One Quick Self-Control Test to Know if Your Feelings Are Running (& Ruining!) Your Life
Negative feelings aren't BAD, and positive feelings aren't GOOD. But when negative feelings show up, are you IN or OUT of SELF-CONTROL? Control itself isn’t bad, but exerting control on the wrong party can make hard things worse.
Take this post as a check-in, a quick self-control test to realize whether feelings are actually running (& ruining!) your life.
Frazzled, Overwhelmed, & Checked Out
Based on a quick scan, it seems like the key defining feature of adulting is this headless chicken state of one frenzied, reactive decision after the next.
Rest is nowhere to be found, but anxiety, guilt, frustration, and shame are rampant.
When the to-do list gets longer while time is running short, my reactive autopilot habits take over. Out of anxiety, I oscillate between OVER and UNDER doing things, being completely out of balance and rhythm:
What I OVERDO in stress:
Working, fixing, planning
Worrying, controlling
People pleasing, placating, helping
Binging TV, social media, drinking, gaming
What I UNDERDO in stress:
Sleeping, eating, exercising
Resting, enjoying leisure time
Taking care of my body
When you think back on the past month, what are some things that you OVERLY or UNDERLY did because you were stressed?
Squeezing the Life Force out of you
Turns out, the word anxiety itself literally means, “TO STRANGLE”. When you’re stressed, even your literal body becomes more tense, tight, rigid.
When your whole body is clenching in the wintertime and you’re freezing, it’s EXHAUSTING, but at least your body is shivering to try to warm you up.
With the tension that comes with anxiety though, you don’t get any particular benefit — you end up with even less focus, energy, and resources than how you started.
It’s a fight with time for you to get out of a stress state once you get into it — the longer you stay in there, the messier, harder, and worser things become.
But wait, Joanne — aren’t you the Feelings Translator who says that even feelings like anxiety are GOOD for you??
Yes, I am! Even feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, and confusion can be very useful messengers that tell us the truth about what we’re going through and what we’re needing.
However, even human messengers need to eat, sleep, and rest. They’re working their asses off delivering packages, but if you keep trying to avoid them, even the nicest of people will get cranky - they’re just trying to do their job!!
Often the issue with messy feelings is that we’re dealing with reactivity that’s a byproduct of us having ignored “bad” feelings for so long. If you keep making things hard for the delivery person, and they get annoyed at you or find inconvenient or chaotic ways to deliver it, that’s on you. You brought that strugglebus onto yourself.
So how do you actually build a life of peace, freedom, and joy that lasts?
The Self-Control Test: “Who’s in charge?”
Don’t get squeamish if you’re having a negative feeling like anger, sadness, anxiety, or shame. As I said, positive feelings aren’t inherently good, and negative feelings aren’t inherently bad. Both positive and negative feelings have important messages to tell us.
When it comes to feelings, the main question to ask yourself ISN’T,
“Do I feel better or worse than before?”
…as if:
you ARE good if you FEEL better
you ARE bad if you FEEL worse
The litmus test question to see whether you’re going down a reactive, chaotic path is:
“Am I more IN or OUT of self-control?”
People can feel positive feelings and be absolutely out of self-control — consider anyone who has any addictive pattern, using behaviors (work, exercise, TV watching, etc.) or substances (alcohol, drugs, sugar, caffeine) to increase pleasure, decrease pain, or both in a quick-fix way.
On the other hand, people can feel negative feelings and still be more in self-control. Examples?
Crying because your pet died (honoring their memory by allowing yourself to feel the pain of their absence)
Disappointment from not getting the promotion (validating just how hard you worked and how this mattered to you)
Anxiety in waiting to find out your MRI results (acknowledging your fragile humanity and facing reality for what it is)
What does OUT of self-control look like?
When you let your reactive feelings RUN your life, here are some ways they might RUIN it:
Your personal life:
You keep getting triggered bc you’re already stressed and anything might set you off
(When a spark lights a forest aflame, you can blame the spark…or that the forest has been bone dry for forever…)Your sleep is shot, your eating is whack, and you over/underly move your body
You might spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to make yourself feel better (or feel less worse), only to find out that it’s temporary at best — those feelings are still there.
