by Emma Seppälä, Ph.D.
THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS AND SOVEREIGNTY COURSE
MODULE TWO
SOVEREIGN EMOTIONS
Overview
Welcome to the Sovereign Emotions Module! Understanding and managing our emotions is crucial not just for personal well-being but also for successful relationships with others. Once we understand what emotions are, we can harness them for growth and self-mastery. This module is a guide to emotional sovereignty. You will learn how to handle negative emotions constructively, enhance emotional intelligence, and move away from unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Learning Objectives
Gaining
Awareness
Understand your emotional habits and their impact on your well-being and relationships.
​
Developing Healthier Strategies
Learn and practice effective strategies for emotional regulation to improve both personal well-being and interactions with others.
Enhancing Emotional Intelligence
Build skills to respond to emotional triggers with awareness and emotional mastery.
​
PREWORK
Journal & Reflect
Journal Prompt
#1
Current Relationship with Emotions
Reflect on how you currently deal with negative emotions like anger, anxiety, or fear. Consider these questions:
-
Do you suppress these feelings? If so, what are the consequences?
-
Do you try to distract yourself from them? Are your coping mechanisms healthy or destructive?
-
Reflect on a time when you reacted to an emotion in a way you later regretted. What could you have done differently?
Journal Prompt
#2
Addictive Habits
Identify habits you rely on (or have relied on) to cope with negative emotions. These might include:
-
Overeating or consuming unhealthy foods
-
Excessive use of social media or digital devices (e.g., doom scrolling)
-
Overworking, overexercising, or keeping yourself overly busy
-
Other distractions that provide temporary relief but don’t address the root cause of your emotions
Note: Be honest and reflective. Your answers are for you alone but can shed light on how you approach emotions and whether these approaches are serving you.
Journal Prompt
#3
Influences
Examine how family, societal, and cultural influences have shaped your emotional responses. Consider:
​
-
How did significant figures in your life (e.g., parents or mentors) handle their own negative emotions, such as anger or anxiety? ​
-
What were the consequences?
-
Did they express them?
-
What were the consequences of that?
-
-
Did they suppress their emotions?
-
How have societal expectations or cultural norms influenced your emotional coping strategies?
REFLECTION
Understanding these influences will help you gain self-awareness—not just of how you cope with your emotions but also how your coping mechanisms and the ones you've learned from others impact you.
​
REMINDER
Just because everyone’s doing it (e.g., suppression, doomscrolling, or smoking weed) doesn’t mean it’s a helpful or successful strategy. It just means it’s what most people know—because most people don’t have formal education on managing negative emotions.
Emotion Regulation Questionnaire
Complete the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess how you manage your emotions.
It will take about 2 minutes.
After completing the quiz, add up your scores for:
​
Reappraisal: Items 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10.
Suppression: Items 2, 4, 6, and 9.
​
Once you’ve calculated your scores, reflect on what they reveal about your current emotional management.
​
-
Suppression is the act of avoiding or hiding your emotions. Research shows suppression can make things worse by increasing stress and sometimes leading to emotional outbursts or physical symptoms (e.g., headaches or migraines).
​
-
Reappraisal is the act of changing how you think about a situation to alter your emotional response. Research shows that reappraisal is linked to more resilience and more effective emotion regulation.
​
Note: We all use both strategies at different times. For example, at work, we might suppress anger or frustration, but in other contexts, we might use reappraisal (e.g., thinking, “Maybe that person is really stressed or in a hurry”).
Emotional Sovereignty
This video explains that while you might want to change or escape negative emotions, doing so destructively only delays their resolution. Emotions are energy in motion, and embracing them can lead to greater self-awareness and mastery over your emotional state. Viewing emotions as energy can help you process them. Learn how to harness the power of your emotions as tools for transformation and self-mastery.
Taking Responsibility for Our Emotions
It’s easy to blame the world around us for how we feel, but often, it is our own emotions that are coloring our perspective. This can be difficult to see, especially in the heat of the moment. In this interview with Mark Fry, whose insights are featured in my book SOVEREIGN, we explore this concept more deeply.
For more, listen to our podcast with him and Scott Barry Kaufman [link to podcast will be inserted here, once available].
Taking responsibility for our emotions can be confronting. We are accustomed to placing blame outside of ourselves, but the practice of turning inward to process and work through our emotions is liberating. This doesn’t mean you're at fault, but it does mean you're taking control of your emotional experience.
Reading Assignment
Read (or reread) Chapter 3 of SOVEREIGN and the Sovereign Emotions E-Book [PDF will be inserted here].
This Week’s Sovereignty Training
Throughout this week, whenever emotions arise, consider turning inward. Pay attention to the sensations in your body and experience your emotions as energy in motion. Resist the urge to act in the heat of the moment—unless it’s an emergency. Instead, allow the energy of the emotion to move through you. If action is needed, take it only once you've calmed down and gained clarity.
Helpful Reminders
The Pause: When you notice yourself reaching for an unhealthy habit (e.g., food, phone, etc.) during challenging times, pause and get curious about what you're feeling. Instead of engaging in the habit, allow yourself to fully experience the emotion.
Your Mantras
WHAT DO I NEED RIGHT NOW?
Meet your physical needs (e.g., fresh air, a nourishing snack, or simply crying). Listening to your body is a powerful way to journey through emotions.
FEELING IS HEALING
Accept your emotions rather than suppress them.
The only way out is through.
I AM BIGGER THAN MY FEELINGS
Remind yourself that you are not your feelings; you are witnessing them. You are bigger than them.
EMOTIONS ARE ENERGY IN MOTION
This mantra helps you observe and experience emotions as energy in your body, encouraging movement through them via creativity, activity, or breathing.
Daily Practice
If you go to the gym once in a while, you won’t see results. If you go daily, you will. I encourage you to start your daily practice today. You may think you don’t have time, but be honest with yourself—how much time do you spend wasting every day? We all do. How about using that time for something that will truly nourish your mind, body, and spirit every day? The return on investment will be greater emotional intelligence, well-being, happiness, and sovereignty. It’s worth it.
Have you found a time of day that works best for you? Try meditating first thing in the morning to avoid distractions later in the day. But whatever time you choose, don’t let 24 hours go by without doing your practice. It’s the superhighway to greater well-being, self-awareness and happiness. Research shows that it enhances:
​
-
Self-awareness
-
Self-control
-
Emotional intelligence
-
Positive emotion
-
Attention, memory, focus, and creativity
​
Begin with the breathing exercise and then move into a guided meditation. Choose a meditation that works for you:
​
-
5-Minute Breathing Exercise: Use the breathing exercise taught in the video (located in the last few minutes if you want a refresher) to return to a place of calm and awareness. Practice it whenever you're upset or need to calm your mind.
-
Meditation: Meditation boosts brain function and emotional regulation. Choose a meditation:
-
You could continue your Loving-Kindness Meditation practice to build self-compassion and patience.
-
When wrestling with emotions, try the emotion management meditation by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, available on YouTube or via the SATTVA meditation app. It’s successfully helped me process emotions many times.
-
You can also use any of the meditations from the album I gifted you when you enrolled in the course. Access them here.
-
Community Dialogue (Optional)
Consider engaging in an optional dialogue with the community. Sharing experiences about emotional awareness and healing can be enlightening. Interacting with others' reflections and insights will reinforce the material and offer new perspectives on your own journey.
​
Do you have questions you want Emma to answer in the Live Q & A? Do you have feedback on the course? Please email us at coursehelp@emmaseppala.com
© SOVEREIGN | All Rights Reserved | The Science of Happiness & Sovereignty Course