Managing emotions: EFT, anger and how to transform your emotions

Nobody taught us how to manage our emotions. We were taught to swallow them: ‘Why are you crying?’, ‘Never mind, it will pass’, ‘Be quiet!’ When I cried as a little girl, I would sometimes get another hit to make me stop. And so we became adults who either explode or no longer feel anything.

Managing emotions does not mean controlling them or making them disappear. It means recognizing them, letting them move through you and using their energy instead of letting it destroy you. Emotion is energy in motion. If you block it, it stays in the body.

Below, I share what I have learned about emotions over the past few years: from my own life, from the livestreams I have done on this subject and from working with EFT (tapping), which I did as a client, with a friend who practices this technique. I am neither a psychotherapist nor an EFT practitioner. I am sharing my own experience.

Important: if your emotions overwhelm you, if you experience anxiety, panic attacks, depression or thoughts of not wanting to live anymore, seek help from a psychologist or psychotherapist (or your family doctor, who can guide you). If you are in danger, call Romania’s emergency number, 112. What I write here supports your journey; it is not treatment.

Why we do not know how to manage our emotions

We were conditioned to live in duality: ‘good’ emotions and ‘bad’ emotions. Anger, shame, fear and sadness were pushed aside because they are not socially accepted. Especially for men: ‘You are a man, you have to be strong, you do not cry.’

The truth is that there are no positive or negative emotions. There are emotions. And so-called negative emotions contain many gifts. I once had a dream that stayed with me: everyone was going to the right, and I was told to go to the left, where there was a pile of filth. ‘Look carefully, because there is gold there, beneath the filth.’ Carl Jung says the same thing: many of our gifts lie in the shadow.

What happens when we do not look at our emotions:

• We repress them. My friend who practices EFT says that an emotion you recognize and accept does not stay in the body for long. The more we run from it, the more heavily it weighs on us, until we reach anxiety, depression or burnout.
• We cover them up with addictions. Nonstop work, shopping, food, sweets, cigarettes, alcohol. I was 30 kilograms overweight when I was in a relationship with a narcissist. We eat to smother our emotions.
• We pour them out onto the wrong people. You swallow your anger in front of your boss and take it out on your children or the friend you know will put up with you.
• We put up barriers everywhere. The problem is that you cut yourself off from good emotions too. Beautiful emotions are subtle; if you close yourself off completely, you stop feeling those as well.

Nonstop work is an emotion too

Between 2010 and 2021, I buried myself in work. Society pushes you there too: get a house, make money, get a car, leave emotions for later. When I looked back, I saw what lay beneath the work: a lack of love. I sacrificed myself to show ‘look how good I am, I deserve your love’, first to my parents, then to my partner.

These mechanisms are deeply unconscious. If you work nonstop, know that it is not normal, however much people applaud you. I wrote about this in more detail in the article on self-sabotage and how to release yourself from it.

What it means to know your emotions

The key to managing emotions is to know yourself: to know your emotions and reactions. When someone hurts you and you do not know what to do with the emotion, you enter the game. You argue, fight and drain your energy. For me, emotions are the essence of life. If you disconnect from them, you disconnect from life.

The emotion chart on the refrigerator

A few years ago, when I began this journey, I came across a ‘pyramid of emotions’, a scale that arranges emotions from bottom to top: shame, guilt, apathy, pain, fear, desire, anger… and at the very top, acceptance, love, joy and peace. I put it on my refrigerator and looked at it from time to time.

I do not take it as a law. For me, it was a mirror. It showed me that I cannot say ‘I want love and peace’ while living in shame and guilt every day. First, you have to make room. Shame, for example, has to be accepted, welcomed and processed before you can release it. Today, if I see it, I recognize it and embrace it. I no longer remain in it.

An adaptive response and a disproportionate response

When an event happens, you can have two reactions. An adaptive response, meaning a response appropriate to the situation in front of you. Or a disproportionate response, when you overreact.

When you react disproportionately, something usually hurts from when you were little. As adults, we replay our first seven years at home. And it is not the event itself that creates the trauma, but the intensity of the emotion you experienced at the time. You do not have to have been beaten for something to remain inside you; sometimes two words spoken by a parent were enough.

I experienced this myself: my first little girl cried a lot, and her crying drove me out of my mind. I only understood where it came from when I realized that, when I cried as a little girl, nobody paid attention to me.

Anger: the emotion with the most energy

I did an entire livestream just about anger, because it is the emotion we most often reject. Anger is a natural reaction to a situation you perceive as threatening. The oldest part of the brain, the part that keeps us alive, activates, and we react as though we were facing a wild animal, even though today the danger is no longer the same. Behind anger, most of the time, is fear.