You feel even more upset because you make reactive decisions you regret or judge yourself for afterwards
(“Why can’t I just get my shit together??”)
Your relationships:
Your relationships become strained and chaotic because you:
Snap at those around you
Dump your feelings onto them
Keep asking others for reassurance and they’re sick of it
Get into another fight because they try to “fix your feelings”
Project all kinds of fears and insecurities onto others
Withdraw into your doom cave because you don’t wanna deal
Your professional life:
Your work suffers because you’re already exhausted and can’t focus
You feel insecure no matter how much work you put in — you just keep feeling like you’re not good enough
You get caught up in imposter syndrome, comparison, perfectionism, etc.
You skip breaks, work over the weekends, and nix vacations because you always feel behind in life
…which then repeats this whole thing all over again.
Sound familiar? I’ve checked off all of these myself, so you have a buddy.
The Reactive, Chaotic Emotional Vortex
All three arenas - personal, relational, & professional - influence each other for better and for worse.
Stress begets stress. One decision born of stress creates more crap to have to deal with.
Stress in one arena spills over into another…All a vicious spiral of one reactive moment feeding into the next (aka the Emotional Vortex).
However, this can very much also go in the other direction: health in one area also can spill over into another, one restful/rejuvenating moment feeding into the next (aka the Emotional Flow).
What does life IN Self-Control look like?
When you decide to RIDE your emotions like a wave — namely, working WITH your feelings so that they work FOR you — here’s what your life can look like:
Your personal life:
Your triggers happen less frequently, less intensely, for shorter durations — imagine how much headspace and heartspace you’d win back!!
You connect more deeply with yourself, knowing your identity, your worthiness, your values, and your dreams
Your needs & wants would be met, freeing you up to live intentionally not reactively
Your relationships:
You know your needs clearly and can advocate for yourself with others (hello, vulnerability + anger!) to get those needs met
You can set and keep boundaries with those who mistreat, disrespect, or hurt you
You create more breathing room as you connect more with yourself (rather than using relationships as a way for you to feel secure)
Your relationships become steady, lifegiving, and reciprocal, because there’s room enough for both of you to show up fully and get your wants & needs met!
Your professional life:
Your career flourishes because you’ll make decisions in alignment with who you are and what you want, not tolerating experiences that suck the life force out of you.
The focus would come naturally, as you’d be working on things that already matter to you.
Productivity and profit aren’t the goal, but the happy byproducts of you doing what you love! #FlowState
Choose your adventure. Which route do you prefer: a life IN or OUT of emotional self-control?
Why do I get OUT of self-control?
You can’t change what you don’t know is already happening. Lack of self-awareness is the first step to losing control of your own steering wheel. You're driven by your own patterns according to what you’re USED to, not what you WANT to do.
You might be aware of the aftermath of WHAT things look like when you’re out of self-control (check the chart above). Below is a snapshot of WHY this happens behind the scenes so that you might do differently going forward.
If you’re OUT of self-control, you’re likely shoving negative feelings aside (because they’re “BAD”) and pursuing positive feelings (because they’re “GOOD”).
Avoiding pain, pursuing pleasure…at the expense of yourself (and others). Another word for this? ADDICTION. What pushes you in this direction is IMPULSE, which is reactive, thoughtless, passive.
When you’re out of self-control, you are seeking short-term benefit, long-term cost. You aren’t in self-control, but are controlling and/or being controlled by others.
It’s much harder to BUILD something than to TEAR IT DOWN. Being constructive is much more difficult than being destructive.
But when you take the harder route, you have a hard-earned home that you built for yourself so that you can deeply rest, enjoy, and connect.
If you’re homeless, you’re at the mercy of your environment and others, unable to rest, always being on guard, and being wary of others. You’re alone, hurting, and hungry. When you’re desperate, you end up becoming others-controlling or others-controlled (remember — “strangle”).
Others-controlling:
OVERLY taking responsibility for things, which leads to managing others. Exerting control as an attempt to feel more in control, only to find yourself feeling LESS in control (thereby doubling down on more control).
Others-controlled:
UNDERLY taking responsibility for things, which leads to other people stepping in out of resentment or major consequences (like losing power because of unpaid bills).
Often being others-controlling or others-controlled are not opposites but rather flipsides of the same coin. The true opposite of both is being in SELF-control.
