How to Control Your Emotions Why That’s Ruining Your Confidence

Self Care, Self Discovery, Self Improvement, Self Love, Wellness

How do you control your emotions and, therefore, your life? Controlling your emotions gives you a sense of safety, but what you are doing inadvertently in trying to control your emotions is trying to control a force built into the very fabric of your human existence that was never meant to be controlled. Emotions are not meant to be controlled; they are meant to be experienced.

So, how do you control your emotions? You don’t. You experience your emotions.

However, many conversations about how to control your emotions will go into understanding emotional regulation. That means another form of emotional control, but let’s get into the details of what this means. Most importantly, I want us to look at how trying to control our emotions is actually sabotaging our current world existence and minimizing the human experience, causing us to feel disconnected from ourselves, each other, and this planet. Yes, our perception of wanting to control our emotions is part of our climate crisis.

I advocate that we listen to all the explorers of life as we discover how to control our emotions from psychologists, poets, scientists, physicians, and artists.

Hi, beautiful. My name is Lumalia. I call myself a beauty hunter, and I’m here to press past the definitions that lead us into deeper self-love and self-discovery instead of looking for answers. I hope to inspire you to experience your one precious life more deeply. I’m a women’s retreat curator, somatic movement meditation teacher, author, photographer, and general life explorer.

I once felt that I had to control my emotions and fought fearlessly to try and be strong in all life experiences.

Until one day, my body said no more.

I was thrown into bed with chronic illnesses and multiple autoimmune diseases that disrupted my entire life and made me really learn to listen to the wisdom that I was given in this one beautiful, precious body. From these experiences and my own research in life, I need to share with you how I feel that trying to control your emotions is actually what is hindering you from experiencing a beautiful life. Read more about my journey in my book Blooming Upside Down.

But before we go into how to control your emotions, as in, don’t control them but experience them, I want you to know that I am not a psychologist, and then if you’re experiencing extreme emotions and feeling completely untethered in a way that is causing harm to others or yourself, please reach out for support immediately from a therapist or hotline. Some beautiful psychologists know how to support you returning to homeostasis, where you can access greater parts of your existence.

Your life is precious, as is everyone around you. So let’s take care of our emotions, ourselves and each other well.

This article may contain affiliate / compensated links. For full information, please see our disclaimer here.

How to Control Your Emotions

Well, it’s easy to say we want to control our emotions. We actually don’t want to use the intention of the word control. To control means to rule over something. Often, that looks like learning how to regulate your emotions, but I’m going to encourage us a step further past trying to regulate our emotions.

To regulate means to govern our emotions. Again, this is not quite what we want to do, so I’m offering that we learn to become stewards of our emotions instead of rulers.

Symatics are important here because our language holds meaning, intention, and energy for our bodies and our relationship to our feelings.

When you think of the words govern, rule, or control, how does that make you feel?

For most people, it does not bring a sense of safety, ease, or calmness.

Unfortunately, most of us experience governing, control, and rule in our regular lives, which creates a sense of distrust. And when we are building a relationship with ourselves, the last thing we want to do is practice anything that causes distrust. The point of trying to learn how to control your emotions is to learn to build a relationship full of love, safety, and trust in your own precious experience.

Build a deeper relationship with your emotions and self-expression with my free 30 day self care challenge

Nicha: “Be careful in casing out your devil that you cast out the best thing in you.”

So, where do we begin, and how do we move from how to control our emotions to how to experience our emotions?

Take my Self-Awareness quiz now to discover where you are at in understanding your emotional experiences and get access to a free road map for supportive practices in self-awareness.

What are emotions anyway?

Emotions are sensations experienced through the body, the mind, and the energies around us. They are not singular to the individual or to humans.

Plants, indeed, respond to our emotions. IKEA experimented on talking to plants negatively and positively, and the plants that grew better were the ones that were spoken to positively.

And other human beings indeed respond to our emotional existence.

You immediately feel joy if you walk into a room full of joy and celebration. Conversely, if you walk into your room full of morning, you’ll feel sorrow to some extent.

It’s in part why how connected we are through social media and the Internet can sometimes be overwhelming to our human existence, which was not made to hold the capacity of the world at any given moment, but that’s a subject for another time.

To say emotions are felt sensations in one human body is to do a disservice to our interconnectedness on this beautiful earth.

