State management
How to manage your emotional state when faced with a highly emotional situation
Have you ever had one of those days when you’re emotionally and physically drained and someone says something or does something and you become shrouded in red mist?
At the beginning of Laura’s story in Super Neuro You, Laura describes the moment she thought she was going to internally combust after seeing her estranged husband ‘the deluded little liar’ wave and smile at her across the street. She felt her blood boil as her body prepared itself for a fight. It was a verbal fight. A one sided fight, as he didn’t fight back. Instead he demonstrated perfect passive aggressive behaviour, and said nothing, winding her up even more. Feeling angry and frustrated, with herself as well as him, she eventually walked away.
Can you relate to this?
Have you allowed yourself to be so emotionally and physically exhausted you are not able to think straight and respond effectively to the behaviour of others?
Immediately after this drama in the street, Laura goes home and looks for something to make herself feel better. On this occasion it was an expensive - ‘a holiday she could’t really afford’. When we first meet Laura she is addicted to making herself feel better by eating the wrong things, drinking too much alcohol, over exercising, overspending and an overuse of social media.
Can you relate to this?
Do you use unhealthy responses in an attempt to make yourself feel better, but in the long run just make yourself feel worse?
Later in the book, after coaching with the MAD Coach, Laura learns to adopt valuable alternative strategies to maintain healthy self-compassion and effectively manage her emotional responses. Applying these strategies helps you perform at your best and stops you from rewarding yourself with unhealthy habits, which if they get out of hand can in themselves become a cause of further emotional pain and poor performance.
One of these strategies is what the MAD coach refers to as
“The Wonder Woman Spin”
Notice, Movement, Mood, New posture, Mantra = Highest Potential Self.
- NOTICE the sensations in your body. When it feels like your blood is boiling, when you start to tense, when perhaps your stomach goes into knots or when your breathing becomes more rapid, you are becoming dysregulated. When you are dysregulated you cannot respond effectively. You need to regulate first then respond. This is where the spin comes in.
- MOVE to rid your body of these sensations (You could spin like wonder woman or just shake it out or even just walk).
- Decide on a new MOOD, Emotion and Feeling you want and remember when you have felt this before. When your body is back to a more neutral state, you can think straight and from this state you can choose the most helpful state or mood from which to respond effectively. Revisit your memory and bring every detail of that memory to life.
- Position your body in the NEW POSTURE simulating your chosen memory. If you wanted to be more confident and assertive, and you remember feeling this way, simulate the way you were standing, sitting or moving. Embody the memory. use the detail of the memory to fill your body with the sensations you felt on that occasion.
- Repeat a helpful MANTRA (Laura’s mantra is: “I am Super Neuro Me!”) The mantra helps you to anchor these new feelings to enable you to maintain them whilst you respond effectively to the situation or person facing you.
Where your body is regulated well or we might say, integrated, you communicate well, you have a balance in your emotions, you’re flexible, you’re insightful, you’re empathic, compassionate, moral and have good access to intuition.
When a person is triggered into fight, flight, freeze, or even a dissociated state (for example, when they faint) the brain becomes prone to chaos and/or rigidity. The subcortical area of the brain is interacting with the cortical area in ways that aren’t so helpful. When this happens, you can lose the qualities you had when you were regulated. You can lose all of them, or a few of them. And it can be really quick.
Dan Siegal sometimes refers to this as ‘the flipping your lid’ state. That’s what we mean by emotion dysregulation. It’s a non-integrated state of your brain.
To learn more strategies for maintaining brain integration, a regulated state and performing to your potential order your copy of
Alternatively you can book a free chemistry call with me to see if one to one coaching or one of my group programmes is a good fit for you.
Good luck!
