Are you a victim to your emotions?

(Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash)

How many times have you heard yourself or someone else say "I'm getting carried away by my emotions!" I think we are all guilty of this....we may have seen a film which moved us to tears or had us rolling off our chair in laughter. We come to the conclusion that the contents of the film was responsible for our joy or sadness. Or, someone gets on our nerves or looks at us in the wrong way or makes a comment and we blame that person for upsetting us or making us feel awful.

In my work as a hypnotherapist, I have to give the bad news that ALL emotions whether positive or negative are created by us. Yes...you read that right...WE ARE THE CREATOR OF ALL OUR EMOTIONS. No one else. We can't blame the kids, husband, the postman or the health secretary. We can't blame the state of the economy, the nosey neighbour or our boss. How we respond to external factors is all down to us! We create our emotions which drives our behaviours and creates our reality.

Now...all is well if you can cope but what happens when life throws a curve ball and suddenly you feel your emotions are out of control? With the lockdown over, it is evident that the number of people suffering from anxiety has gone through the roof. Why do some people sail through life's ups and downs while others go to pieces?

If we can all accept that we choose how we respond to any given situation we are one step ahead. All emotions and feelings are created internally as a response to our thoughts and our thoughts are driven by our beliefs. This is best explained by how two people can respond differently to the same situation. During the lockdown many people felt as if their freedom and liberties had been taken away from them and subsequently suffered in various ways from anxiety yet others saw this as an opportunity to learn a new hobby or skill or decided to use the time to help others and found the lockdown experience positive. They saw this in a different light and were able to manage without any significant deterioration of their mental health.

Our perception of a situation can differ because of the beliefs that we hold. Many of our self limiting beliefs were created in childhood and these are the filters or lenses we then view much of our adult life through. Remember, as a child your critical factors or cognitive abilities weren't fully developed. As a result of this you couldn't reject harmful ideas or opinions of others that we would reject later on in life. The only thing you had to go on was your emotions and feelings. As children the smallest thing could have created a strong emotional response which if not followed through by reassurance and support means we get stuck in that painful moment. Be it poor parenting, a dysfunctional family, a horrible teacher or nasty siblings..as children we do not have the emotional intelligence to filter out nonsense or hurtful fabrications of the truth.

When these old beliefs are not updated, we make adult decisions with childhood beliefs. When the outcome that we want do not materialize we blame everyone else and everything else. The strong emotions that follow (because life did not go how we wanted) can manifest into over eating, binge drinking, anxiety depression, anger , blaming others and the need to control.

How to rein in your emotions.

The first thing is to acknowledge and accept that we are the creator of ALL our emotions, to own it and be accountable. This is often the biggest hurdle as our inner child (part of your mind that is frozen in time and has no relationship to your present reality) will constantly tell you it's somebody else's fault. Events will happen in your life which you have no control over except, how you respond or react. Once you accept this, life gets a bit easier!

Secondly, you have to have a good look at your core belief system that these emotions come from. Become a detective and work back and ask WHY? Why am I anxious, scared, timid, angry, sad, annoyed, frustrated? This will lead you to various beliefs such as I can't cope, I'm not good enough to do this or I'm not confident, etc etc.

And this is where it can get confusing because you are getting closer and closer to the truth and your inner child part of your mind will kick in with the negative self talk in order to protect itself and will again use emotions to mask you getting to the truth.

Getting to and changing the core beliefs that run our lives can be accessed using hypnotherapy. These are subconscious beliefs, learnt behaviours that drive who we are and how we do things. So deeply ingrained, changing them consciously is challenging. Logically we know it makes sense but more often than not, will power is simply not enough when it comes to changing deeply rooted beliefs.

The beauty and power of hypnosis allows you to connect with those beliefs and then to change or update them to ones that serve you in the here and now. Of course there is work to be done as you have to commit to change but once you do, your life will no longer be run by your emotions.

As always this is a blog so I'm trying not to waffle on and on....but hopefully this gives you a brief insight into why we often get so carried away with our emotions, why some adults still have temper tantrums, sulk, manipulate and cry to get their own way. Alternatively some of us go into a shell and refuse to communicate totally blocking off and ignoring any attempts to resolve the matter.

Please feel free to leave our comments, questions below. Thank you for reading.