6. On Emotions
It took me a long time to realise that I wasn’t very ‘good’ at emotions.
I would commonly get feedback at work that I was difficult to read. Others said that it wasn’t easy to really know what I was thinking. Turns out that could be a useful tactic in different scenarios. It meant I didn’t often lose my cool, and I was able to stay in control. I thought that was a sign that I did know how to handle emotions.
Like I said, it took me a long time to realise that I had it all wrong.
Take anger or embarrassment as an example. With even a relatively meaningless slight, I would feel flashes of heat. But I became really good at pressing down on those feelings quickly. Or, so I thought. I also got told pretty often that people could tell when I wasn’t happy with something; my face gave away more than I thought. I wasn’t so good at controlling these things after all, it seemed.
For reasons unknown to me at the time, I’d created a default within me that it was normal, perhaps even expected, to suppress emotions. Sadness, fear, embarassment. Rationally, I think I knew this was wrong, but I never explicitly knew what emotions were for. So I couldn’t move past this default.
Me and my own emotions
I wish I’d known sooner that, much like the concept of ‘Memento Mori’ (Remember we must die), acknowledging and being aware of the existence of our emotions is something that can add great perspective to our lives. No matter what strategies we might employ against them, emotions are inevitable for all of us.
As I realised that my current strategies weren’t really working for me in a few areas of life, I started researching emotions and their role. And through that process, one thought helped me more than any other to turn my relationship with my emotions on its head.
Emotions are a cheat code, once you know how to use them.
They’re not something to avoid, suppress, or necessarily even respond to - they’re there to guide us on the path we want to walk.
“The essence of being an emotionally intelligent person is being able to know when an emotion deserves a response and when an emotion deserves to be acknowledged, experienced, and then politely shown the door.”
The term emotion is derived from Latin term “emovere” which means to stir, to agitate, to move. The idea of movement, of action, has long been embedded within the experience of feeling an emotion. Therefore, it is entirely natural that when we encounter one, we experience a physical response along with it; a rush of blood in excitement, a tightening of muscles in fear, a relaxing of the jaw as we laugh. It can all too easily feel natural to link emotions with particular, automatic responses.
But learning to live with our emotions requires us to shift our idea of emotions from things that deserve a response, to a trigger that instigates a question: Why?
Why did I feel that emotion?
The simple act of asking that question transforms the power of emotions from feeling as though they belong to something beyond our control, into information that we can use. Asking that short, but impactful question, ‘Why am I feeling [sad, happy, fear]?’ before doing anything else, gives us the power to choose our response. It allows us to transform emotions from having control over us, into information that we can use.
This is what Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who powerfully details what he learnt from the horrors of concentration camps in WWII, refers to when he says:
From Man’s Search for Meaning:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
— Viktor Frankl
In that space is our opportunity to ask ‘Why’? And in choosing our response, lies the opportunity to take greater responsibility for, and control over, our lives. This is what ultimately grants us freedom. From our circumstances, and from ourselves.
But creating that space is easier said than done, of course. That is why we have to train ourselves to recognise the role of emotions. It can look something like the below:
Including daily reflections on how we responsed to emotions during a given event or day is the first step to understanding why we might react the way we do. Keeping a short journal of these thoughts and reactions is a very useful starting point. This is most useful when we force ourselves to reflect on actions or responses we took that we are not proud of, or happy about.
Through this reflection, our understanding of our emotions can grow, allowing us to recognise that in the moments we feel one, any physical sensations you experience alongside - blood rising, fingers or teeth clenching, feeling like your stomach has dropped to the floor - are simply cues to pause.
This pause allows you to hold yourself against responding immediately, to pause and reflect, even if only for a tiny moment. This is the ‘space’ that Viktor Frankl talks about.
And that space buys you the opportunity to ask ‘Why’, and to then choose a response that you feel most comfortable with.
Over time, this process becomes more and more natural, but in a controlled and intentional way.
Asking ‘Why’ gives us the freedom to choose our response. It takes us away from a state where an automatic response chooses us.
And little by little, as we piece these tiny actions together over time, time and time again, the process gets easier. It becomes more natural.
““Learn to ask of all actions, ‘Why are they doing that?’ Starting with your own.””
Having the freedom to choose the actions of our own life has the potential to be one of the most powerful influences on our lives. But to borrow the immortal words of Spiderman:
‘With great responsibility, comes great power.’
Emotions are experienced uniquely by everyone. One person’s sensation of sadness can feel entirely different from another’s. The same holds true for happiness. Or any other emotion.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with feeling anger, sadness, happiness, jealousy. But everything we do as a result of feeling that emotion is always our responsibility. We have to force ourselves to understand why we felt something, in order to be able to choose our response.
And we can only achieve a level of freedom over our emotions if we take full responsibility for them. And this requires us to consciously inject those spaces in between stimulus and response.
“You have to assemble your life yourself, action by action”
And, like anything in life, the more we practice, the better we get.
This is how we can create a framework that allows us to live with, and learn from, our emotions. Not to hide or suppress them. And it is within this framework that we can feel the fullness of life, with all its complications and joys, but without feeling as though we are on the cusp of being overwhelmed, or slaves to internal powers.
Emotions are a cheat code, once we figure out how to use them.
They’re not something to avoid, suppress, or always respond to - they’re there to guide us on the path we want to walk.
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These posts are written to remind our readers that; Life is hard, we’re all just trying our best and we could all do with a little help, no matter where it comes from.
How did the thoughts above impact on how you think about Learning from Emotions? We’d love to hear your comments below.