I actually have a great example to remember back to as me and @Sonyaxx had some issues pop up the other day and things got pretty sorrowful/malicious on my end. I actually fudged up a lot of the below steps which is exactly why I have been thinking about what to do the next time. Times when I have successfully navigated out of being overwhelmed have roughly followed the below process.
It seems the main thing is to stop whatever is happening and address the fact that I am feeling very bad. The default is to spin round in the depths of the feeling, the feeling intensifying itself in a spiral, awareness-cum-attentiveness will begin to limit this growing inferno that is the emotion.
So firstly I stop what I am doing and become attentive to the fact that I am overwhelmed by emotion. I ensure that I am not repressing or actively feeding into the emotion.
Secondly I make sure to keep my hands in my pockets to avoid doing things which will make the situation worse or set of secondary triggers which will again only serve to make the feeling bad worse. The feeling bad is then put in a bind. The bind consist of (psychically) not moving in any direction whilst at the same time being fully aware of the feeling in action. It seems important at this step (if truly overwhelmed) to not make any efforts of investigation at all, even finding the trigger might be a bad idea at this point.
If the above 2 steps are somewhat successful the feeing will start to be somewhat ‘capped’, because I am no longer feeding or running from it, also because I have kept my hands in my pockets it is not growing into anything more. Putting it in the bind and being aware of it fully eventually robs it of its blood supply and the feeling begins to diminish to a somewhat acceptable level, this might take some time though.
It is around this point (once the initial storm is over) that I can begin gathering a sincere intent to get out of this hole I am currently in. By seeing that I am not doing anyone any favours by remaining consumed by this emotion. I make an agreement with myself to move out of this emotion, to allow a movement into neutral. Somewhere around this point I will begin to ask myself some basic questions around what is happening as putting a name to it seems to be key for developing sincerity.