Emotional Fitness vs Emotional Control
The emotions we feel during matches are based on the situation itself combined with millions of lifelong learning experiences from past similar situations.
This means that it is actually easier to improve the relationship we have with our difficult match related emotions (and therefore respond better to them with our actions) than it is to control the difficult emotions itself.
The weird thing is that this ‘emotional fitness’ approach tends to result in less intense difficult emotions in the long term, without ever trying to control them.
The same goes for difficult unintentional match related thoughts as well.