Controlling Our Emotions So They Don’t Control Us

I am sometimes surprised at how easy it is to manipulate a person. We all have a range of emotions, personalities, beliefs, desires, knowledge, understanding, and human connections. Yet, despite our complexities, is it really so difficult to manipulate us? If someone hacks or invades our emotional centers, can’t they then hijack our mind and body?

It’s quite easy to make someone angry if you think of it. This involves calling someone a name, badmouthing their mother or other family members, insulting their intelligence or skill, making offensive gestures, or referring to a person’s most deeply held beliefs as nonsense or idiocy. If you make someone angry, they tend to lose control, yelling loudly, becoming offensive in their own word use or gestures, perhaps even be willing to engage in a fight. They tend to get into a revengeful mindset – wanting to hurt the person hurting them.

Understand that to make someone angry is to poison them and those around them and make them do foolish things. So, if you anger someone, you have controlled them into taking actions against their own best interest. Of course, most people assume they are not being manipulated. Most people assume that the antagonist is legitimately being himself, and just by his own faulty character, he happens to be anger-inducing. Somehow, that belief probably makes us even angrier, thinking, how could someone be such an imbecile, so uncaring, so offensive?

Perhaps much of the time, the antagonist is legitimately himself. Still, other times maybe he enjoys gaining control over others, knowing that if he doesn’t like someone, he can make them angry and make them lose control, turning them into his puppets. As long as the antagonist maintains some control over himself, he will appear to be the better person, in the end, perhaps even coming out to be a hero if he helps to calm down the person he has angered or to stop the one he angered from causing too much trouble.

Anger is just one powerful emotion, but any other could be used just as well to shift someone into a different frame of mind where they cannot think clearly. Can you think clearly if you feel overwhelmingly sad, happy, jealous, embarrassed, hopeless, or scared? Don’t those emotions tend to put you on a one-track mind, where all you can think is of one thing? Generally, you will work toward alleviating that strong emotion to get yourself back to normal. Still, in doing so, you may be easily manipulated and controlled into taking a course of action that works against your best interests.

I recently heard of a scam where people are contacted by the FBI, only it is not truly the FBI, but just an imposter who wishes to trick the target into transferring money to them. These villains can trick many people because they scare them. To many people, it is one of the scariest things to be contacted by the FBI, to be told that you are wanted for crimes – even, of course, when you are fully innocent. We will do anything to alleviate the overwhelming emotion of fear, even if that means telling these people all of our private details or transferring money to them.

It isn’t until later that we realize none of it made sense. The caller didn’t know the target’s name but rather had to ask to confirm it. The caller didn’t know the target’s address, or social security number, or which bank he used, or anything at all about the caller, until the caller provided that information.

So why would the FBI call someone if they did not know who they were calling, nor anything about them? Of course, they would not.

We must be wary of someone who insists on putting us into extreme emotional states. Someone who constantly reminds us that we should be scared, worried, or sad should not easily be trusted. When taken to extremes, these emotional states do not help us work our way through problems or see clearly.

One of the greatest skills anyone can learn then is emotional control. We have to practice this. When someone is yelling and behaving in a threatening way, a part of us must recognize that this is a potential threat, but it does not help to cower in fear and panic.

Recently, I stopped at a gas station to fill my tank. While I was pulling into the gas station, I got an uneasy feeling, as four men were partly blocking the entrance. One of them begrudgingly moved out of the way to let me in. There was a huge truck to one side blocking the view to the street – it crossed my mind that this may be on purpose, to obstruct the view so no one could see what these men were doing, but I ignored that idea. Some gas pumps were out of order, and the one closest to the street was in use, so I pulled up to the one next to these four men. They were standing, appearing to do nothing. This struck me as a bit strange since we were at a gas station, but I reminded myself that they were not doing anything, so there was no problem.

As I parked my car at the gas terminal, I noticed that one of the men had his eyes on me. He was the biggest of the group and only about 10 feet away from me. I stepped out of the car and in front of my door, and suddenly the man had one arm fully behind his back in an awkward manner – he was not stretching, nor was he just quickly pulling out some cigarettes. His hand was back there purposefully as if he were holding something. He was smiling at me, inching forward very slowly, as if he didn’t want me to notice he was getting closer. He complimented my nice-looking car, and I said Thanks, man.

He continued to inch closer and closer, with his arm still behind his back. I was outwardly as casual as possible, while at this point, every red flag had been raised in my mind. I realized that my life was possibly in danger. On top of all these red flags, the man was smiling with a sort of grimace that did not seem right at all to me.

Somehow, through years of working on my emotions, not allowing them to go out of control, and always keeping my composure, I had been able to be fully calm at this moment where I realized I was in trouble. I had never been so sure in all my life that something bad was about to happen to me. The man was almost within arm’s reach now. In a flash, I had realized that the big truck blocking the view was not a coincidence. The four men clustered, doing “nothing” was not a coincidence. This man’s arm awkwardly behind his back could not be a coincidence. I believe he wanted to threaten me with a weapon.

He was almost within arm’s reach.

I quickly yet casually stepped behind my car door (with it between the man and me) and into my car. I imagined that from his perspective, he might have assumed I just forgot my wallet or something in my car. Of course, I was ready to leave. I put my keys in the ignition and got out of there as quickly as I could.

The first lesson here is I should have trusted my intuition earlier. I knew something was not right immediately when I saw these four men doing nothing, and then the big truck blocking the view from the street and the many “out of order” pumps were other signals. The man with the hand behind his back staring at me was another signal. I waited until the last possible moment when he was almost within arm’s reach, and that was a mistake, but luckily nothing happened to me.

Emotional control is critical. If I had gotten too scared, I might have entered into the animalistic “fight or flight” response. As humans, we should remember that the options are actually endless, not binary. But if I had frozen there, obviously, this would have been a mistake. If he had me scared and frozen, that was probably the perfect victim he was looking for. He could have taken all my money, my phone, and the car, in that case. If I had panicked and run on foot, they might have been ready to stop me. Even though I got back in the car, if I was too scared, not thinking clearly, I may have forgotten to lock the car, I may have dropped the keys or struggled to get them into the ignition properly, giving them enough time to open my door and force me out.

It was of utmost importance that I remain calm and composed.

Luckily I did.

Just because the environment is moving us toward an emotion does not mean was must let those emotions run out of control. Something in the environment may press our Anger button, or Fear button, or Embarrassed button, but we can rewire ourselves not always to need to respond with the same thinking patterns, and certainly to not always need to respond with the same behaviors and actions.

You can imagine emotional triggers as passing through you, not happening to you. This means if someone insults you, it goes through you. You do not need to take it in and respond to it. Similarly, if someone near you fears many events: diseases, wars, financial troubles, you do not necessarily need to let this affect you. You can imagine those feelings passing through you, not needing to get entangled with your emotional self. The words and the fears of this person are just going through you. You are not adding energy to it by taking it seriously. You may even empathize with this person over their fears and try to help, but you are not required to take in their negative energy even then.

Sometimes I have thoughts such as this:

This anger (or fear, sadness, etc.) is not helping me see clearly and behave rightly. I must let this feeling go so that I can move on. When I move on, I will be able to see clearly and behave rightly once again.

When you feel the emotions start to run out of control, think the above thought (or read it aloud). Then talk to a loved one. Practice taking deep breaths. Go for a walk or jog. Watch a stand-up comedy or a comedy film. These are the things that help me. Maybe they will help you too. And of course, if you have a problem with an individual, consider talking it through with them after you have calmed down a bit.