How I Learned to Manage my Emotions

For many years, my thoughts lay in a jumbled pile and it was hard to sort through the processes in my mind. It took many years for me to understand that thinking effectively for clarity and sanity involved separating our thoughts.

One day while I was reading a magazine. I read an article about gaining clarity of thought, and after some studying of my own, I learned that there are four main areas of thought we sort through daily. These are faith and spirit, wealth and career, health and self-care, and relationships and love. If you consider it for a moment, you will see that all of our daily thoughts fit into these 4 categories. We are propelled by the thoughts that come up in each of these areas. The problem for many of us is, we confuse the thought process by thinking about these areas in a jumbled and confused way. We do it all the time. At least I know I did and sometimes I still do.

Coming out of my depression, I found that it was important to separate the thoughts first and then cohesively integrate them into effective clear thoughts. If you don’t do this, you end up with an enormous mess, and sorting it all out can be a tough feat. That just does not work for productive living. How do I know? I am the one who suffered for over 11 years with a debilitating disease called depression which led to other issues like anxiety and despair.

My thinking caused me to assume and perceive so many things that were just off-kilter and crazy. Thoughts that my man must be cheating on me or that one of my friends was jealous of me or that she was trying to get back at me for something. All of this based on my warped thinking patterns.

It is why , looking back, I do not have any childhood friends who I can go hang out with or call my best friends. For many years it hurt, but I have learned to live with it because it is a residual of a soul not colored and life not truly lived.

It was hard becoming an adult and seeing people leave me because of me. I struggled for many years with feelings of abandonment, rejection, and loneliness.

I am sure this is why I jumped into the relationship I did. It was for me a way of escape from the pain of very few people wanting to be around me. The problem with this is that I jumped from the frying pan into the fire and it burned something fierce. It was one of the most horrible experiences in my life. I was even more abandoned, rejected, and lonely because I would not conform to what he thought I should be. It was a horrible place to be, and it resulted from immature emotional control and thinking that got me there.

So I work daily to correct my thinking and do the work necessary to keep my thoughts integrated. I stay sane that way. I realized that insanity for some results from confused thinking that leads to false perceptions. These perceptions become a part of your daily existence and before you know it, they almost swallow you whole. You wake up one day and realize that you do not understand who you are and how you got to the place you are in.

Here’s a simple exercise to help you sort your clutter.

Take a piece of paper and fold it in half and then in half again so you have four squares. Give each square one of these titles: Love and Relationships, Faith and Spirit, Health and Wellness, Wealth and Career. Once you have done that, say a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to help you brainstorm ALL the jumble of thoughts in your mind for each area. Once you have completed the brain-dump, look for patterns and similarities for thinking.

• What’s healthy?

• What’s not so healthy?

• Where do you need to make some changes?

• Where do you see growth?

• What needs to go?

• What needs to stay?

Doing this exercise, which I call “Quadrant of Thought” is not the final answer to healing but it is a start. Healing takes work. Are you willing to do the work? Good! Then get started with sorting through your thoughts.