I say this a lot, your emotions are valid.
Why?
Because our emotions are rooted in our subconscious mind, so as long as we are a living breathing being, we’re going to have emotions.
But in a worst-case scenario, we get emotionally hijacked.
An emotional hijack refers to a personal emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has been triggered from a much more significant emotional threat.
This term was first coined by psychologist Daniel Goleman in 1995. Another way to explain this is emotional hijack is a situation in which the part of your brain that serves as your emotional processor, hijacks, or even bypasses your normal reasoning process.
An example of an emotional hijack can be when you suddenly snap at someone when they have only said one word. It isn’t really that word that triggered the anger, it’s the emotions behind what previously happened. You might regret your own reactions and hate yourself for being a slave to your own emotions.
You become programmed to react in a certain way to a specific set of circumstances and might feel out of self-control. If you ever felt this way, then you are being hijacked by your emotions.
To break away from the hijacking you really only have two choices:
Choice #1 You can forget what happened, move on like any other normal day and react the same way the next time you’re faced with similar circumstances. Or,
Choice #2 you can try to sort through your thoughts and feelings, like pieces of a puzzle.
You need to do some inner work and dig for the answer to WHY you reacted the way you did, you can alter and train your default reaction so that your response would be different next time.
Some good self-reflection questions to contemplate your behavior are:
- What is the real reason I reacted the way I did?
- Did my reaction help me or harm me?
- How will I feel about this in an hour? How about In a month? Or A year later?
- What would I do differently if I could do it again?
- What will I say to myself the next time this happens that would help me think more clearly and react differently?
Get yourself thinking, do these reflections often, recognize your emotional behaviors. Instead of feeling guilty for what you did, turn those emotional hijacks into a catalyst for intentional thoughts and reflection, and of course, the ultimate goal is eventually, to change.