Here is a six-step process for mindfully dealing with difficult emotions
These steps are adopted from Everyday Mindfulness: Melissa O Brien but released by The Counselling and Personal Development Service at Dublin City University (Website: www.dcu.ie/students/counselling)
1. Stop, Turn Towards The Emotion: Once you have become aware of the feeling, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath and then ‘sit with’ the anger, guilt, anxiety, frustration, fear, or any other difficult emotion. Don’t inhibit, suppress, ignore, or try to conquer it. Just be with it with an attitude of open curiosity and acceptance.
2. Identify the Emotion—acknowledge that the emotion is there. If you are angry, you can specifically recognize that feeling. You can mentally say to yourself, for example, “I know there is anger in me.”
3. Acknowledgment of What Is: When feeling a difficult emotion, acknowledge what is present. For example, “I can acknowledge that I am angry right now.” By opening up to the emotion, you create a mental space around it and witness it instead of being enmeshed in it. This allows you to realize that you are not your anger, fear, or pain— you are much larger than that.
4. Realize the Impermanence of All Emotions:
Acknowledge that all emotions are impermanent. They arise, stay for a while, and then disappear. They come and go in you like waves in the sea, cresting and receding. Your task is to allow the current wave to be and to witness, with patience, as it stays, changes form, and eventually disappears.
5 Investigation & Response: When calm enough, look more into your emotion to understand what has brought it about and what is causing your discomfort. It may be that particular thoughts were the cause of specific values, beliefs, expectations, and judgments about how you should behave or be seen by others. Allow the light of your mindful awareness to help you gain insights into the emotion. Reflect on how you want to respond to what is happening.
6. Trust Yourself to Choose the Appropriate Response:
This step involves trusting yourself to choose the appropriate response based on your insights into the emotion and the situation. Responding mindfully allows you to avoid reacting impulsively and helps resolve the emotional turmoil.
Using the above technique, you can break free from the entanglement of emotional attachment, making it easier to relinquish the inner control freak.