How do I get back IN self-control?
If you’re IN emotional self-control, you might still feel negative feelings like anger, sadness, anxiety, or shame.
The difference is that what’s moving you forward THROUGH them is a deeper gut sense that this is ultimately GOOD FOR YOU in:
Developing your character - e.g., becoming more honest, deliberate, dedicated
Taking responsibility for your life instead of blaming or dismissing them
Being a WHOLE person (integrity) instead of shards of a person
When you’re living a life IN SELF-CONTROL, you are pursuing short-term cost, long-term benefit. Another word for this? INVESTMENT (instead of ADDICTION, which is short-term benefit, long-term cost).
A life of investment involves INTUITION and INTENTIONALITY, which are purposeful, proactive, and engaged (instead of IMPULSE, which is reactive, thoughtless, and passive).
What kind of life would you like? One of self-control, or others-controlling/controlled?
Where do feelings fit into this?
Your feelings might be RUNNING your life (right now) but aren’t necessarily RUINING it (yet).
Our feelings are our wakeup call that we’ve been living life as if a lonely starving orphan, reaching for loaf of bread off of someone else’s cart, and getting our hand slapped and gut kicked for it.
The issue isn’t that we have feelings. The issue is that we have unmet needs. Our feelings are only trying to help by bringing our attention to those needs (we’re STARVING) but are getting scapegoated as if they’re the troublemakers.
The more you ignore your hunger, the more desperate your body will be in doing whatever it needs to do to get fed – blurring boundaries, breaking the rules, lying, cheating, stealing, and hurting others if they’re in the way.
The issue isn’t those behaviors, but WHY those behaviors seem to be necessary in the first place – because for whatever reason, the original needs weren’t met in legitimate, sustainable, safe ways.
Don’t kick your hungry orphan. Take them in, feed them, wash their wounds, and give them a home where they belong. Yes, in the beginning their desperate habits to fend for themselves might still show up. But once they know deeply that they belong and that their needs matter, you’ve won a lifelong ally who will stand up for you too.
The orphan is YOU, and wherever you go, there you are. If you can’t get rid of the orphan, you may as well befriend them. If you DON’T do so, they’ll for sure take over (not because they WANT to, but because they don’t have any other choice) and end up setting things on fire so you’ll pay attention.
Take your pick - will you befriend or abandon yourself?
If you befriend yourself, you’re choosing to work WITH your feelings (and they’ll start working FOR you).
If you abandon yourself, you’re working AGAINST your feelings (and they’ll push back for the rest of your life).
Concretely, what does befriending your feelings mean? It means sitting with and getting to know what those specific feelings are telling you about what you NEED or WANT. Here’s a handy chart for the BIG 5 Feelings.
No amount of healing or growth can happen until you make this decision internally for yourself. No one can make this decision for you.
Choose a life of self-control. It’s a harder path that takes work, but where you’ll end up is far better than anything you could get otherwise.
You’re worth it. So put in the work to get to know the emotional waves so you can enjoy the view riding them well.
The BIG Feelings Masterclass
Want a more thorough overview of why feelings work the way they do?
Learn how to turn your soul-sucking emotional roller coaster into your life-giving power source with this 1-hour masterclass!
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© Copyright 2023 Joanne Kim. All rights reserved.
Joanne Kim, Feelings Translator
Hi! I’m a therapist-turned feelings coach who helps Highly Sensitive Persons, Empaths, Enneagram 2s & 4s, etc. turn their BIGGEST feelings into their GREATEST superpower!
They are often the first (or only) person in their family to intuitively process and express feelings; consequently, they are often judged or criticized so that they learn to people please, placate, or perform until they hit a wall.
They’re super familiar with anxiety, guilt, and shame, partly because of an allergic reaction to anger (theirs and others').
Often the super responsible, empathic, and ethical person in their environments, they reach out to me after they're already burned out, resentful in their relationships, or sucked into their shame spiral.
The most common feedback I get from people when I share about how feelings work is,
"Why didn't anyone teach me this in school??"
Hence, I am building a school helping people work WITH their feelings so their feelings work FOR them.
Join me and Lauren LaSalle as we talk on her podcast, The Highly Sensitive Podcast, about how to do emotions along with tips for HSPs.