A few things I have noticed:

• Anger does not mean violence. In its higher form, it is a force: the force to act, to make decisions you previously lacked the courage to make.
• Anger can turn against you. If you do not let it out, you turn it toward yourself, and then you hate yourself. That is how you end up in states of depression.
• How long you stay in it matters. Anger held for a long time ‘goes bad’ inside you and becomes destructive. It makes you impatient with everyone and with yourself.
• Anger is a signal. When we cannot ‘digest’ something, we become angry. Pay attention to the signal: why are you angry? It accumulates: from today, yesterday and five years ago.

How I transform anger

To be honest, I made my money through anger. ‘Just you wait, I will prove it to you’, and anger motivated me. That is why I say anger is good, but how long you stay in it and what you do with it matters.

Alchemy means observing the emotion and transforming its energy into something useful instead of dumping it on others:

• Create something. Art helped me first. If I am angry, I go and paint, and painting brings me back into a state of flow.
• Put the energy into a project. ‘I am angry, but instead of reacting, I am using this energy to build something.’
• Breathe and release. Through breathing and emotional release techniques such as EFT, you can discharge anger without hurting anyone.
• Use it to get unstuck. I have had periods when I was stuck and could not get out until I became angry. Then it helped me.

A very serious warning: if you want to leave a toxic person, especially a controlling partner, prepare your departure. The moment you leave can trigger dangerous anger. Talk to people you trust, ask for help and, if you are in danger, call Romania’s emergency number, 112. I wrote about these patterns in the article on narcissism and toxic behaviors.

What EFT (tapping) is and how I experienced it as a client

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is a technique in which you gently tap certain points on the body with your fingertips, inspired by points used in traditional Chinese medicine, while focusing on the emotion you feel and saying phrases related to your situation. It is also called tapping. As a joke, I call it ‘the woodpecker’.

I have tried many methods over the years: meditations, psychoanalysis, constellations and working on my own. I only recommend what I have tried and what has helped me. I have been working with EFT for a while, as a client, with a friend who practices this technique. Here is what I noticed:

• Things ‘clicked’ much faster. I like psychoanalysis; I like ‘digging around in my head’. But the conscious mind cannot reach everything. Many wounds come from before we could speak. By talking and tapping at the same time, understanding came faster.
• I felt it in my body. While working on an event from childhood, around age 10, when I was made to carry loads far too heavy for a child and scolded for being ‘lazy’, I felt something detach from the left side of my head, like a black cloud. Another time, I felt a tendon activating all the way into my hand. After a while, in yoga, I managed to touch the floor with my fingers, which I had not been able to do before. These are my experiences, not promises.
• I stay grounded. After a good meditation, I am ‘up high’ and find it hard to function in everyday life, so I meditate in the evening. After EFT, I feel good and settled at the same time, and I can work immediately. My friend says EFT does not make you ‘zen’, but gives you tolerance for what you experience every day.
• You do not have to tell everything. What I like most: you do not have to say what you experienced. It may be something you do not want anyone to know. The work focuses on the emotion you feel about the situation.
• ‘Good’ emotions matter too. While working, I came across beautiful moments, such as the birth of one of my daughters. Everything had gone well, but the emotion had been so intense, and I had had nobody to process it with, that it had stayed inside me.

The full glass

My friend uses an image I return to all the time. Imagine a glass filled to the brim with everything you have accumulated over the years. Any words, any unpleasant event make it overflow: you feel you cannot breathe, that the world is ending.

Through EFT, the glass empties little by little. Not completely, because we have accumulated a lot. But when another unpleasant situation comes along, it no longer overflows. You have tolerance; you see things from a different perspective. The problem is still there, but you are no longer caught in the drama. You address it clearly and specifically. And many people say after a while, looking back: ‘What was such a big deal?’ It was a big deal because the glass was full.

The tapping points, briefly

To give you an idea of what this involves, these are the points I used in sessions. The taps are gentle and should not hurt:

1. The ‘karate chop’ point, on the edge of the hand (this is usually where you start)
2. The top of the head
3. The beginning of the eyebrow, near the nose
4. The outer corner of the eye
5. Under the eye, on the bone
6. Between the nose and the upper lip
7. On the chin, below the lower lip
8. Below the collarbone
9. On the side, under the arm, level with the chest
10. On the fingers

While tapping the points, you say phrases specific to your situation. I also do tapping on my own, for example before an important decision that I do not want to make out of fear or stress. But for deeper work, you need someone from outside, a mirror, to guide you. And if you carry serious trauma, working with a psychotherapist remains the foundation.

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EFT at the office, in the car, at home

One practical thing my friend tells clients who ask ‘where can I do this at the office without my colleagues seeing me?’: go to the bathroom for five minutes, do tapping and return. Many tell her afterward that they come back with different energy and even their colleagues seem less difficult to tolerate.

For children who do not yet know how to put their feelings into words, I would choose gentle things: an oil massage, a warm bath, calming music, drawing and painting. Art lets them express themselves.