Modern science, with its means of dissecting things apart for the sake of understanding (which has brought us a lot of resources), has done us a disservice by failing to understand the interconnectedness of all that is.

“Science isn’t a unified, known body of knowledge. Science is a process in which we explore truth. Science is never a book of truth. That’s a dangerous PR. Then we aren’t allowed to challenge anything.” Dr. Zach Bush

So, that’s why your fellow wellness practitioner and poet is writing this article. I will do my best to provide human-made answers to bring together the best for you. But do your research in the field of your life experience. Get curious; let this be an adventure for you. I hope you’ll go from wanting to control to wanting to discover and play, which is the greatest gift I can ever give you.

“The artist’s function is the mythologization of the environment and the world.” Joseph Cambell

Learn to alchemize your emotions working with the power of the Camellia flower

Emotions as Sensations Named as Feelings: How to control your emotions

When we experience emotions, we can name the sensations.

For example, tightness in our chest is associated with the label “fear.”
Butterflies in our bellies are associated with “excitement.”

We humans have generally agreed that these sensations mean things about us or what we are experiencing.

As expert somatic therapist Anodes Judith said in her book Eastern Body Western Mind, “Emotions are the clothing of our feelings. When we experience a strong emotion, we feel our aliveness and often identify with the feeling involved. Even our language makes this identification: I am angry and scared. (Other languages say, I have fear or anger.) This is the identity that says, I feel therefore I am, and whatever I feel is what I am. Some people identify their main sense of self in this way.”

It’s here, in these identification moments of our feelings, that we can get caught in stories or associations with the feelings that let us then make meaning of who we are and what we are experiencing.

Want support in practicing this? Get access to my free self-awareness roadmaps where I give you free access to videos, journal prompts and guides to dive deeper into this.

How do we witness feelings instead?

So, instead of attaching meaning and associates to our sensations and our emotions, what if we witnessed them instead? This practice is called mindfulness and building self-awareness.

One of the most excellent teachings of mindfulness and self-awareness is to disassociate from attaching a story or identity to the sensation, to let it have a moment of expression without needing an “answer” or specific outcome. Which, of course, is something scary for us humans. So, oddly, a great way to “ control your feelings“ is by not attaching identity to what you’re experiencing or the story at first. Once you get into the weeds of the same experience over and over, again, it’s important to look for patterns and meanings, preferably with a therapist or in a self-discovery journey like my self-awareness roadmaps.

As Anodes Judith said in her book Eastern Body Western Mind, “Initially, emotions are subconscious organizations of impulses to move away from harm and toward pleasure. It is difficult to feel emotions without some kind of movement.”

For this reason, I want to say emotions are an accumulation of sensations that require movement. For most of us brought up in modern worlds, that usually equates to rumination or uncontrollable outbursts. Later, we become ashamed that we are ruled by those emotions. Hence, we seek to rule our emotions!

We often feel our emotions rule us and want to rule them instead!

How dare they!

Imagine a toddler angrily stomping their feet.

It’s understandable and cute of us, but not helpful.

So what do we do instead?

How to Steward our Emotions Instead of How do we Control our Emotions?

Instead of trying to control our emotions, I offer that we use the word steward.

A steward is someone who manages and supports the whole effort to get to a desired outcome.

Yes, there’s some means of control here, but instead of trying to rule over it with an iron-clenched fist, we come to our sensations with mindfulness. This stewardship leaves space to understand the entire system, our whole environment, our whole body, our past, present, and future. Then, from this holistic perspective, with gentle, loving care, we can come to be with our emotions and sometimes understand them. (Notice I said sometimes? They may not need to be understood by the mind.)

So, what does a steward of emotions do?

They act like a very good set of parents.

The Loving Tender Mother:

Holds you in her embrace.
Comforting you and your experience.
She validates everything you’ve gone through as true.

The Empowering Father:

Cheering you on.
Protecting you when you are threatened.
Advocating for you.

You go through this knowing they both are going to have your back the entire way.

Sadly, so few of us actually know those types of parents, so that’s where we look to the beautiful poets, teachers, and scientists of our world to create this in our inner landscape for ourselves. Here, we can truly begin to create new worlds from the inside out.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Learning to control and steward your emotions is really important, not just for yourself but also for how you affect your environment.

You are an important piece of this and can learn these methods.

