How do you control how to react when you are under emotional distress?

puregoldlight · 2019-10-12T13:24:18+00:00

It’s not personal. It’s not important. It’s not permanent.

gsharm · 2019-10-12T14:27:24+00:00

Stop. Hold still. Try not to let the storm blow you over.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A24-27&version=ESV

It takes practise. Be willing to fail over and over but improve your reactivity gradually over time. With practise you’ll definitely improve.

It’s encouraging to see posts like yours. It means individuals are starting to see the spell they’re under, and break free.

Remember that ultimately it’s not even being stoic or meditation or money or travel or time or anything material in this world that sets you free. It’s truth that sets you free.

801735 · 2019-10-12T13:36:18+00:00

Count to 3, 5, 10 whatever works for you to speak words from your brain and not from your glowing charcoal?

And if that is happening often to you, perhaps when you allow yourself the time (make it happen, it's just a matter of priorities), do revisit yourself in peace and quiet and try to find what really sparked the fire.

It's always you, your reaction to something, fear of something from your past experience.

Generally speaking, you can relax, nothing is under control. You just imagine it is,... until a car hits you out of the blue or that thing you "knew" was 100% guaranteed isn't delivered etc etc etc.

IterantImprovement · 2019-10-12T16:10:43+00:00

Also, in my experience, you cannot "observe in advance" to then have stillness of mind when it matters.

You are mistaken on this.

TLDR: You can practice your emotional control by mentally projecting yourself into different scenarios designed to invoke an emotional reaction. This takes practice like any other martial art.

In the military a great deal of preparedness comes from planning. You would write 'Patrol Orders' that would in great detail lay out the response to many scenarios that would be likely to occur. The main reason for this was so that you could spread out theses tactics to the team, so that whatever the scenario, the entire team was working with the same tactics. In a similar fashion we'd do this with mental simulation as well.

Outside of the military, I would analyze past situations that I had been involved with. If they resulted in the best case for me, I would try to pinpoint what lead to that outcome. If they didn't result in the best case for me, I'd run through different scenarios identifying key points/branches using all the available understanding of the situation and the other people's rationales to come to logical endings. I found this very useful in learning how to deescalate situations by walking a fine line of getting my point across without feeding into the rage of the other person/people.

In much the same way I'd recommend you do that for yourself. In the past scenarios where things didn't work out for you or you lost yourself to emotion, analyze where you went wrong. Be honest with yourself and get into the detail of what prompted you to react emotionally. Also, if the event still causes you to react emotionally, I'd recommend staying in that event as much as you can (in your head) to get to the bottom of what is driving you. You'll have to do this until you can 're-live' the event in your head without you becoming emotional.

After that, feel free to inject yourself mentally into other situations of emotional stress and perform the same exercises. Try to work through the scenario that would result in the best long-term result for yourself. Remember, be honest, rational, and logical with yourself in regards to how the scenario would most likely play out based upon your experiences, understanding of other peoples perspective & rationale, and understanding of how society and our world actually works.

This takes a lot of practice and self reflection, but this has worked so well for me. If you do it enough, even when you encounter a new scenario where you might get drawn in on an emotional level, your ability to recover quickly will be enhanced so that you don't stay wallowing in that emotion.

Also, do not be afraid to practice detachment in these scenarios especially when you know the other person is intentional attempting to invoke an emotional response from you. What I mean by this is to put all your senses into observing the situation and channel your energies into logic and reason and to totally shunt off your emotions for the time being. A strange calmness will overtake you and nothing they can say will get a rise out of you.

Good luck!

CunningAsshole · 2019-10-12T13:34:19+00:00

I'm not perfect at accepting what is, but I'm working on it. Depends on what it is. I talk about women following their tingles but men do it too. In fact its the default mode among many if not most humans, which is why there are so few "remarkable" people in society, and even many who are struggle with addiction. Self mastery takes practice.

jermrash7 · 2019-10-12T17:17:08+00:00

music works for me.

thrmnd · 2019-10-12T13:41:11+00:00

Outcome independence - not caring about what happens. Detachment.

NapsBeforeWork · 2019-10-12T14:08:31+00:00

Well I agree about not being able to "observe in advance", you can prime yourself about the situation to normal/lower the stress of the upcoming event that will cause you some stress.

For instance driving: I'm aware asshole drivers will cut me me off, therefore I can look for situations in traffic where impatient drivers may way to cut into my moving lane and should prepare to break accordingly; when it does happen I brake and let that jolt of stress pass, and be glad I didn't get into an accident.

The more mindful practice of your emotions and situations, the more helpful it becomes and you can act above of your emotions while observing.

kes_unum · 2019-10-12T14:33:13+00:00

All great comments and should be taken before you dos what I did. I lost my shit. Took a knife. Stabbed the wooden cutting board as hard as I could. Hand slipped down the blade and got my pinky. Cut nerve and tendons off completely. Lost all movement. Now I have a daily reminder to not loose my temper anymore for the rest to my life. Either learn the hard way lile me or practice what the other comments say.

Copypastable · 2019-10-12T16:22:14+00:00

I'm under emotional distress 24/7 by women. In my head it's like, "ok there's that... so I'm gonna do (this)." I believe the trick is recognizing the issue and using rationality to follow through.

Sometimes the stress can pile up over the limit and the outcome isn't ideal, as I'm still human, but just dump it and immediately resume the standard protocol.

For example:

Problem - Woman says, "eek can you kill that bug please?"

Solution - I respond saying, "you just went to church and you want me to kill one of God's creations? You're trying to make me into a murderer."

Much more stressful scenarios occur from time to time, but these more frequent petty situations add up quick. If you're around it often, you expect it, so you could think of solutions on the fly.

Thankfully, ignoring them is the default solution for me if you do not want to waste energy coming up with something. Perhaps this could work for you in other scenarios.

Tonyb33 · 2019-10-12T17:38:52+00:00

Examine what triggers you. Then ask yourself why. You will often find that is not the real trigger but it hits a nerve, a deeper problem that you have bottled up. There are very few realities. Things that you think are great now may not be so good in hindsight. Similarly things that you find are currently problems may be life telling you to shape up.

My father grew up in a mining village where the boys went down the mine at 15 dead at 40. He was born in November 1924, he was saved by ww2 which broke out in the uk in sept 1939.

Be honest with yourself dig deep and find the true problem

MGTOWJayJay · 2019-10-12T18:25:07+00:00

I highly suggest this 12 minute read: https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck

Also his book is on amazon.

sootlord · 2019-10-13T12:02:12+00:00

This is going to super cliche. But honestly, whats helped me with being overwhelmed and having adhd is controlled deep breathing. At first it almost seems useless, but after awhile you notice that your mind quiets right down.

Title	How do you control how to react when you are under emotional distress?
Author	Romek_Buch
Upvotes	17
Comments	28
Date	October 12, 2019 1:21 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MGTOW
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MGTOW/comments/dgv2un/how_do_you_control_how_to_react_when_you_are/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MGTOW/how-do-you-control-how-to-react-when-you-are-under.394475 https://theredarchive.com/post/394475

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