If you imagine punching someone, getting a grip on your emotions is urgent. Powerful transformations come when you Locate, Describe & Transform™ your imagery.
Overview of the "Get A Grip" Metaphor
NOTE: The introduction is the same for each of the four intensities of the Get A Grip Metaphor. If you have already read it, you may want to click to skip.
Your head is in your hands. Your eyes are staring off into space. You’re turning your energy inward. And you’re telling yourself to get a grip.
We often say this phrase when we’re trying to get control of our emotions, when we’re about to be overwhelmed, often in a negative way. But what does that metaphor actually look like to you? Because if you want to transform the emotion, then you want to focus on the imagery that that phrase brings up.
Yes. You also want to focus on your body language. If you’re slouched over, you want to get yourself to sit up straighter. If your hands are on your head, you want to bring them down to your lap and focus on your breathing. And if your eyes are staring out but you’re not really seeing anything, possibly because your head is just spinning with thoughts – often negative thoughts or fear thoughts – then you want to give yourself something positive to focus on.
But within all of that, the one thing you can focus on is your metaphor. When you’re telling yourself to get a grip, what does that imagery bring up for you?
Hello, my name is Karen, and this series grows out of my book, Emotion Commotion, and The EAT Program™. In these videos, I help you Locate, Describe & Transform™ the emotions that interfere with you making your best decisions.
Your emotions present as images and metaphors, so each week I explore new imagery, always looking at it from four levels of emotional intensity: extreme, high, medium, and low.
Your imagery might look very different from what I choose, but you can still walk through the process, as I do, to transform your own emotions. This week we’re working with the metaphor, get a grip.
Four Emotion Intensities with Four "Get A Grip" Metaphor Images
-
The extreme intensity video I’ve chosen is a person with fists clenched and punching a human shaped dummy bag.
-
For high intensity, I’ve chosen a mechanical grip that grabs onto massive rocks at a construction site.
-
For medium intensity, I’ve chosen somebody who’s climbing a rope and using their hands to grip, to climb.
-
And for low intensity, I’ve chosen butterflies who are gripping to flowers.
Getting A Grip: Extreme Intensity Emotions
The extreme intensity video really speaks more to an anger or a rage or frustration when we’re talking about getting a grip, and it’s important to note that we often will use “get a grip” as a phrase when we’re leaning toward depression. But we’re not talking about that here; we’re talking about the outward acting emotions, not the inward ones.
What we see is somebody who’s on top of this punching dummy, with fists clenched and pounding down on it. The reason I’ve put this into extreme intensity emotion is because it’s actually a physical act. You’re telling yourself to get a grip because you’re about to act out. You’re probably feeling your fists are clenched tight, your jaw might be tight, your whole body is tense as you’re trying to convince yourself not to act out.
Getting A Grip: Transformation 1 - Unclench Your Fists
Your starting place for the transformation is going to be to unclench your fists. You want to straighten up your body and hang your arms down by your sides. Take a deep breath, let it out, and imagine straightening out your fingers.
If your hands are clenched, then you physically want to straighten out your hands. Relax your fingers and really focus on breathing air in and out through your body to release the tension. What we really want to do is move you away from targeting somebody into just releasing that built up, pent up emotion in a more healthy way.
Getting A Grip: Transformation 2 - Silent Scream
One way can be a silent scream.
If you’re out in the wide open and you can literally let go with a howl, go for it. But otherwise, imagine yourself just screaming as long as you can, as hard as you can – a silent scream in your head until all of that pent up energy is released. If you have to scream a few times, go for it.
The ultimate goal is to have your body relaxed, no stress or tension anywhere through your body, because now what you want to do is look at the situation with fresh eyes and decide your next healthiest step.
Probably your emotions are built up around another person or group, and it may be necessary for you to stay clear of that person or that group for a while until you can get your emotions released. You don’t want to say something like get them in check because that’s an idea of holding on still, but you want them transformed, released, breathing easy so that you can make your next healthy decision.
That might be returning to the person or group and working out a healthier relationship or fixing the situation. Or it might be walking away altogether. Pay attention to your body. It’s going to give you the clues about what is healthiest for you.
Get A Grip: Closing
We’ve just explored the Get A Grip metaphor through four intensities, from four different angles:
- The extreme intensity video focused on an extreme amount of anger or rage, a negative emotion that wanted to act out toward others.
- The high intensity emotions focused on overthinking – the stress of overthinking – and needing to find clarity, and getting a grip on all of the thoughts.
- The medium intensity emotion was about getting a grip on the positive emotions, and not letting them take over, where you end up failing at something that you were really primed to succeed at.
- And the Low Intensity Emotion video focused on a gentle grasp and balance to be able to take flight.
I respectfully acknowledge that this video was recorded on the traditional territory of Mi’kmaq people.
For more information on transforming negative emotions with the Locate, Describe & Transform™ process, check out theEATprogram.com.