Ready to get support in these practices? Take my Self Awareness Quiz to discover your emotional patterns and receive a personalized roadmap for feeling more grounded.

Then, you’ll begin to show up differently for yourself and those around you.

Because as you give yourself more space to experience, you gain capacity. You gain compassion, empathy, and forgiveness, which first needs to be an inside job.

And a world full of compassion, understanding, and forgiveness is such a beautiful world.

So, how does a good parent show up as a steward of one’s emotions? The parent begins by observing instead of reacting, which is what mindfulness is all about.

It is the act of pausing to notice the sensations.

Sometimes, we name them. But other times, we describe them. We give them a texture, a color, a shape, or simply state that they exist.

Give it a go right now with my Yoga to Notice

The act of slowing down helps the nervous system go out of its animal responses and into an observational state, where we have more access to our high creative cognitive functions than when we are in a sympathetic nervous system response where we shut down, freeze, please others against or our needs, or do animal things like yet, scream or act in violence.

However, pausing in an emotion is not always accessible. Often, we have to practice this over and over again until we become more masterful at the pause. But between these practices, our emotions sometimes hit us like a tsunami. And this is where movement becomes helpful.

How to Control our Emotions with Somatic Movement Release

Often, when we experience really big emotions, it can be helpful to let them have a shape, voice, or expression in our body in a way that does no harm to ourselves or others around us.

Many times, when we get deep into an emotional release, it’s helpful to put ourselves in an environment where we communicate with those around us who are doing the somatic release. This means clearly stating that your expressions do not have meaning or impact, especially when young children are involved.

Sometimes, when my daughter is feeling frustrated, I feel her frustration and ask her if she wants to pause and growl with me. We’ll make silly sounds and growl. We’ll squeeze each other in a really big hug. She’ll cry. She’ll tell me all she’s feeling, and I will just listen and validate her experience. That emotional release alone is really helpful for both of us.

Having a somatic, emotional release can look like this:

Talking out loud, even to yourself
Calling a friend asking if you can vent without any solutions
Hitting a pillow against a bed
Tearing paper very slowly
Screaming in your car alone
Sighing loudly
Humming
Letting yourself laugh at the irony of the tragedy
Even give yourself permission for a full theater rendition of your five-year-old self throwing your whole body on the ground as if the world was going to end because _____.

There are no right or wrong ways to express your emotions as long as they are not harming those around you or yourself.

For step-by-step support in your emotional releases, take my self-awareness quiz to get immediate access to a customized road map that includes guided practices and resources to support you today.

“There is no fixed shaped….you are changed by the journey of every single day. There is no competition. There is only transition.” Philip Shepherd, in his incredible book Radical Wholeness, you’ll want to go give this a read!

Sometimes, we must go back to re-experiencing these somatic releases, these body responses to help emotion move through us. Our bodies need safe places for expression, and many of us have never had this environment.

If these emotions reoccur, the vital step is to come back to ask what support these emotions need. Often, this step is done with a coach or a therapist. Still, it can be done in self-reflection, where a story might return a memory or just more sensations in the body that a wellness practitioner can help you come to some answers to its roots or origin. Once we’re able to identify the pattern or need, we must take action in our lives. Our emotions don’t just need release; they often need a change in our lives, sometimes really uncomfortable ones.

It’s important that as you step into some of these experiences, some things in your body might begin to get released, and you might want further support. If you feel at any point that you are at the edge of your capacity, it’s helpful to work with experts in somatic or yoga therapy with some trauma-informed backgrounds. (Want to try an intro class right now? Try my somatic movement meditation Kindred Healing Balm replay class pay what you can now.)

When we first learn how to experience our emotions in a capacity that feels attainable for our current bodily and psychological capacity, we need to be mindful that not all of these ways of expressing our sensations are going to feel safe in our bodies. It might feel scary to emotionally release, but if you can do it in an environment that feels safe to you, this can be helpful. Bedrooms with closed doors, in the car alone, bathrooms when no one is home, in the forest alone, with a person who is your support system, practitioner, or coach.

Sometimes, we may not even need to act on our emotional expression. You may even imagine yourself expressing yourself and seeing how just imagining that plays out, and if it seems like it feels good, it feels into it. If it feels good to let that release happen, give it a go! There is no wrong way to express your feelings unless you harm others or yourself.

Check out Body First Healing with Brittany Piper for more reading and support.

