Negative thoughts can have an intoxicating effect: they knock you down, make you experience many different unpleasant emotions, and cause you to doubt yourself and your decisions. Their side effects can be truly devastating both for your psyche and for your overall well-being.
If you don’t want to face them face to face and get yourself into new problems, you need to practice emotional sobriety. To start doing this, you need to find out what it is and what methods will help you make it a part of your daily life.
What is emotional sobriety
Emotional sobriety is a combination of emotional intelligence and self—regulation. It consists of coping with difficult emotions and reacting to them as they arise to calm down and take control of feelings. It’s hard work, but the effort is worth the reward. You see, the brain can quickly become addicted to repetitive, harmful patterns of thinking.
Therefore, when you are stressed at work every day, worried about money or relationships, you train your mind and body to respond to such situations with a “hit or run” reaction. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to cope with it. In the “fight or flight” state, you cannot think clearly and approach life from the position of intuition, not reason, compassion, and curiosity.
Because of this, you become extremely reactive, fearful, or self-centered. However, you can control how you react to emerging thoughts and feelings. Emotional sobriety is directly related to success, happiness, and wealth. It consists of several components.
The Acceptance
When you’re in a state of emotional intoxication, you can spend a lot of time thinking about things that you can’t control but would like to change. You spend your precious energy and nerves on this, but in the end, you don’t come to any result because you can’t influence the current situation.
By practicing emotional sobriety, you learn one very important skill — the ability to accept what is happening without the need to control things you cannot influence. You prefer to focus on what you can change rather than trying to grab everything at once. And there is great power and wisdom in this.
Emotional intelligence
People who have achieved emotional sobriety experience negative feelings in the same way as others. However, they can notice and regulate them. For example, if a person has a presentation at work, he will be nervous but not give in to negative thoughts and perceive the situation as a disaster. Emotional sobriety is the ability to choose healthy ways of complacency when faced with difficulties instead of succumbing to negativity and panic.
Sustainability
Prolonged periods of emotional intoxication can seriously undermine self-esteem. When feelings control you rather than you control them, your ability to cope with uncertainty and difficulties decreases dramatically. On the other hand, when you master emotional sobriety, you become a stable person—someone who knows how to navigate various situations, adapt to changes, and is not afraid of “limbo.” You eliminate self-limiting beliefs and instead feel the need to try new things, follow your dreams, and reach your potential.
Mindfulness
Stress seriously undermines the feeling of calmness and inner peace. It does not allow us to be fully present in the present moment and also forces the mind to come up with many negative stories that are easy to believe. Emotional sobriety allows you to regain your calmness. You don’t get lost in your thoughts—you learn to reconnect with your intuition, ground yourself, and take control of your feelings.
Creativity
Stress prevents our creative abilities from working and opening up. When we are in hit-or-run mode, we are cut off from all the wonderful things that make us human: creativity, curiosity, empathy, and love. Fortunately, when you practice emotional sobriety, you can reconnect with your creativity and authentic self. You will begin to think and act with general openness, love, and self-respect rather than obeying negative thoughts and feelings.
How to practice emotional sobriety
Now that you know what emotional sobriety is, it’s time to learn how to act and talk. However, it is worth noting that it is impossible to keep feelings under control one hundred percent of the time. Life is full of ups and downs; even the most conscious people are sometimes distracted by a negative mood. But still, here are a few ways to catch your feelings and adjust them as soon as possible.
Learn to recognize when you are emotionally intoxicated
It is important to be more attentive to your body and mind. It would be best to learn to notice when experiencing significant emotional arousal. Of course, it feels different for each of us. But most often, it manifests itself in the form of irritability, depression, and anxiety for no reason, as well as in the need to immerse yourself in thought and isolate yourself from others.
Figure out the causes of emotional intoxication
Once you get a clear idea of how you feel in a state of emotional intoxication, it will be essential to understand its triggers. What happened before you felt yourself getting more and more nervous? No, it would be best if you did not look for the culprits, among others. Determining which situations trigger your body’s “hit or run” reaction is important. A great way to figure out your triggers is to keep a diary.
By writing down what worries and annoys you, you can notice patterns that explain what makes you feel emotional intoxication. Ask yourself: where do negative emotions come from? Is there a connection between your feelings now and what you’ve been through? Are there any mental wounds that have not been able to heal? By working on self-awareness, you will better manage complex emotions.
Pay attention to the stories that you tell yourself
Negative thoughts almost always reinforce emotional intoxication. They can seem out of control, and because of them, we tell ourselves all sorts of unpleasant stories about a situation that happened in the past or may happen in the future. This makes us even more stressed and maintains our dependence on negativity. To practice emotional sobriety, you need to be able to pay attention to the stories you tell yourself and then move on to the next stage of practice.
Learn emotional regulation
Now that you’ve figured out what kind of chatter in your head is preventing you from living, you can start creating space between yourself and your thoughts. Instead of reacting to the emotions and stories that pop up in your mind, take at least a second to realize what feelings you are experiencing. For example, something angered you. Visit . A F R I N I K . C O M . For the full article. Think about how to respond to this correctly and what step should be taken so that it corresponds to your values and your vision of the person you want to be.
For example, if one of your values is compassion, talk to yourself kindly and show respect to other people involved in the problem. Don’t start shouting or defending yourself — it’s better to take a deep breath, pause, and think about how your words and actions can affect your well-being and the lives of others. Then, return to the dialogue calmly or postpone the conversation to think about everything. Come to your senses and calm down before you open your mouth.
Get rid of perfectionism
To improve the practice of emotional sobriety, you need to start believing in yourself. This means respecting your personal opinion, reasonable expectations from yourself and others, and understanding that life is not perfect. We have no control over how other people perceive us. Even if we are “perfect,” there will still be those who will not like us. We can only focus on improving rather than making perfectionism a principle of our lives.
