Regulating Emotions

What is Emotion? Where is it?
•A signal system is inherent in each of us
•Making judgments in a high-speed, automatic, effective and integrated way
•Above all, consider for survival (fight or flight)
Your Emotion System is Far More Complicated than an Airplane Dashboard
•Amygdaloid nucleus – the brain’s alarm center. Better to give a false warning than fail
to warn at all.

Unified Mind and Body – Pay Attention to your Body’s Signals
•The Boss-Relationship with physical response: controls the automatic nervous system. Emotion is the big boss of your physical response.
Telling an angry person “don’t be angry” just accomplishes the very opposite. In the same way, if you tell a sad person “there is nothing to be sad about,” your friendship boat will capsize.
•The law of emotion is like flowing water, and guidance is the best solution.
To Know is Easy, but to Do is Difficult
•Relationship with rational thinking: complementation can guide actions, but “the arm is no match for the thigh.”
•Emotions cannot be ordered: one, two, three… Ordering an angry person “not to be angry” just accomplishes the very opposite. In the same way, if you tell a sad person “there is nothing to be sad about,” your friendship boat will capsize.
•Only when the amygdaloid nucleus alarm is cleared, sense has space to participate in decision making. (The function of the prefrontal lobe of a teenager’s brain is still developing, and the rational space is slightly weaker than that of adults.)

Several rapid and effective methods to adjust emotions
●Don’t judge an emotion as right or wrong, and observe your own emotional changes
●Accept the emotion: Never ask yourself to feel good immediately. Turn your attention to your inner self and ask what is your own feeling. Then patiently listen to yourself. Carefully distinguish heartbreak, sadness, grieving, indignation, worry, tension, fear, shame, frustration, etc., and expand your words that can describe emotions. The more you can describe your emotions, the better you can understand yourself.
●When you get overly tense or irritated, pay attention to your breathing, actively take slow and deep breaths, and imagine a soothing picture in your mind at the same time (such as a place that you like or a warm blanket that can make you relaxed and at ease).
●If your emotion gives an immediate but impulsive behavioral suggestion – this is the response of the amygdaloid nucleus.  You should tell yourself: this feeling will fade away after a while and I can make a decision later and take it easy (give your sense time to catch up with your emotion)
●Ask for help – Get listening and emotional support from teachers, parents and psychotherapists
Empathy and listening – Give emotional support to each other

Each person is eager to be heard and understood.“Listening is love, and healing is achieved through understanding” — If you feel the need, you can seek more professional help.

Psychological counseling does not mean clients are “ill”, rather that they are brave to face their own pain.