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When was the last time you were angry at somebody? Can you remember?. Think about what you said, and what they said, and what you should have said when they said that. Now try to remember what you were thinking. Not feeling. Thinking. I’m betting that it was more or less a blank.
This isn’t a coincidence. The emotional mind and rational mind can be thought of as two separate channels. We’re usually operating on a mixture of the two, but when we get really emotional, the rational part gets shoved to one side. We remember how we felt, often we’ll even relive the physical sensation of our emotion, but we won’t be able to think about it clearly because, well…we weren’t really thinking.
So how do we stop that from happening? How do we keep our brains in gear when we get emotional so that we can get our point across? In the long term, many techniques from meditation, to therapy can be very effective at improving our emotional control, but in the moment, one of the most powerful techniques you can employ is to simply try to express yourself clearly.
The power of using your words.
These explosive displays of emotion are caused by two things. An inability to express oneself in…