And suppose you want guided support on how to feel more of your feelings and how to begin to support yourself through self-care.

Free Month of Self Care Guide

If you’re ready to explore self-care, I invite you to try my FREE month of self-care guide. You can download a free PDF with daily challenges that are more than just a checklist, they are a land of great adventures, you’ll forget they are self-care and remember the point is to live a beautiful life!

Want a deeper dive join my paid 30-day self-care challenge where we dive into somatic movement meditation that practices mindfulness with movement to help create feelings on demand and experience sensations in a slow, gentle way that we get to choose the capacity and full expression we go to.

How do I stop letting people affect my emotions?

The reality is that your environment and the people around you will always affect your emotions, but you can practice choosing your reaction with mindfulness. You can then practice clear communication, set boundaries, and make sometimes hard decisions about your life that help keep you in safe, healthy, loving relationships.

But let’s be honest. At the end of the day, there’s still a deep part of our human biology that is still an animal. We are humans and need lots of grace and understanding for each other. However, that does not justify anyone intentionally causing physical harm to another person. If you are experiencing this type of experience, please use this hotline.

When others begin to affect our emotions, it’s usually because we are getting triggered by them; what they do or say can put our body into a felt sensation. This sensation might be felt as rage, fear, or discomfort in general.

So, it’s essential to go back and practice mindfulness:

Name the emotions in shapes, colors, and sensations, and see what happens with particular people and how they affect your feelings.
Then, with time, you can look for patterns of how this happens.
Begin to ask, like a loving parent, why this keeps happening?
What do you wish would happen instead?
How do you wish the scenario had gone if this person had been very loving and safe?

Sometimes even writing them a letter and maybe never sending it can help work through these. Let your pen write from your heart instead of your head.

Getting curious about the experience will help you better understand how to create boundaries for yourself and communicate “I” statements to those around you.

Sometimes, we need to create boundaries to help us say, “Hey, you can’t treat me this way. You can’t yell at me, etc.” and seek support from other people in your life. Therapists or friends work through these situations and try to come to an understanding of what is happening. Sometimes, it may be a really crummy situation that you have an emotional response to. It may be a situation you must address in your internal world or relationship instead of trying to control your emotions. Sometimes, it’s not always what we need to do, but how we must ask others to show up for themselves and us. However, wanting to take responsibility for yourself is also part of the beautiful equation of being human. Often, it’s both. So be kind and gracious to yourself and others.

Next, you can learn to communicate how this person is affecting you to them. This can state your feelings. Depending on the person, it may or may not go well, and you can use your discretion if you think they will be receptive to your experiences.

My home is filled with three rowdy tween girls and their friends, who love to be loud. While we enjoy having kids around, it can be frustrating for us parents trying to work. Instead of shaming them for noise or isolating them with screens, we ask them to respect our small space and remember the great outdoors for their wild play. We set boundaries and provide reminders as needed.

Explore more in my article Self-Love in relationships

How to Stop Being Emotional & How to Be Less Emotional

If you are asking yourself how to stop being emotional and become less emotional, I want to reach across this computer screen, give you a hug, and tell you that your emotions are a gift! And YOU are why I wrote this article; your emotions are just signals.

However, because this is the wild internet, if you are emotionally harming yourself or others, I encourage you to seek professional support.

Emotions are a beautiful gift to us as humans, but don’t let me convince you otherwise; instead, I’ll let the poets who say it all be the best. You need more voices in your head telling you that you aren’t emotional; you are just living in a world that suppresses emotions. Then go read this article: How to Feel Your Feelings and Emotions Are Ok

Feelings Are Ok Quotes:

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”― Helen Keller

“But feelings can’t be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself because I could find no language to describe them in.”― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Mary Oliver

Find more self-love quotes here.

What to do When you Feel Overwhelmed with Emotions?

Ok, but let me also offer this too. Sometimes, we experience so many emotions we don’t know how to come back to a centered place, and this is also where mindfulness practices are really helpful. Breathwork, meditation, movement meditations are all-powerful. If you’re deep in emotional upheaval right now and have been for hours, try these meditations to help calm your nervous system.

Try my free playful and easy Beginner Breath Work yoga class.

how to control your emotions in the moment

By now, we get the point: It’s not helpful to know how to control your emotions in the moment; instead, let’s steward our emotions in the moment.

