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Negative thoughts can have an intoxicating effect: they knock you off your feet, make you feel many different unpleasant emotions, and make you doubt yourself and your decisions. Their side effects can be truly devastating to both your psyche and your overall well-being.
If you don't want to face them head-on and get yourself into more trouble, you need to practice emotional sobriety. And to start doing so, you need to learn what it involves 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 knowing how to deal with difficult emotions and respond to them as they arise in order to calm down and bring feelings under control.
It's hard work, but the effort is worth the reward. You see, the brain can easily become addicted to repetitive harmful thought patterns. So when you're stressed out at work, worried about money or relationships on a daily basis, you train your mind and body to react to these situations with a “hit or run” response.
Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to deal with. In the hit-or-run state, you can't think clearly and approach life from a position of intuition rather than reason, compassion, and curiosity. Because of this, you become extremely reactive, fearful, or self-centered.
However, you can control how you react to the thoughts and feelings that arise. This is what emotional sobriety, which is directly linked to success, happiness and wealth, is all about. It consists of several components.
Acceptance
When you are emotionally intoxicated, you can spend a lot of time thinking about things you can't control but would like to change. You waste your precious energy and nerves on this, but in the end, you don't come to any results because you can't influence the situation.
By practicing emotional sobriety, you learn one very important skill - the ability to accept what happens without the need to control things you can't influence. You choose to focus on what you can change, rather than trying to grab onto everything at once. And there is great strength and wisdom in that.
Emotional intelligence
People who have achieved emotional sobriety experience negative feelings just like the rest of us.
However, they know how to notice and regulate them. For example, if a person is facing a presentation at work, they will be nervous, but they will not give in to negative thoughts and see the situation as a disaster.
Emotional sobriety is the ability to choose healthy ways to calm oneself when faced with difficulties instead of giving in to negativity and panic.
Resilience
Prolonged periods of emotional intoxication can seriously undermine self-esteem. When your feelings control you instead of you controlling them, your ability to cope with uncertainty and difficulty is drastically reduced.
On the other hand, when you master emotional sobriety, you become a resilient person, that is, someone who is able to navigate different situations and adapt to change, and who is not afraid of being “on edge.”
You get rid of self-limiting beliefs and instead feel the need to try new things, follow your dreams and unlock your potential.
Awareness
Stress seriously undermines our sense of calm and inner peace. It prevents us from being fully present in the present moment and causes the mind to come up with many negative stories that are easy to believe.
Emotional sobriety allows you to regain your peace of mind. 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 creativity from working and unfolding. When we are in “hit or run” mode, we are cut off from all the beautiful things that make us human: creativity, curiosity, empathy, love.
Fortunately, when practicing emotional sobriety, you can reconnect with your creativity and authentic self. You'll begin to think and act from a position of shared 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 speak up. However, it's worth noting that it's impossible to keep your feelings under control one hundred percent of the time. Life is full of ups and downs, and even the most conscientious people are sometimes distracted by negative moods. Still, here are some ways to catch your feelings and regulate 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. You need to learn to notice when you are experiencing significant emotional arousal.
Of course, it feels different for each of us. But most often it manifests itself as irritability, depression, unreasonable anxiety, and the need to wallow in thought and isolate yourself from others.
Understand the causes of emotional intoxication
Once you have a clear idea of what emotional intoxication feels like, it's important to figure out its triggers. What happened before you felt yourself starting to get more and more nervous?
No, you shouldn't look for blame among the people around you. It's important to figure out what situations cause your body to trigger the “hit or run” reaction.
A great way to figure out your triggers is to keep a journal. By writing down what makes you anxious and annoyed, you'll be able to notice patterns that will explain what makes you go into a state of emotional intoxication.
Ask yourself: where do negative emotions come from? Is there a connection between what you're feeling now and what you've experienced in the past? Are there mental wounds that have never been able to heal?
By working on self-awareness, you will be better equipped to manage difficult emotions.
Pay attention to the stories you tell yourself
Almost always emotional intoxication is reinforced by negative thoughts. They can seem out of control, and because of them we tell ourselves all sorts of unpleasant stories about situations that have happened in the past or may happen in the future. This makes us even more stressed and keeps us addicted to 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 chatter in your head is keeping you from living your life, you can start creating space between yourself and your thoughts.
Instead of reacting to the emotions and stories popping up in your mind, take a second to recognize what feelings you're experiencing.
For example, something made you angry. Reflect on the right way to react to it and what step is worth taking that aligns with your values and your vision of the person you want to be.
For example, if one of your values is compassion, speak kindly to yourself and show respect for others involved in the problem. Don't start yelling or getting defensive - rather, take a deep breath, pause for a moment, and think about how your words and actions might affect your own well-being and the lives of others. And then return to the dialog with a calm heart or postpone the conversation until later to think things over, come to your senses and temper the fervor before you open your mouth.
Get rid of perfectionism
To improve your practice of emotional sobriety, you need to start believing in yourself. This means respecting your personal judgment, having reasonable expectations of yourself and others, and realizing that life is not perfect.
We have no control over how we are perceived by others. Even if we are “perfect,” there will still be those who don't like us. All we can do is focus on simply becoming better, rather than making perfectionism a principle of our lives.
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