5 Skills to Enhance Emotional Regulation for a Stronger Marriage
Understanding how our emotions, media and being in control play to our benefit
Good morning, Icons,
We are back with a new week of empowering content to support your social empire.
We thank you for showing up to be a part of our Iconic community.
Being a community, we ask that you participate by sharing your ideas, thoughts and comments with us so that we can all grow in our life, love, marriage and families together.
We want Iconic marriages to flourish, and we can only do that together.
5 Skills to Enhance Emotional Regulation for a Stronger Marriage
For the month of October, we have been looking at how negative media can impact our marriages.
And it isn’t always positive. The media is in it for clicks, an agenda and whatever else they want to do without any concern for you or yours.
With the tips and tricks of past newsletters, you should be alright. We work to empower you with resources on how to maintain a marriage, its daily work.
Importantly, how do we regulate our emotions so that whatever media we consume doesn’t impact our relationships?
Popular influencers will tell you that men are less emotional than women and use that as some kind of one up on the female gender.
In actuality, emotional regulation and experiences differ person to person. Each of us must learn how to regulate our own emotions and make the best choices as we grow old regardless of what life puts in our way.
We cannot have Iconic marriages without strong emotional intelligence.
What Are the Signs of Emotional Intelligence?
Some key signs and examples of emotional intelligence include:1
An ability to identify and describe what people are feeling
An awareness of personal strengths and limitations
Self-confidence and self-acceptance
The ability to let go of mistakes
An ability to accept and embrace change
A strong sense of curiosity, particularly about other people
Feelings of empathy and concern for others
Showing sensitivity to the feelings of other people
Accepting responsibility for mistakes
The ability to manage emotions in difficult situations. Emotional Intelligence (verywellmind.com)
Gender is not an excuse to hide emotions, become abusive or to dehumanize fellow humans, from anyone.
Managing our emotions is peek adulthood. It is the bare minimum to living and running a household.
In fact, Christians are called to love even our enemies! How difficult is that?
Luke 6:27-28
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Pagans can love who loves them, but Christ tells us to love even those who hate us!
This is a tall order in a society bombarded by media that tries to play on our emotions, control our habits and be middlemen in our households.
Luckily, God the Holy Spirit gives us the power to control our emotions, forgive our enemies and build a healthy marriage that lasts.
The Media Influences our Emotions
Knowing that media influences our emotions is huge. We can use this information to determine who or what we absorb into our lives.
The media, again, perpetuates relationship narratives and have people still trying to keep up with the Joneses. This intensifies how we feel and what experiences those feels leads us to do. In fact, those feelings literally come out as joy, peace, anger, disgust, apathy and more.
Affect is the way we experience our emotions. And our environment, what is in our society, and our upbring all play a role in how we feel and act..
For example, podcasters often discuss masculine and feminine energy putting us in constant conversations about how our innate selves play a huge role in our interpersonal interactions with long social media discussions and videos about these ideas.
These narratives shape our culture and transform us even in our brains.
In the research work, “Media, Emotions and Affect:” Author Kaarina Nikunen explores how what we see translates into our feeling. She explores in many areas such as television, movies, war propaganda, activism, Virtual Reality and video games.
As we are talking about marriage, she describes one example of Reality Television,
Reality TV production includes variety of shows that explore problems connected with intimacy, relationships, self-confidence, economic difficulties and the body. John Corner (2004) aptly points out how emotions, experiences and the desire to be inside of experiences have become emphasized in television genres in the 2000s. In their seminal work on reality TV as a technology of affect, Beverly Skeggs and Helen Wood (2008; Wood et al., 2009) explore the management of intimate relationships through visualization of women’s domestic work (on reality shows such as Wife Swap). By sensationalizing intimate relationships, reality television capitalizes on intimacy, and disseminates normalizing and problematically gendered versions of care and relationships. (PDF) Media, Emotions and Affect (researchgate.net)
How we experience emotions comes through in the media we consume and how that transfers to our relationships can have a lasting effect on success or failure altogether.
Do you know if what you believe is your own idea or that filter to you through the media you consume?
You know now if you have taken into the information, you’ve read so far.
The media is influential, but we get to decide what we do with the information we get.
