Donning the life jacket of emotional-ecology

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“Fear and anger are not opposites; they are the emotional safety barriers of humane sanity. Go over the top of either, and you may end up overboard, floundering inside an ever-decreasing circle of your sharp-toothed crimes; whilst your dreams and hopes disappear beyond the horizon, like dream-ships deserting a drowning rat.”

 

Emotional-Ecology is about recognizing that your emotions such as anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise - and their individual story-lines or predictions about you and your current situation, can also influence each other, and that communications (or a lack of it) between them, will also influences your destinations in life.

 

Because our emotions can seem like that they are there to look out for our safety and best interest, they can feel very powerful. Yet, despite what it may seem or feel like sometimes, you command your emotions (and their story-lines), they don’t command you.

 

Your emotions are like lookouts pointing to things that can be good, dangerous or anywhere in-between; and their story-lines are predictions of what might happen, not what will happen. However, it is a law of life; that unless your emotions (and their story lines) are dealt with in a reasonable manner, then they are likely to fester and mutiny.

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It's also worth recognizing, that your current emotion’s initial response and its story-line are not written in stone, but on the ebb and flow of life, time and reality - and that it may be better to take other storylines and predictions from your other emotions before choosing the best course of action.

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Exercise 1: If you are daydreaming about yourself, other people or the world and it makes you feel say sad,  just for a change, make the effort to put one of your other emotions and its storyline at the wheel, so to speak, and see how the change of course changes where you could end up.

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Exercise 2: To gain more self-control over any overwhelming emotion, try the following:

1: Identify the feeling and what level it is at, from 1-10

2: Feel where in your body it is, and what self-talk and images are coming into your mind.

3: Breathe deep and slow, then exhale. 

4: Draw in a change of emotion and prediction.

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The six basic emotions are: Anger. Disgust. Fear. Happiness. Sadness. Surprise.