I Don’t Get Angry Anymore, I Just Look, Think And Walk Away If Necessary

By dint of having to deal with complicated situations, we learn to distance ourselves emotionally, to manage our discomfort and to think before making a decision. As with everything, learning this requires time and experience. A lot of experience.

Thus, we could say that emotional distance is an unwritten code that allows us to see and feel things differently. In this way, we allow time for emotions such as anger to lose steam and we can give way to feelings. Thus, once calmed down, we understand more clearly what we really think and how we want to act.

That is, doing this helps us to better manage our emotions. In this way, we achieve more coherence between our opinions and our actions. Acting in this way will give us much more freedom when it comes to saying something we don’t feel or doing something we may regret. When we are the ones who control our emotions and not they control us, we will have taken a great step in our mental freedom.

What do we need to get emotional distance?

Now, how can we get emotional distance? This answer does not have a magic recipe, as it depends on many personal and circumstantial factors, as well as relationships.

There are people that we carry within us to the roots. In this case, distancing ourselves from the emotions that being with them generates is, without a doubt, one of the most complicated tasks we have to carry out. When it comes to reassembling the puzzle that allows us to understand what is happening, we will have to quiet the mind and observe.

However, and although we do not have the recipe that leads us to take emotional distance in the ideal way, we can highlight most of the ingredients that we need to achieve emotional distance from what is difficult to handle.

When faced with an affront, it will probably light up amber and then turn red. That is, when, for example, we are invaded by anger, sadness, joy or any other emotion, our traffic light is red and, therefore, we should not make decisions.

Avoid making “hot” decisions

Observe, look, and walk away if necessary, but don’t make permanent decisions about temporary emotions. Even if you want to say four things to that person or scream and walk away forever. Give yourself time for your emotions to calm down. Go out for a walk, start coloring, or let a few days go by before talking to or seeing a person who has made you angry or saddened.

When time passes, certain things simply cease to matter. Over the days, some details that anguished us, become trifles that we relativize and accept as proper to the circumstances. Acting when anger takes hold of us can lead us down a very wrong path. We tend to lose the ability to reason and we can end up saying words that hurt more than a bullet.

Thanks to time, we distance ourselves and we stop committing ourselves to the emotional intensity generated by disappointments, expectations, betrayals, etc. Not being controlled by our emotions is possible and like any skill is learned with practice. So, whenever you feel anger taking hold of you, try to remain calm. If necessary, run away and let time pass, but try not to act out of anger because the consequences may be worse than you might imagine.

The internal compass, a great benefit of putting emotional distance into practice

Once we manage to put emotional distance from what happened, we can listen to that internal compass that generates feelings about what is right and what is wrong. These intuitions are often correct since they are based on our feelings, much longer than our emotions.

Then the decisions we make regarding others and what has happened to us will be much more successful or rather in line with what we think and feel. Here we can know what deserves attention and what we want to ignore, encouraging us to feel better and not suffer so much for what we cannot control.

In summary, it is very important that in complicated situations or with too much load and intensity we take emotional distance, because we will ensure that the most temporary aspects of our emotions do not hinder us and do not make us regret acting in one way or another.

Main images courtesy of Claudia Tremblay