Practice Noticing: Where are you feeling the emotions in your body?
Give the Sensation a Description: color, shape, location, metaphor, simile. For example, it feels hot and red, like an anchor in my chest.
Ask the sensation if it has anything to tell you. Listen like a beloved parent to a child who needs your undivided attention.
Respond to that request as best as you can, seeking not to console or resolve but seeing how maybe there does need to be radical action in your life or just a gentle witnessing was what is required. Don’t jump to fixing. Just listen.
Hug yourself, take a long deep breath (inhale for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds, repeat until desired), hum, or listen to a song that feels good and invite gentle swaying.

Check out my article “ How to Feel Your Feelings“ for more step-by-step support.

How to Control Your Emotions as a Woman

Unpopular opinion: you should not control your emotions as a woman. Your emotions are powerful compasses; it is your job to learn how to listen to them, give them the voice and expressions they need, and take supportive action. I have a beautiful guide to this in How to Feel Your Feelings.

However, your emotions and what you do with them should not cause harm to yourself or anyone around you.

And let’s hear from the world’s best poets about how to control your emotions as a woman and what they have to say on the subject.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Mary Oliver

“Someone I loved once gave me/ a box full of darkness./ It took me years to understand/ that this too, was a gift.” Mary Oliver

“Drama is very important in life. You have to have to come on with a bang. Everything can have drama if done right,” Julia Child

“If you’re feeling enraged, that is your initiation to break down the wall. When one door closes you burst through the wall to the next thing” – Chelsie Diane

“The fears are paper tigers, you can do anything you decide to do…the process is your own award” – Ameilia

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“But feelings can’t be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“We often think we must fix the pain to make it disappear. But really, the greatest lesson I’ve learned and knowing the depth of despair itself is that it does not want an exit plan. The tears won’t drown you. They are what will help you stay alive the most. Our emotions just want to be seen, held, and honored for being the voice that couldn’t have been spoken aloud.” Lumalia Armstrong, (hey that’s me! lol) from my book you should buy Blooming Upside Down

Wow to Control Your Emotions as a Man

Your emotions are a gift, not to be controlled but experienced in safe, healthy, supportive ways. If you’re ready to experience your emotions better, check out my article “How to Feel Your Feelings.”

Or dive into my workshop Back Home in my Body

How to Deal with Emotions in a Healthy Way & Emotional Regulation Skills

Emotional regulation skills are techniques taught in traditional therapy, often using techniques like congestive behavior therapy (CBT), which aims to identify and change negative thought patterns. CBT can be helpful but becomes obsolete when the body’s memory is stronger than the brain’s ability to attach memory to experiences.

Personally, I’ve found that CBT was initially helpful for me but ultimately harmful to my human experience as it is a top-down approach. It says the mind governs the body and emotions, which is not true. It’s all a relationship.

James R. Doty, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

This is a must-read book if you want to truly explore why controlling our mind does not actually work but becomes a relationship we build.

Find morebest books on Self-improvement here.

The best way to deal with your emotions healthily is to learn how to feel your feelings. I hope you find this article helpful and take the emotional regulation skills outlined in it.

Emotional regulation skills are best practiced in a way that feels fun to you. Otherwise, we’re less likely to do them. Let’s be honest.

And suppose you’re ready for action steps right now, including a somatic release step with movement and imagination play. In that case, I’d love to invite you to my 30-day self-care challenge, which will include fun experiences, somatic movement meditation classes, and journal prompts to support you in exploring the beautiful world of your emotions.

I love imagination play in movement meditations and in writing.

However, you can practice emotional regulation in the moment, journaling, and walking, where you change voices in your self-talk.

The world is your playground, and your emotions are just invitations.

“Stacking curiosity on curiosity increases drive, not effort.” The Art of the Impossible by Steven Kotler is another excellent book that helps one understand the neuroscience of motivation.

Come play with the magic of your life inside my free 30 day self care challenge

Personally, I found approaches like somatic work helpful that look at the nervous system and our body’s ability to hold on to memory when our brain sometimes forgets specific things, and we are stuck in loops because the body’s memory and responses can not be overridden like the mind. For that reason, forms of somatic work and movement meditations have been more profound for me, as forms of expression like dance, writing, and spiritual practices. (For more understanding of spiritual practices, check out Dr. Lisa Miller’s book The Awakened Brain.

Cheers to being a human WITH emotions.

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