Better emotional coping

Weekly Radish 32

Three tips to help you  positively cope with negative emotions

In this week’s video I share three simple tips to help you cope more positively with negative emotions (From my ‘How to Cope the A**e out of Life’ Course - learn more here). I explain how our emotions hook us and why we can feel so powerless when they hook us. I reference the work of Susan David PhD, author of ‘Emotional Agility’ in this video. A great book with valuable tips and insight into becoming more agile in handling our emotions. View on Amazon here

If you want to learn more about how to positively cope with negative emotions, I am running a series of webinars entitled ‘coping the a**e out of life’ - learn more here. I hope you found this video and these tips valuable - let me know your thoughts by hitting reply.

Transcript from video:

- Three Tips to Better Emotional Coping.

This week builds on the last two weeks and I'm focusing on emotional coping. I wanna give you three tips to apply day to day, so you can learn to cope more positively.  I've taken these tips from my How To Cope the Arse Out of Life online course and if you want a free resource
with my Give Yourself Credit model overview, you can claim that at the end. But for now, let's get into the three tips.

Tip One.

You may already have started doing this based on the content of the last two weeks, because it's about reflecting on your tendency to get emotionally swept away or to bottle up your emotions, but it's about catching yourself in the act. Start to notice when you get that emotional overwhelm.  Start to notice signs, what are your warning signs and then when you catch
yourself, create some space, step away, use the rescue breath, two, two, four, breathe in for two, hold your breath for two, breathe out for four. Use those techniques to create some space and distance from the stimulus that's
creating your emotion overwhelm.

Tip Two.

Recognise that emotion. This can be a really simple, but powerful tool.  Often what we do when we get emotionally caught up in the moment is that we start to label ourselves, criticise ourselves and personalise it and what we need to remember is that your emotions are not you. They're a part of you, they're a manifestation of some element of you,
but they are not you and what can be really powerful and useful is to just, once you've caught yourself and created that space, is to identify the emotion and label it, not you, label it, that's
anger, that's frustration, that's sadness, not label yourself, "Oh, I'm an angry..."and start to get critical, label the emotion and create some distance from it and recognise that you are not your emotion.

Tip Three.

Inside out. Once you've created some space and once you've maybe acknowledged what the emotion is, externalise it, but not in that getting swept away mode, where you might rant and rage at somebody inappropriate, step away and externalise it in a more constructive way and that could be by talking it out, by having that cathartic release, that I talk about in the support network, Weekly Radish. But it is about externalising it either verbally, or writing it down, or even just talking to yourself. Be careful where you do that obviously, but get it outside,
because what you need to do is hear it with these things, not let it whir around in your head with the emotional charge that it contains. Make it coherent, make it tangible, so that you can start to evaluate it and get it in perspective. So there's three tips to help you cope more positively. Catch yourself in the act and create some space. Label the emotion, not yourself, then externalise it in a constructive way. So if you find that emotional coping is a particular struggle for you, employ one or two of those techniques and practise them and these three tips are
taken from my course, How To Cope the Arse Out of Life and if you wanna find out more, then follow the link at the end of this video. But for now, focus on picking one of these tools, that most resonates with you and put it into practise next time you find yourself getting caught up by your emotions.

Keep an eye out for the next blog.

Dave
Dave Algeo,
Stress(ed) Guru Speaker, trainer and 'Men's Burnout+ Coach (coaching from burnout to break-through)
dave@stressedguru.com
Helping you create success with (not at the expense of) wellbeing.