I'm not a fan of this discipline of managing and processing emotions as if they were opinions or the consequence of our thoughts.
Emotions are facts. This must be the premise. If you've felt them, they've happened already. The question is not "what are you feeling?" but rather, "what are you going to do about what you've felt?"
So as long as you're not confusing what you can change, you're good. You can prepare yourself and educate yourself for when you could feel something next time. But this is also already highly automated. Emotions tend to educate themselves. So I find a lot of this is just trusting yourself, and not overreaching into thinking you can change your past or twist the facts.
If you're sad you're sad. If you're happy you're happy.
It's not so much managing your emotions. It's more about managing the moment, and what you wish to do with yourself. It's about managing the things that make you feel things.
If you hate your job, quit your job. Don't manage the hate.
If you love someone, go for it. Don't manage your love.
You'd be surprised how many people don't know what they are feeling. They are numbed, distracted and possibly have never given names to the experiences inside of them.
I agree that "managing" is a poor term here. In my practice I use the term "engage" with the emotion. Feel it. Surrender to it.
Action is very often a way to escape the intensity of an experience.
Yes absolutely. We have control of our actions. Emotions we have no control over. Or rather, that should not be the focus of our intentions. But we can control what we do about them, and we can connect the dots between our actions and our emotions when deciding what to do next.
And also there is hardly ever anything wrong with our emotions... I don't buy into negative emotions either. They're what you make of them -- after the fact.
I randomly came across this a while ago, and it remains the best example I have:
She talks about being afraid, except, she's no longer afraid of fear.
At which point, what is fear to you? What is fear?
The emotions, and the facts, remain. What has changed is you. This would not be possible if you = emotion. And it demonstrates how even fear is not negative. It's only negative if it leads to negative outcomes, which require your action.
When we are young, emotions become us. Someone takes your toy, and you cry. Maybe in your teens you punched someone in the face. But as we age, hopefully, these things happen less often. But you probably still get upset. The difference is in the control you have over your actions. And with this, our emotions seem to mature and sort themselves out also.
I'm afraid of falling when I'm rock climbing. If I followed your advice and quit rock climbing instead of managing my fear, I'd have missed out on the best experiences of my life over the last year.
Emotions are temporary, more temporary than our long-term goals. If we allow emotions to control our actions, we become unable to pursue goals which require any significant process. Sometimes you have to not pursue someone you love in order to preserve existing relationships. Sometimes you have to stick with a job you hate to build your career. Inability to pursue long-term goals is not the path to happiness.
Further, emotions may not even allow you to achieve short term goals. Love says go for it, but fear says rejection will be devastating. Hate says quit your job, but depression says quitting will change nothing. Obeying your emotions is not always a freeing action.
Of course sometimes the easiest way to process an emotion is to act on it, and sometimes that's okay. But let emotions fuel actions that take you in a direction you want to go, rather than letting emotions dictate the direction.
I think many of the points you're making are in the article. Emotional regulation and the corresponding process models are staples of at least a few forms of therapy.
Ideally, we should all be able to regulate our reaction to our own emotions, but in practice some people aren't as good at it as others for various reasons.
I agree at one level, but also see it slightly differently. To wit:
Feelings are facts. Emotions are labels we apply to those feelings. The Fine Article deliberately glosses over this rather key distinction in a way that cedes an opportunity to make the very point you're making here.
This is — or can be — a problem, because we tend to identify with the labels much more strongly than the experiences, which can be consequential for our long-term mental health.
I think this is a short sighted way to view ourselves. More often than not, our emotions are caused by externalities, or even our own internals, as scientists have recently discovered how our gut microbes might directly influence our feelings and behavior.
People are complicated. If you have an emotion, it's important to know that it doesn't have to represent who you are, and that you can do something about it. Processing emotions is a legitimate thing to do. EMDR therapy is a great example of processing emotions for traumatic experiences.
