It is normal that sometimes we are more cheerful or excited than others, it is also normal to feel upset when things do not go as we would like.
Are emotions definitely there for a reason?To achieve our goals, communicate and survive.
- The problem arises when these emotions do not adapt and the people who feel them get over-carried away by them.
- Even behaving in a way that interferes with their functioning and adaptation.
- That is.
- Instead of solving them.
- Create more problems.
In psychology, this behavior is called emotional instability. Emotional instability is a characteristic of personality and sufferers constantly change their mindset without any apparent or reasonable cause.
Can’t you tolerate frustrations, that is, if something doesn’t go as a person wants to trigger a series of very intense and extreme emotional and behavioral responses such as anger, aggression, with yourself or with others?in addition to drug use, promiscuity, etc.
These are people with low self-esteem, extremist thinking (there are 8 or 80), communication problems and few resources to deal with difficult life situations.
In addition, they are very impulsive and visceral people, they do not think about the consequences before acting and then they find more problems than before, problems that they do not know how to deal with.
On the other hand, they are very passionate, idealizing the people they live with, which leads them to be emotionally dependent, changing their relationship relatively often, because it is very difficult for them to be alone, they say they feel constantly empty.
All this poses numerous problems in the social, family and professional spheres.
Emotional instability can be addressed, although it is very important that the unstable person is strongly motivated to change and improve.
Unstable people don’t change overnight, because the behaviors we talked about earlier are too deep and automatic for them. However, practice and willpower can greatly shape your personality.
Some techniques used in therapy to help overcome instability are
People with emotional instability are stressed and react viscerally and explosively, without thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to learn to see the problems from a certain emotional distance in order to analyze and manage them better.
One way to do this may be to get away from the situation, engage in any other activity that produces pleasure and is healthy (not worth drinking to forget).
Take a walk with the dog, bike, listen to music, watch a movie . . . these things entertain us, occupy our minds and also greatly diminish our level of anger over time.
Absent from the situation and calm the anger is very good, it makes us see things from another angle, but it can’t be like that. Now is the time to deal with the problematic situation.
The problem-solving technique is very simple to perform and can help us a lot, it is about generating many alternative solutions that do not include self-harm, aggressions towards others or other non-adaptive behaviors.
We need to clarify and understand that none of the solutions are 100% advantageous, because they will all have advantages and disadvantages, once we had all the alternatives that came to mind, we evaluated each of them with a score.
We choose a unique solution, which has more advantages and fewer disadvantages, and then put it into practice.
When choosing it, we create a plan to deal with the disadvantages that the chosen solution can generate, so that it does not take us out of the game and we do not react badly to the frustrations that may arise. know how to make a decision and not postpone it, accepting what is not coming out as one would like.
Socratic dialogue is a technique that involves questioning the way we think, which in unstable people is often wrong, causing them great discomfort.
To perform this technique, we must first identify the situation or problem that causes intense emotions and discomfort.
Once the problem is identified, we wonder what we thought. The typical thoughts of unstable people are: “I’m sure if you didn’t call me it’s because you forgot, you don’t love me. “
After identifying these bad thoughts, we began to question them. Writing our questions and answers on a piece of paper helps a lot.
An example of the questioning about the above thought may be, “How am I so sure this person doesn’t like me,” “What other alternatives can exist besides what I think?”Am I drawing hasty conclusions?
When people ask this question and respond to reality, their emotions change completely, being more adaptable and calm.
These people lose their minds with their behavior and the way they say things. Self-affirmation training is required that will help you a lot in your self-esteem and relationship problems.
One of the techniques of self-affirmation is to reach agreements
This technique is used when the person has their rights violated or is frustrated by something and must express their discomfort appropriately.
The steps are: first, do we value the other as a person and put ourselves in their place?”I understand that this was not your intention”. Do we then express the true cause of our discomfort, but without judging the person, because people make mistakes and we have to differentiate people from their behaviors?”I felt bad because, even if you did it by accident. “
After expressing discomfort, a solution is proposed so that this does not happen again, also taking into account the proposals and opinions of the other, in this way a negotiation is given and an agreement is reached, it is not necessary to shout, fight or insult ?this would create more problems and you could never find a solution.
Simple, but difficult. Practice here plays a very important role if you want to get out of the emotional prison you’re in, let yourself be free and don’t let emotions control your life.