How to Be Less Emotionally Reactive

We all know what it's like to have something or someone activate a sudden and intense emotional response within us. It might be a comment that immediately makes you feel angry or defensive, or that you feel hurt by someone’s words or actions. One minute you're fine, the next minute your mind and mood has been hijacked.

An emotion is an internal, personal feeling that you consciously experience, but it's often accompanied by an automatic thought as your brain swiftly appraises and makes meaning of the situation. There's also a physiological experience (perhaps a knot in your stomach, sweaty palms). It all happens so quickly and unconsciously that you can be reacting before you've had time to even register what's happened. That’s when you act in the heat of the moment and do or say something which you might later regret.

If you find yourself frequently experiencing strong emotional reactions that you struggle to manage, if you're flying off the handle at small things, lashing out at others or even sulking and withdrawing to tend to your wounds, it can be helpful to learn some strategies to manage those big feelings.

Of course, the first thing I need to say here is that if you're in a relationship (intimate, platonic or familial) with someone who seems to go out of their way to push your buttons, it might be wise to reassess the value of that relationship and protect yourself with some boundaries.

1. Start with mindfulness 

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor E. Frankl

This isn’t about sitting down and meditating on a cushion – it’s about pressing the pause button between the stimulus and your response. Being mindful means being fully aware of what’s happening as it’s happening, and when you are able to slow yourself down enough to recognise you’ve had your buttons pushed, it gives you an opportunity to take a beat before reacting.

Take a slow deep breath, register the emotion you're feeling, where you feel that in your body, and the story that you're telling yourself about what just happened. Just this brief moment of acknowledgement can make all the difference to your next steps. It might feel like the hardest thing to do, but this brief pause is a crucial starting point for learning to choose a different response. 

2. Identify what you’re feeling

There’s a popular and proven strategy for handling big emotions called “Name it to Tame it”.

By putting words to what you are feeling, you bring a part of your brain online that can help you to regulate those feelings.

In fact, labelling your emotions is proven to be as effective as many other strategies for emotional regulation. The added benefit of naming what you are feeling is that you start to develop a healthy emotional vocabulary. Many of us are quite limited in the words we have available to us to describe our emotions and learning to clearly identify and distinguish between various emotions helps you to make sense of them and therefore to manage them.

3. Focus on what matters most 

When you react emotionally, you're often being hijacked by a very primitive, lower part of our brain that instinctively wants to keep you safe from threat or harm. That part of your brain is not very rational and the things it’s most sensitive about are often past experiences that have nothing to do with what’s happening now.

Right now, in the present moment, what matters most is behaving in a way that is aligned with the kind of person you want to be, and upholding important values such as kindness, fairness, or compassion. When we're caught up in an emotional storm, we're not being our best selves.

After pressing pause on your emotional reaction and clearly identifying what you’re feeling, the next step is to remind yourself of what is most important to you. This is your decision point to either give in to your emotional reaction or choose a different response, that is more aligned with your values.

4. Count to 10

When faced with the decision to react or to choose a different option, while you are still flooded with intense emotions, you might just be inclined to go with the option of reacting because the temptation to discharge those emotions is pretty powerful.

There’s a reason they say you should count to ten when you’re angry and that’s because taking that brief break gives you a little more space to calm down the intensity of your emotions. The act of counting also draws on a more logical and linear process in your brain to help counter the irrational, emotive response.

5. Respond, don’t react

Being less emotionally reactive isn’t about being passive or a pushover if someone has done something to offend or upset you. It is about choosing your response consciously, rather than reacting in a way that feels out of control. Explaining to someone clearly and calmly (even if you're upset) that they’ve done something to hurt you, gives you a far better chance of being heard and understood than if you fly off the handle or use aggressive or blaming language.

It might feel satisfying in the short term to vent all of your frustrations but in the long term what we are usually more interested in achieving is more honesty, respect and understanding. Take the high road for your own sake and the sake of all your relationships.

Learning to observe your thoughts and feelings (even the really big ones) without having your mood hijacked and your relationships threatened by them is what I teach in my fully online, self-paced program Mindfulness for Busy People.