Remember that it’s important that we don’t label some emotions as “bad” and others as “good”. Doing so only sets up resistance in our minds, which actually strengthens the emotions we are labeling as “bad”. Instead, we can accept ourselves as Feeling Beings, people who are capable of a wide range of beautiful emotions. At the same time, we can be aware of times when emotions can “capture” us and lead us into actions that we’ll regret, like snapping at someone we love. This tool is one of the most effective we’ve found to both honor ourselves as Feeling Beings and to down-regulate emotions that are getting explosive.
We’ve all heard the advice. You’re starting to feel yourself rev up into a rampage, about to lash out at your children in a verbal barrage, about to throw your coffee cup across the room . . . and all you need to do is stop, take a breath, and relax.
Yeah, right.
Whether it’s deep breathing, counting to ten, or any other emotional regulation tool, the part that’s often not mentioned is that when we’re feeling overwhelmed by anger or anxiety, we are, well, overwhelmed by anger or anxiety! That “overwhelm” takes over our mind. It has its own propulsion, a momentum that can make it feel impossible to step back and take a more objective viewpoint.
So how do we navigate these powerful emotions that can drag us down or make us feel like we have no choice but to direct our anger at those around us?
The trick is that any of these emotional regulation tools work in one of two ways. The first use the method of trying to pour water on the fire. A deep breath, for instance, soothes the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight, flight, or freeze” part of our brain.
The second are methods that bring us into awareness – tools like illeism, talking to yourself in third person, which help us step out of our mind-state to see ourselves more objectively. And yes, those deep breaths and illeism CAN be effective. But both of them suffer from a similar fault – we often fail to utilize them because we’re captured in the whirlwind of our emotions.
What we need is a simple tool that does both — a check-in that doesn’t just try to down-regulate the runaway emotions, but that brings us into awareness of what our mind is doing.
Our family calls it the 1,2,3 scale, and it’s proven immensely effective. It has an air of “objectivity” about it that helps the tool insert itself into the momentum of runaway emotions. Nothing else has been quite as capable of breaking through tough emotional spirals and transforming them. It’s especially useful when you’re trying to communicate with someone.
Here’s how it works. We start to get used to rating our emotional state as either a 1, a 2, or a 3. Check in right now, in fact. What are you at?
1 – Your emotions are on uncontrollable autopilot. Anything anyone says is going to be taken as an attack. You aren’t open to suggestion or creative methods to change your perspective.
2 – You are feeling emotionally stable, but criticism or unkind words could send you down to 1. You might be crying, for instance, but you’re still open to connection and working through things.
3 – You’re super stable, feeling tons of self-love, and it a state of peace so strong that anybody could say anything to you and you would be able to see it from a perspective of love and understanding.
As you start to rate yourself, you’ll begin to know more about your “baseline”. Most of us are in the 2 range – we move through life fairly stable, but some strong words can send us tumbling down to a 1, and a good meditation session can send us temporarily up into a 3. Divine Mother, by inviting us to immerse ourselves in a state of love, gets us shifting ever-closer to a 3, and the longer we have her in our lives, the more we’ll find ourselves feeling very “3” on a regular basis. And if we’re dealing with a lot of trauma or difficult life experiences, we may find ourselves often stuck in a 1.
You can apply this tool anytime, but especially when someone starts trying to communicate with you about something challenging. What number are you at? This will tell you a lot about how able you’ll be to communicate, and how to approach that communication.
You can also use this with other people. Share it with your family, for instance, and you can then ask each other what number you’re at when communication begins.
Here’s an essential thing to remember. When someone is at a 1, whether it is you or someone else, it is NOT time for communication. In this state, constructive words will only make things worse. When people are in 1, they may need time by themselves, or they might benefit from just behind held. A solo walk or watching a couple minutes of derpy videos might help. But don’t try to offer advise or otherwise “fix” things.
When someone is at a 2, they might look really upset. But they are open to a shift. Someone might just want to be held, or they might be open to talking about what’s upsetting them. We have to be conscious when communicating with a person who is at a 2, and be aware if they are creeping toward a 1.
When some is at a 3, we’re in an incredible place where we can talk as if we’re in our divine states, unafraid to look at really tough things because we are seeing everything from the perspective of love.
Note that these aren’t static states. We naturally shift between them. Yet over time, we can shift our “baseline” up or down along the scale.
Divine Mother lives at a 3. And as we deepen our relationship with her, we’ll begin to discover ourselves moving up along the scale more and more. This emerges out of the simple act of loving, being filled with bhakti on a daily basis. Bhakti is the key – the overall foundation for life that opens our heart to Divine Mother’s love and lets it flood through us.