Can you remember a time when you became a little irritated with someone and made a sharp comment that may have hurt, one which you later regretted? Have you ever writhed in
pain of emotional agony over some loss or missed opportunity? Do you recall a time when you felt so overwhelmed by emotion that you withdrew from everything and everyone? In any of these cases to a lesser or greater degree emotional part of your brain has produced a questionable response or perhaps a response that you may have regretted later.Researchers generally agree that there is an appropriate 'alarm' system in brain. This system effectively overrides thinking part of your brain in emergencies and causes an action or reaction that can be life saving.
The same system causes you problems when it creates inappropriate and unreasonable responses in your daily life in non-life threatening situations. Maybe your loved ones see your anger and it hurts them or your relationship to them. Perhaps you experience other consequences that would have been averted had you greater control over your emotional brain.
You can exert control over reactionary part of your gray matter. The first step is realizing why these unwanted and seemingly uncontrollable responses happen. Just being cognizant that your emotional alarm system sometimes triggers at inappropriate times is half battle. With awareness, you will be primed to take next step.
Using your will to produce a calmer state is second step. You'll want to exert some effort from rational or thinking part of your brain. Your thinking mind must not be timid and should be a bit stronger in applying a conscious influence over your emotional reactions. You can learn to control alarm response with persistence and patience and reset threshold to a more appropriate 'setting'.
Once you begin to recognize emotional response before it happens, you begin to develop ability to stop that response and engage more rational part of your brain.
