Through all that life throws at you, it seems like the one thing that takes you out for the play is your emotions. 

They control such a large part of your existence and influence your perspective on yourself, others, and life.

It’s important that as you experience the breath of the human experience and the emotions that go along with it, you cultivate a healthy relationship with them.

If you fully trust in and rely on your emotions, you may make irrational decisions, letting your emotions control your every move. 

Conversely, if you’re always skeptical of your emotions, you may try to logic your way through everything in life, and sometimes things in life simply defy logic. 

In order to live a balanced life and to be able to regulate properly emotionally, you must learn how to cultivate a relationship with each of your emotions.

How to Maintain a Healthy Relationship With Your Emotions  

In the Pixar movie Inside Out, the emotions of 11-year-old Riley are portrayed as characters. Fear, Sadness, Joy, and Anger are personified as the audience is brought along the experiences of  Riley’s life and how her emotions play a role. 

Though this movie was made for children, there are valuable insights gained from viewing your emotions as personified characters. 

Our emotions are unique to each one of us. The way you experience anger will be different from the way I experience it. The things that bring you joy are different than the things that bring your co-workers joy.

Maintaining a healthy relationship with your emotions means recognizing them as individuals. Visualizing your emotions as characters allows you to recognize their difference and then be able to get to know and uniquely manage each.  

Here are a few tips on how to get to know your emotions, helping to cultivate a healthy relationship with each. 

#1 Your Mom Would Never Skydive, so Your Anger Would Never Break up With Your Boyfriend

When you plan a weekend getaway for your mom on Mother’s Day, you don’t even consider taking her skydiving because you know of her paralyzing fear of heights. 

If your brother never cusses, but your dad came up to you and said that your brother just cussed someone out in the grocery store parking lot, you would be skeptical because that’s out of character for your brother. 

In the same way, you know your friends and family, how they talk, what they like and dislike, and their mannerisms; you must get to know your emotions. Otherwise, you risk your emotions facilitating out-of-characteristic actions. 

We subconsciously think that actions satisfy our feelings. So when you experience extreme emotions, you want to satisfy them by taking some sort of action.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re feeling really angry lately. You look around at your life and blame your job for the anger you feel. So the next logical step you conclude is quitting your job- like, right now.

That’s what it would look like to be unacquainted with your anger- making the impulse decision to quit your job, which isn’t actually that bad. Plus, you need the paycheck for rent and groceries next week…

If you’re deeply aligned with your emotions and know them well, then you’ll know that the anger you feel doesn’t need to result in you quitting your job. It doesn’t even need to result in you thinking about quitting your job. 

You have to be able to recognize the roots of your feelings and separate them from the actions you want to do to satisfy those feelings.

Every feeling demands to be felt, but every action does not need to be taken. 

Get to know your feelings and their MO. Get to know the spectrum of each feeling- anger, sadness, fear, and joy. Be acquainted with the appropriate actions to take to satisfy them. 

#2 You Don’t Believe the Fake News on Tik Tok, So Stop Believing the Fake Scenarios in Your Head

What the heck is up with us making up fake scenarios in our heads and then living as if they’re true?!

Often, the scenarios we make up in our heads are purely based on emotion.

The fantasies you have about the girl next door in your bed? Lust.

The scenario where you catch your boyfriend cheating on you with your best friend? Insecurity. 

The situation where your house and everyone you love burns down? Fear. 

Humans have a fantastic imagination, but it doesn’t always serve us well. Don’t let your ability to conjure up fake scenarios in your head dictate your reality. Because really, that just means you’re letting your emotions dictate your reality. 

Part of getting to know your emotions is understanding what each emotion means in relation to your reality.

Just because you imagine your family dying in a car accident doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Just because you fantasize about kissing your lab partner doesn’t mean you’ll get married. 

Separating your imagination from your emotions means you can make rational decisions in the face of irrational emotions. 

So stop playing into the imaginative scenarios you make up in the face of extreme emotion. It will never serve you well. 

#3 Unsubscribe From the Dang Spam Emails

Unless you’re like me, with zero unread emails, you probably have hundreds of unread emails. For some reason, there’s no in-between. You either open all your emails or let them accumulate as if your inbox count equals your net worth. 

Don’t let your mind get like your email inbox- running out of space and filled with spam. 

If your mind is occupied with the latest Kardashian drama and what you and your friends are going to do this weekend, you’re never going to be able to deeply know your emotions. 

You’ve got to declutter; otherwise, you risk the inability to think about your emotions. If you never think about your emotions, then you’re more likely to let them flippantly control your actions. 

Clear your mind by ‘unsubscribing’ to the things in your life that clutter it. Endless scrolling on social media. Random YouTube videos. Needless worrying. Pointless fantasizing. Never-ending to-do lists. 

You don’t have to be in this Zen state 24/7 but do try to clear your mind and connect with your emotions frequently throughout the week. 

The only way to get to know your emotions is by grabbing a weekly coffee with them. So grab your coffee, silence your phone, and enjoy the conversation.  

Real Talk 

Your emotions are unique to you and different situations will make them show up in big and small ways. 

If you live a life unfamiliar with how your emotions usually operate and what actions result from said emotions, you will live a life controlled by your emotions.

If you want to be in control, get to know your emotions. Know them at their best and at their worst. Know how they present themselves in your mind and physically to yourself and others. Know what actions they typically lead to.

Separating your emotions from reality is hard to master and takes time and intentional study. 

But the more you put into cultivating a healthy relationship with your emotions, the more you’ll be able to manage them. 

Get to know your emotions, and they will serve you instead of controlling you.