Let us look at how we manage our emotions in spite of all we are up against.
Regulating our Emotions to Win in Life and in Marriage
How can we control our emotions and be healthy in our interpersonal relationships?
there is a specific therapy that helps couple get back on track.
This is called Emotionally Focused Therapy.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a form of short-term therapy that aims to improve couple relationships by rekindling the physical and emotional bond that can get sacrificed to disappointment in a partner and alienation from them, a common dynamic in distressed couples. If there is a motto for EFT, it is: “Hold me tight. Emotionally Focused Therapy | Psychology Today
Most couples that get to the point where they need coaching, therapy or counseling from the missing the bonds that got them together in the first place.
EFT’s goal is to get the two of you back on track.
This type of therapy is mostly used when couples feel isolations, not able to express emotions or signs of emotional weakness.
In therapy and coaching, couples learn how to deal with fears of abandonment and more through a safe space that helps to express your emotions.
How does EFT and emotional intelligence help?
The applications of both get to the bottom of the emotional distress, the trauma, depression and or anxiety that has broken the connection.
The treatment can explore childhood issues, family bonds, and new connections in the brain.
Results?
Patients come to understand how their negative interaction patterns are typically related to attachment-related fears of loss. Under the direction of the therapist, they learn to openly discuss their fears, identify the attachment needs that their fears mask, and instead of distancing themselves, use their vulnerabilities to seek closeness. From that position, they can readily solve life’s problems together. Emotionally Focused Therapy | Psychology Today
This is just one of many forms of therapy that can help couples.
What can you do outside of therapy to regulate your emotions?
Shifting Your Mindset: Change how you view situations and how you think about them. This can change how you feel about it and how you react. (Check out our marriage course on Mindset work through our Media Library link on the home page).
Elevating Communication to Solutions: Planning how to fix an event will empower you to have control over what you do next. Communication means that your spouse at least is aware of how you feel and where you stand. Many issues can arise above the fray if we learn how to effective message our feelings.
Practice Mindfulness and Self-Awareness: Knowing what is going on, how you truly feel, and the reality can calm any storm. Knowing what to do from relaxation techniques, knowing your own triggers and boundaries and when to table a conversation for another day all play into dealing with and controlling your own emotions.
Re-elevate Perceptions: We grow older, lose jobs, have medical issues so our expectations may need to shift to meet current needs. Sometimes we can perceive something incorrectly which shifts our emotions about it. A person might look lazy but has a bad heart or is diabetic or depressed. Re-evaluate your perception of things can help you out in the long run.
Accept how you feel and learn to maneuver with those feelings: It is okay to be mad or upset. Own how you truly feel and move in the right direction by being honest with yourself and others. Most people can move better when they know how they are working with you the right way.
Many people experience emotions. Understanding how to control behaviors motivated by emotions can be more complicated than labeling what you're feeling. In these cases, reaching out for support from a psychologist could be beneficial. What Is Affect? Psychology And The Expression Of Emotions | BetterHelp
Summary
The media doesn’t care about your or your family.
It is up to you to look at media as a tool and to learn how to pivot for the benefit of your social empire.
Great leaders own their emotions and that expands to the functionality of a healthy home life.
People only are motivated and change by what they choose to do.
Do not waiting on others, society or even your spouse to change how you feel.
We will explore our emotions more in a future newsletter.
And remember, in everything you feel, be Iconic.
Related Articles
1-Year Anniversary Celebration: Iconic Marriage Holiday Package and Giveaway
Call-to Action
Come be a blessing to our work and give today.
All proceeds go to 200 FREE eBooks to Icons online.
Offline, we are helping Grace Village, a women’s shelter in local Georgia, with 20 print books to residents.
Our overall goal is to raise $3000 this holiday season.
Donors get a reward based on the amount you give, a win-win situation.
These are our Iconic Marriage Holiday Packages: Choose your package here.
Give $15 get 1 eBook.
Give $30 Get 3 eBooks or 1 print book.
Give $50 Get 5 eBooks or 2 print books.
Give $100 get eCourse
Give $125 get print book collection.
give $150 Get entire collection.
Give today. We can’t do this without you.