Exercise: meeting childhood anger

This is the exercise I did in the livestream about anger. Do it in a quiet place, at your own pace.

1. Close your eyes and place your hand over your heart. Take a few breaths.
2. Let an event come to mind from childhood when you were angry. The first one that comes. If no image comes, only a sensation, gently press the top of your head and let the event reveal itself.
3. Let yourself feel. You are simply an observer of that moment. Do not analyze; just feel.
4. Enter the scene as the adult you are today. If it is a situation of injustice or abuse, take the child you were by the hand, lead them out of there and hold them in your arms. Tell them that you are there for them now.
5. Return slowly to the present and write down what you felt.

At first, nothing came to me, only an energy. I gently touched my head, and then a memory came from around age 10, of a violent argument between my parents. What was happening there did not belong to me, but the anger had stayed inside me.

If the exercise brings up something too difficult, stop. You do not have to go through painful memories alone; a psychotherapist is the right person to help with these.

Working with the inner child is one of the most powerful paths I know. I wrote about it in depth in the article healing the inner child, with exercises and release practices.

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Empaths experience everything at maximum intensity

If you are an empathic person, you grasp reality through emotions. You feel everything with enormous intensity. Many artists and creative people are like this. For you, in my opinion, working with emotions is not optional; it is your language. You can explain anything rationally; if the emotion is not released, it stays there.

Two rules I always tell empaths:

• Other people’s emotions are not yours. It is a gift to feel what others feel, but do not take it onto yourself.
• You are the priority. You cannot give from well-being if you are not well yourself. Give from abundance, not emptiness.

I wrote about this in the guide to empathy and empaths: what you actually feel and how to protect yourself. And if you grew up with a mother who was not emotionally present, I also recommend the article on the narcissistic mother, signs and healing.

The limiting beliefs behind emotions

Many emotions come from a belief formed in an intense moment: ‘People are bad.’ ‘Money is hard to make.’ ‘I deserve to suffer.’ ‘Life is hard.’ ‘God is punishing me.’ A child who sees their parents arguing violently may conclude ‘my life is in danger’. This belief stays in the subconscious and makes you attract the same situations.

Beliefs have a seed, a moment when they formed. That is where you need to go and work. My friend uses EFT for precisely this, and in my experience it worked very well for limiting beliefs and unmet needs. You know the phrase ‘I did it and I do not know why’? Often, an old, unmet need lies behind it.

The threshold: when you fear your own well-being

Something few people say: sometimes you are frightened not by bad things, but by good things. When you work on yourself, life begins to rearrange itself, and the mind becomes frightened and wants to pull you back into your comfort zone. Then you start canceling sessions, postponing things, ‘taking a break’.

That is the threshold. If you cross it and do not retreat, that is where the leap happens. I canceled sessions at first too. And working on yourself never ends: I still work on myself, because otherwise I cannot evolve.

An image I like: our life is like a garden. You cannot care for a garden with just a pair of shears. You need several tools: EFT, constellations, meditation, art, psychotherapy, inner child work. Each has its moment, and not all are for everyone. Follow what you feel calls to you.

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Watch the livestream about emotions and EFT

You can find more about anger and the exercise above in the livestream where we transform and get to know our emotions, and about emotions left over from childhood in the livestream with emotions and release practices.

Frequently asked questions about managing emotions and EFT

What does managing emotions mean?

Recognizing your emotions, letting them pass through you and choosing what to do with their energy. It does not mean controlling them, hiding them or no longer feeling. A recognized and accepted emotion passes; a repressed one accumulates in the body.

How can you control your emotions when you are angry?

Do not try to swallow your anger. Observe it: where you feel it in your body, why it appeared, how long it has been there. Breathe, step away from the situation for a few minutes, then put the energy into a useful action: a walk, drawing, a project. If you often react disproportionately, look for the older wound behind it.

What is the EFT technique?

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), also called tapping, is a technique in which you gently tap certain points on the head, face, chest and hands while focusing on an emotion or situation and saying phrases related to it. I worked with EFT as a client, with a practitioner. It does not replace psychotherapy or medical treatment.

Can I do EFT on my own?

For temporary states, yes. I sometimes do tapping on my own. For deeper work on trauma, old beliefs or difficult events, it is good to have someone from outside to guide you. If you have anxiety or depression, see a psychologist or psychotherapist.

Are there negative emotions?

In my view, no. Anger, shame, fear and sadness are considered ‘negative’ because they are not socially accepted, but each has a message and a gift. The problem is not the emotion, but how long you remain in it and what you do with it.

What should I do if my emotions overwhelm me?

If you feel you can no longer cope, if you have panic attacks, depression or thoughts of not wanting to live anymore, talk to a psychologist or psychotherapist, or your family doctor. In case of danger, call 112 in Romania. Spiritual work goes alongside this help, not in place of it.

Your emotions are not your enemies. They are your energy. Be gentle with yourself on the journey. Kisses.