If you are looking to explore your mind and body, then getting to know how to be more in touch with your emotions is mandatory. You will be surprised to learn how much emotions build up over time and if you want to live the least stressful life, you need to be in touch with your feelings and learn how to control them.

However, the questions of how you get in touch with your emotion and how you can control your emotions can be complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you want to learn how, keep reading until the end, and you will learn a thing or two about controlling your emotions and making your life a bit easier to handle.

What does it mean to be in touch with your emotions?

Being in touch with your emotions means becoming conscious of your feelings—what and how you feel—and when to address them. For example, enjoying and multiplying your happiness if you’re happy or sharing your sadness with others when you’re down.

An excellent way to go about it is by staying away from suppressing emotions and letting them out. Suppressing emotions doesn’t work. So instead, express your feelings; you might cry, yell, scream, laugh, smile, hug, or write in a journal. These actions can help you release pent-up tension.

Most importantly, be honest with yourself, and you’ll be able to recognize when you’re feeling an emotion. The first step to working with emotion is to realize you’re feeling it and what the triggers are – being open helps you identify what’s causing those feelings.

Questions to get in touch with your feelings

Self-reflection and attention to your body are the keys to getting more in touch with your emotions and improvement. By accurately defining your emotional state, you can better grasp how your emotions influence your thinking. 

Before improving yourself, you need to evaluate yourself, and asking yourself the right questions is the best way to find out how you feel. Ask yourself the following questions to learn more about your emotions:

• What are my emotional weaknesses?
• What are my emotional strengths?
• Am I tensed or just tired?
• Why am I feeling this way?
• Why does a specific emotion trigger my hostility?
• When and why do I show a positive emotion?
• When and why do I show a negative emotion?

Why is it important to control your emotions?

An intellectual and capable human being is different from a wild animal, which may attack any living thing as a threat, as food, or out of a hormonal rush. The difference is self-control and discipline. This self-control should also extend over your emotions and all other areas of life.

You should be the one controlling your emotions and not vice versa. In your daily life, you meet numerous people and display a variety of emotions, and it should be within your grasp to show what emotion you want to the person you meet or to the situation thrown at you.

By controlling our emotions, we can make better decisions, big or small. In addition, understanding and controlling our emotions enables us to become conscious of our triggers and learn how to react in beneficial, ethical and non-destructive ways that will help us instead of making it more complicated.

Emotional regulation

Strong emotional regulation abilities can improve long-term wellness, work performance, personal relationships, and even general health, in addition to the more apparent advantages like instant improvement with feelings.

Keep in mind that your emotions have a direct effect on your physical health. So when you manage your emotions, you also take care of and improve your mental and physical health.

Keeping track of your emotions is extremely important, especially during a conflict. Learning to not give in, keeping your calm while your buttons are being pushed, and getting physical takes a lot of control. If you can’t control your emotions and get in touch with your feelings, they will eventually end up owning you, and you do not want that to happen.

Emotions that regularly get out of hand might lead to relationship or friendship conflict, difficulty relating to others, trouble at work or school, an urge to use substances to help manage your emotions, and physical or emotional outbursts. None of which is good for you.

How to get in touch with your emotions and control them?

Now that you know why you need to get in touch with your emotions and control them, we will guide you on how to do it – here are our simple tips.

Taking care of oneself

A routine that gives you a little me-time can help. It would be best if you stuck to some routine, whatever suits you the most. Having time for yourself and personal hobbies is very important when trying to improve yourself.

Maintain meaningful and healthy relationships

Do not be around people who hurt you or make you go nuts. Instead, surround yourself with people with positive vibes and whose company you genuinely enjoy. Hostile environments and people can worsen your emotional state, so try to avoid them.

Start reappraising and stop suppressing

Giving attention to your emotions and assessing them is an excellent way to get in touch with your emotions. Remember, you should never suppress your emotions and emotional needs as they tend to build up over time and affect you adversely.

Exercise mindfulness

Be constantly aware of your thoughts, your body sensations, and emotions. Avoid emotional explosions. If you’ve ever exaggerated a minor issue, you probably felt horrible afterward. This happens to all of us when we burst out in anger and let our emotions control us by blowing the situation out of proportion. However, we should always try to avoid it.

Seeking help from your loved ones

If you ever feel like you can not cope with your emotions, vent out to a loved one. That might be your wife, girlfriend, sibling, parent, or friend – whoever is ready to listen to you. You can get heavy emotions off your chest while improving focus as well.

Improving focus on your emotions

Never let the situation or the person trigger you. You can achieve that by focusing on your feelings and emotional state, triggers, and reactions, and in return, you will improve your focus, build deeper relationships, and make better decisions.

Do not let your emotions build-up

Never let your emotions bottled up. Having a specific activity to let out your emotions is crucial. If you can’t handle it by yourself, seek professional help from a therapist if you feel like you have lost control over your feelings and are piling up. These professionals are experts in what they do, and they’ll guide you with all the experience they’ve got. 

Learn to express your emotions

Above, we talked about how you shouldn’t bottle up your emotions. For example, if you feel sad or depressed, do not try to hide your feelings. The more you hide, the worse they will get. Instead, you must find a way to get it out of your system. However, remember not to burden those around you. We all have issues and problems to work on, which can become too much sometimes.

Critical thinking after an emotional burst

Here’s a familiar scenario – you lose yourself in the moment, let your emotions control you, and burst. Do not worry – we’ve all been there. The silver lining here is that you can spend your time critically thinking about the situations that led you to that moment and make sure it never happens again. Be smarter and more disciplined next time.

Having a positive attitude toward your surroundings

Always looking on the bright side will lead you to a healthier mindset. So focus on the good part – it will highlight positive emotions and help negate negative ones.

The bottom line

Controlling your emotions and getting more in touch with them is a positive attitude toward life, and it reflexes your ability to work on yourself and guide people. 

All great leaders express the importance of this skill and consider it most important in having a stress-free life. Can you imagine being a president of a country and losing your cool every time you need to make a difficult yet important decision? You’d risk a heart attack in the first week on the job.

So go and learn more about yourself, and don’t let emotions eat you away – learn to control your feelings and turn them to your advantage, and you will improve your personal and work-life quality.

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