Become Less Reactive and More ‘You’…
It can be really intimidating when challenging emotions like overwhelm or frustration take over…
…and we lose our sense of self.
Until we support our brain to empower us, we can find our unprocessed emotions erupt in lots of ways that don’t serve us.
We find ourselves at their mercy and powerless, with consequent behavioural reactivity introducing more complication and greater challenges.
I used to always feel like I was trying to contain all the emotions of each day until…
…They erupted unexpectedly.
Usually around those I felt safest with - Paddy my husband, or my two girls.
What brings wonderful advantage however, is when we support our brain to move away from such emotionally reactive behaviour.
We’re all emotionally reactive…
Emotions influence your behaviour so in that sense, as a human being, you are constantly emotionally reactive.
Our emotions are fuelling our behaviours constantly, usually without our conscious awareness.
When heightened emotions like frustration come along, we can find ourselves reacting to those challenging feelings before we’ve even realised.
For example:
Paddy might have criticised a way I was trying to solve a problem with our girls.
Then, before I know it, I feel a surge of irritation and reacted back with criticism.
This response is natural but it’s as if I haven’t chosen my behaviour, it’s simply happened instantaneously.
What I realise now is that I wasn’t consciously noticing the surge of emotion or deciding how best to support myself. I was reacting automatically.
Reacting sometimes gave me momentary release…but it gave me far more emotion to process overall.
We minimise our emotional challenges when we have ways of responding to intense emotions that give us conscious awareness and behavioural choice.
This Week’s Self‑Support Step
At first, you’ll probably notice your reactivity in hindsight. Over time, as you pay conscious attention, your brain will start to notice it in the moment.
It’s really helpful as a first step to recognise that these challenging feelings are coming from within you.
You are their source and therefore have the opportunity to re-engage with your reactivity with compassionate curiosity.
Being reactive doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s simply that it can be unhelpful, unsettling or introduce extra challenge.
As a first step…
Practice saying how you’re feeling out loud when normally your reactionary behaviour would occur.
You can describe how your feeling specifically…
“I’m feeling really overwhelmed.”
“I’m feeling really angry.”
Or generally, for example:
“This is too much for me right now.”
“I can’t process this.”
You can repeat this simple sentence again if needed. You’re not trying to eliminate the emotion.
You’re simply softening its impact behaviourally with a moment of conscious perspective.
It all starts with building in initial moments of practice.
The more you practise, the more your brain learns that this calming response is available to you anytime.
Reducing reactivity was one of the ways I started to genuinely transform who I wanted to be when Paddy and I were having difficult moments.
It’s rippled out into so many other helpful areas of my life and I’d love for you to experience the beginning of that empowering change too.
Amazing emotional transformation really is available through small, repeated steps that create brain change and emotional growth.
Thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain can learn to support you in wonderfully empowering ways!
Why this matters
Your brain is waiting to emotionally perform for you in a way that fuels your health, energy and potential. A very different life.
You simply need a relationship with your brain that gives it this opportunity.
That’s why I created the Emotional Rebuild Framework™, a short series of online coaching sessions, rooted in neuroscience, that enable you to build an empowering relationship with your own brain. For good.
A relationship that gives you full emotional opportunity. It’s incredible where this can take you.
Click below to see a visual overview of my framework:
