your brain states shift to the emotional and survival parts of your brain — which also changes the chemical release in your brain — and your thoughts and behaviors then respond.

When highly emotional, the rational thinking part of your brain begins to shut down. You start to have trouble processing what’s happening to you and understanding the impact of your words and behaviors.

Your out of control emotions may activate your brain’s fight-flight-freeze survival responses. This makes you feel protective, defensive, agitated and, perhaps, combative.

All this mind-body discombobulation makes it challenging to figure out how to calm yourself down. Maybe you blame the situation or others around you for losing control — but it’s actually because there’s no way for your brain and body to handle the emotional rush and discomfort in that moment.

The emotional energy builds up and needs to be released — or you may try to suppress it, which will cause another whole list of mind-body challenges for you.

Are you being triggered?

Based on your brain’s stored memories of your previous experiences with stress and emotional overload — or even trauma — your emotional discomfort in any given situation may be “triggering” you.

Your brain’s memories can be triggered and actually trick your brain into thinking that you’re experiencing something else than what’s actually happening to you in real time. Your body’s reactions and your brain’s thinking patterns then react to the trigger.

Depending on your previous emotional or traumatic experiences and relationships, when triggered, your central nervous system tends to overreact. Your brain can even be emotionally hijacked — when the tsunami of your emotional thinking takes control of all of your other thinking.

Most times, your memory triggers are activated by your senses — external (sight, smell, touch, sound, taste) and/or internal (intuition, conscience and other gut brain reactions).

This dysregulation in your central nervous system will make you feel intensely emotional — anxious, angry or depressed. Once your rational thinking begins to shut down because of all of the emotion you’re feeling, that’s when you then feel and behave out of control.

It’s time to stand in your power.

How you emotionally react in stressful situations is your choice. Empowered with the right tools, you can make better choices when you feel yourself getting out of control. You can actually feel better, rather than worse, after feeling intensely emotional.

You have the power to disrupt your emotional escalation and flooding. You can get back into the executive seat of your critical thinking by extinguishing the fire of your emotional dragons.

There’s one simple thing you can do to stop losing control. This will help you control your emotional thinking, rather than your emotional thinking controlling you.

This simple tool that will help you regain control of your emotional thinking and react in a more thoughtful way.

The One-Minute Calm Down — BMR — Breathe, Mantra, Refocus.

An Emergency Anger Tool that you can do in 60-seconds or less.

Learn this. Practice this. Master this.

Breathe — When you feel the emotion start to build up inside of you, you can take two or three deep breaths down to your diaphragm to begin your calming process. Deep belly breathing will activate the calming part of your central nervous system, which will slow your heart rate and improve your brain states.

This will have an amazing calming effect on you. It’s simple — you can try it now.

Put one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest. Breathe slowly and deeply in and out. Do this without the hand on your chest moving and with the hand on your belly steadily rising up and down.

This deep belly breathing is much different than the “chest breathing” that usually occurs during intensely emotional moments.

Mantra — As you breathe deeply to calm your body, you can also recall and recite to yourself safe and motivating mantras — short simple phrases — to change your brain states and change your negative thinking.

It’ll almost be like magic.

Your emotional thinking will be calmed with this positive self talk. You can change your automatic or trigger thoughts when you’re emotional.

It’s best to develop your mantras ahead of time, so that you can more easily recall them in the heat of an emotional or stressful moment.

Refocus — Now that your body and brain are quickly calming with intentional breathing and positive self talk, you can use some mindful techniques to regain your focus and motivation. While becoming calmer, you can now re-energize.

What outcome are you looking to achieve? Are your needs or the needs of others being met? Are you maintaining relational integrity and the dignity of yourself and others with your reactions?

With the decrease of your emotional percolation, you can refocus and keep your desired end result in mind.

The sooner you begin to do things to calm yourself down, the less likely you’ll be to lose control. Know how your brain and body reacts when you start to feel emotionally escalated. Notice the progression of your changing body sensations and automatic distorted thoughts.

And then stand in your power and do something about it — actually, it may become your superpower!

—

Get your FREE Personal Stress Plan PowerPack — including step-by-step video module, ebook, The One-Minute Calm Down, Manage Your Triggers Toolkit and Magic Mantras Formula sheet.