Maybe this is why self help books to "change your life" fly off the bookshelves, because we want to believe that it's easy to tame emotional reactions or some magic to translating them into something more cognitively tolerable.

I can look back and see that awareness is at least one of the first steps for me, and I can see that the taming is easier and faster than it used to be, that I am able to tolerate more than I used to. And that somewhat paradoxically, being able to tolerate more reduces the intensity of the thing. The keys for me begin with a desire to see something differently, maybe imaginative in terms of believing it can be different than the emotional place I'm in now. At some point I began to believe that I could act differently than my emotional state was driving me towards, I could get off that train or out that trap door. Some Buddhists refer to this as intentionality or in the terminology of Pema Chodron, "letting go of the storyline." Doing it differently, even if it didn't produce an automatic positive result (i.e. get me the thing that I wanted), seemed to help me break free of whatever negative emotional control was grasping at me.

I think only in retrospect can I begin to articulate what's different than it used to be. What therapy has done for me is to develop a place where I can describe what clutches at me and how I respond to it, and a place to keep track of what I did differently or to become a better observer of what I'm doing and where it leads me. I have a long way to go but it's critical for my well-being that I keep reaching towards what I want.