What is your style when it comes to dealing with your emotions?

Our brain has different mechanisms to handle emotions. Take a look at the following graphic and see whether you identify they way(s) in which you normally react:

Do you have a tendency to live in a state of worry and insecurity (the red circle in this graphic)? When something happens, do you tend to get into doing mode or workaholic mode? Or do you sometimes realise that something stressful has happened and you need a time out?

It is vital for our wellbeing to strike a happy balance between these 3 modes. Some of us get stuck between the Fight or Flight (Threat) system and hectic doing mode (the Drive system), without ever allowing us to get into the Soothing system.

I think the 3 circles model that Prof. Paul Gilbert OBE offers is really useful to explain why we may sometimes feel unwell. If we are stressed and anxious (red zone), then take some impulsive action, such as smoking (blue zone) and then worry about the effects of smoking on your health (red zone), instead of feeling better you will feel worse, because of the lack of balance between the different modes of brain action

produced by NICABM, the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (US).

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