Controlling emotions like controlling wildfires

I’ve noticed similarities between how our emotions propagate and how wildfires spread — we end up being consumed by a gush of emotional wildfire that started from a small thought, just like an entire mountain gets burned with a small ember or flicker of flame that started everything.

I pushed this metaphor further to think about how we can leverage the methods they use in order to control wildfires from spreading to curb those destructive emtotions from spreading and ruining our peace of mind.

• Controlled burns: Upon noticing a wildfire, experts are dispatched to the site and they intentionally set small fires ahead of the main wildfire so there’s nothing left to burn. Similar to this, setting small fires in our mind’s vulnerable spots upon detecting incoming potential threat in order to preemptively burn up the potential fuel can be considered (eg. Regulary venting, poruing out emitions by journaling or counseling)
• Raking and firebreaks: These methods physically removes the materials from burning (ie. Raking the leaves and creating firebreaks by bulldozing strips of land). Just like this, we can consider emptying our minds with mindfulness exercises, regularly letting go of all the wastes piled up in our minds.
• Firefighting: If it’s too late for all those preventive measures above, we need powerful countermeasure like enough water supply to fight the fire and also those chemicals that can be dropped from planes. A mental-health equivalent of those would be equiping ourselves with the opposite aspect of emotional fire (ie. reason).

Just like fire is a boon to humanity but turns into a disaster when uncontrolled, emotions are best for us when controlled. It’s easier said than done but I will keep today’s musings in mind and will prepare for both prevention and countermeasures for those emotional wildfires.

ps. Came back from a trip and seriously jetlagged but I’m glad I didn’t skip today’s daily writing sprint session. I even got to finish eveything from the brainstorming to the first draft 5 minutes earlier than the 30-minute deadline. Go me!