Emotional Control

Definition : Capability to retain, master and dominate one's reactions provoked by pleasant or unpleasant emotion.

Example situation : Lets say you meet a girl. You setup a date, things go well. Check. You call the following week to see how she is. She says shes busy and shell call you back. Hmmm, ok. So you sit around waiting for her to call. You start thinking, what if she doesnt call? She calls back a couple of hours later. You think to yourself, cool, she digs me and you get excited. So you set up another date and things go ok. You call the week after but shes not home. You leave a message and she doesnt call back. You get frustrated and confused, so you try calling her again. She says she was sick all week. Oh, ok. Again you breathe a sigh of relief. "It had nothing to do with me, and she still likes me." So youre happy again.

Do you see the pattern? The problem is, you are giving the girl emotional control over the situations. Sure, your behavior might suggest that youre a DJ, but youre letting the girl dictate your moods. When she didnt call, you got upset. When she did call, you got happy. If her behavior pattern changes in any way, your emotions start clouding your better judgment, and you start trying to overcompensate for something you may or may not have done.

The Key to Emotional Control 1) Distraction One tries to change ones emotional state through distraction, internal or external. Internal distraction involves trying to think about something else, to place ones mind elsewhere, to think about anything except the girl whose coquetry is driving you crazy. External distraction is as simple as turning on the television, relying on outside stimulus such as comedy or music to distract us from an unwanted emotional state. This strategy is a long-term failure, but can work in the short run provided that the emotional state is not potent, e.g. a girl has rejected you, but you werent that interested anyway.

2) Repression One tries to control ones emotional state by sheer force of will. You try to command yourself not to feel a certain way. You close your eyes, grind your teeth, and wish it away. This method almost never works. Zen Buddhism teaches that in a contest of will versus imagination, imagination always emerges victorious. There is some truth to this. Repression can be counterproductive, because the psychic energy spent trying to repress an element adds to the elements power, and even if the element is temporarily cast into the Id, like all repressed elements, it reemerges eventually. See Freud concerning the behavior of repressed elements.

3) Affirmation A variation of repression found in the NLP community, one repeats empowering phrases in ones mind over and over until it supposedly sinks in. This method takes a great deal of time to be effective, and is subject to relapse. It does work in some cases, but one must persevere beyond the point of frustration. All in all, it works in some cases, but is generally ineffective because subconsciously one believes that one is practicing self-deception.

4) Rationalization "I shouldnt feel this way because." Since when can you debate with

5) Pray

Prepared by : Amir Farid Hafiz Aduka Amir Razak Abu Mansur (PPISMP Sem 3, Social Studies)