I thought of "being the witness" as I read the article too. To be able to choose not to react takes awareness and the article is helping us to remember to be aware - that letting the emotion just run may not be what is the best choice.
But, how do you get to the state of being that aware? I mean, often the emotions are reactions that overwhelm any ablity to detach enough and tune into how the higher self might guide one's reactions. So how to detach enough from an overwhelming ego based reaction?
I'll make my answer but invite other answers too.
Practicing meditation gives you peace of mind such that emotional reactions are not completely automatic. Syncronistic information to what I read in this article:
Daniel Goleman on emotions and your health Hope the links stays.
I used to go to a group that worked on "unlearning" habitual behaviours. The idea was that we have built up lots of automatic reactions and they are the default responses when we are stressed. The techniques were to feel these habitual emotions/reactions and find a way to "interrupt" them such that you are aware and then you can choose to continue running it or start a new way of responding. Installing the interrupters was various techniques. One of which was to exagerate the behaviour to the point it was like a soap opera and you could find a way to laugh at it. Or to find something about the reaction that was out of place for the current situation - that the reaction was really about what you mother did way back when, then you become aware some more that you are recating and using an old habitual behaviour that may not work now. Or just running these reations in a group session could be enough, that you become familiar with the reaction since you are bringing it up in session which gives you the perspective that you actually choose it even when it tries to take over imediatly.
PS. Erin: It was heartwarming to hear how you responded to your kid marking the furniture. Sometimes kids do something that they don't see as wrong and if the reaction they get from the parents tells them they were totally wrong could squash the part in the kid's creativty. It applies more to the case of a kid drawing on the walls. The parents could totally not see that the kid was being creative if the response has no appreciation of what was drawn and only tells the kids not to do that. The kid may think, I should not draw at all. So you have to give the kid two messages - wow, what cool drawing but don't ever do it on the walls again!