Emotional adjustment strategies include

The core of emotion regulation strategy can be summarized into three directions: cognitive adjustment, physiological intervention and behavior transfer. On this basis, different schools of psychology has derived hundreds of practical methods of subdivision, and there is no universal "optimal solution". The core is to match personal characteristics with current emotional trigger scenarios.

Many people's first impression of emotional regulation is either "forbearing breast hyperplasia for a while" or "taking a step back and getting more and more angry", which is actually extreme. Last year, I visited a girl who was engaged in e-commerce operation. Before, every time Party A rejected the 8th version of the plan, she went to buy cold beer and blow bottles. The next day, she got up with a hangover and changed the plan, which made her headache splitting more inefficient. After stepping on the pit for half a year, she found a method that suited her: when she was angry, she went to the tea room to pinch an ice pack for 3 minutes, and then went downstairs to feed stray cats for 10 minutes. It was much faster to come back and smooth her plan.

To tell the truth, at the peak stage of emotion, you simply don't have the strength to tell yourself the truth, so the first thing you can use is actually the physiological intervention method. To put it bluntly, it is to quickly lower the emotional threshold by adjusting the physical reaction. For example, if you are so angry that your heart is beating to 120, you can't hold the pen, or you are so anxious that your chest feels stuffy that you can't breathe. Don't force yourself to "open up". Try 478 breathing (breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and exhale slowly for 8 seconds), or pinch an ice pack and apply it to the artery inside your wrist. If it is fast, you can feel your heart slow down in 30 seconds. If you are in a meeting, it is inconvenient to do these little tricks, secretly stomping on the ground with your toes or biting your back molar, the pain will immediately draw your attention out of your mood, and others will not see it at all, especially suitable for workplace emergency.

After the emotional energy has passed, if you still feel blocked, you can try the adjustment at the cognitive level, which is often called "cognitive reappraisal" in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). Take the most common example: 5 minutes before leaving work, the leader suddenly sent you a bunch of amendments. Your first reaction is "Is he deliberately targeting me and doesn't want me to leave work?" The more you think about it, the more angry you even want to resign directly. At this time, try to change the idea of "he targeting me" to "Could it be that his client just raised a demand and he was in a hurry to ask for it, forgetting that it is the off-duty time?" Emotions can be relaxed in half in an instant. However, I also want to mention here that the mindfulness school actually does not advocate forcibly "thinking from another angle". They think that this is essentially another kind of suppression of emotions-why do you have to force yourself to understand each other when you are clearly unhappy? The practice of mindfulness is to perceive without judgment: "Oh, I am angry now, because I have been temporarily added to work", and I don't judge the mood, nor associate it with it. After a few minutes, the mood will resolve itself. There is no right or wrong between these two methods. You can try which one is not internal friction.

As for the method of behavior transfer, everyone should use it the most, such as licking cats, fighting Lego, running 3 kilometers, and yelling at KTV for half an hour. The core is to take attention away from the events that trigger emotions and give the brain a buffer time. However, this kind of method is also the most controversial: psychoanalytic schools believe that emotions are energy, which will accumulate in the body and become nodules and chronic diseases, and must be relieved to be healthy; However, the follow-up study of CBT school shows that if you vent your anger by smashing things and swearing every time, it will make your brain bind "anger" and "aggressive behavior", and you will be more likely to lose control next time you encounter similar things. My own experience is that as long as you are relaxed after using this method and don't vent more and more anger, then there is no problem-if you are refreshed and can work immediately after scolding the imaginary enemy, then scold, if you want to find the party to check the line after smashing the decompression ball, then change the method quickly.

In order to facilitate the comparison, I have compiled a comparison table of common strategies, all of which are effective by myself and visiting relatives:

Oh, yes, there are many minority methods that are particularly easy to use. For example, I have a friend who is a teacher. Every time I am angry, I copy the Tao Te Ching, and my heart will be quiet after copying for 5 minutes. There is also a programmer friend who went to brush the elementary school Olympic math problems when he was in a bad mood, and the sense of accomplishment of doing two questions correctly directly washed away the bad mood. To put it bluntly, there is no standard process for emotional adjustment. It is a good way for you to be comfortable without hurting yourself or others.

When I'm so anxious that I can't sleep, I usually put a hockey puck in my mouth (to reduce my heart rate quickly), then sit on the carpet and spell Lego for 10 minutes, and then wait until my mind turns to a dead end before thinking about things. I never force myself to "don't worry" and "be optimistic"-after all, it's normal for people to eat whole grains, and it's the most unnecessary internal friction to compete with themselves.