> it's important to know that it doesn't have to represent who you are
Maybe it's easy to confuse what I said with this, but I never said this. Equating your emotions with who you are is an act that you've done. It's a result of an action. But they already are two separate ideas with separate words. There is you, and there are your emotions. I am not able to equate them. There is me when I'm sad, me when I'm happy, me when I'm busy... I can become sad or busy if I know what triggers those states. But this must all be based on facts.
Same with your gut microbes example. Yes, emotions are caused by externalities, and that is precisely why they are facts. But thinking they are internal will have you fighting gut microbes with your mind. This is the dead end you want to avoid. You cannot accurately process the outcome of your gut microbes other than by accurately dealing with your gut microbes. Everything else is a workaround. They may still work in the end, but the most effective treatment will always be physically and accurately dealing with the physical cause of whatever effects we are looking to change.
"Processing emotions" is no different than dealing with facts. EMDR therapy is also a physical therapy. It treats emotions as facts, and deals with trauma factually. Whether it works is also a fact.
I mean, "be factual" is just another way of saying "stay scientific". There is nothing shortsighted about insisting on remaining scientific.
Perhaps the controversial part to me was your last two lines.
> If you hate your job, quit your job. Don't manage the hate.
> If you love someone, go for it. Don't manage your love.
These lines appear to contradict the idea in your reply, where we seem to agree that your emotions of hate or love should not be taken at face value. Instead, these two lines suggest you should give into your id, based on the "fact" that you've experienced those emotions.
They absolutely should be taken at face value - or factual value, rather.
Face value does not mandate mindless reaction. This is juvenile. I'm not saying "fuck it, quit your job". I'm saying, you should not think you can alter how you feel about your job, which - as a matter of hard fact - you hate. So many people spew excuses and find outlets and vent when all that is doing is spreading the hate. The hard truth is in your face the whole time - you hate your job. And instead of doing something about it, we often live with it and spread it.
Quitting or changing your job is a tough but legitimate option. Reality is far more manageable than changing how you feel with mind games or "therapy". This is trying to change something that has already happen, and which you cannot prevent from happening. YOU HATE YOUR JOB.
Given how you feel, do what is most intelligent. Do what is right. Listen to your emotions, but don't obey them. But don't think you can change them either. Don't even try to. This is the very act of fighting with yourself. You don't want arguing with yourself to be part of your life's strategic handbook.
I may have strayed a bit, but the point is, my emphasis is on "don't manage the hate". If quitting your job isn't an option, so be it. But do something real about your circumstances. Don't try and manage your emotions.
Fight facts with action and with facts that you create, and never with your imagination.
This is a good article. I would just add that attending to an emotion and explaining to someone what you are feeling and why often results in a spontaneous process that produces positive changes such as lessening of intensity and change in perspective. This is much of how psychotherapy works, or for that matter just talking things over with a friend.
A good book on attending to feelings is Focusing, by Eugene Gendlin.
Agreed, in that regard I didn't find that example in the article very good:
> For example, if you were trying to impress a new date who wanted to go to the zoo, you might have to find a way to play it cool in front of the gorilla enclosure by using a discrete breathing technique.
Instead you could simply say that you actually have an irrational fear of gorillas. Worst case the date is actual a huge gorillas nerd and that would be a deal breaker, best case the date helps you change perspective and at the end of the date, you're not afraid of gorillas.
Emotions are facts. This must be the premise. If you've felt them, they've happened already. The question is not "what are you feeling?" but rather, "what are you going to do about what you've felt?"
So as long as you're not confusing what you can change, you're good. You can prepare yourself and educate yourself for when you could feel something next time. But this is also already highly automated. Emotions tend to educate themselves. So I find a lot of this is just trusting yourself, and not overreaching into thinking you can change your past or twist the facts.
If you're sad you're sad. If you're happy you're happy.
It's not so much managing your emotions. It's more about managing the moment, and what you wish to do with yourself. It's about managing the things that make you feel things.
If you hate your job, quit your job. Don't manage the hate.
If you love someone, go for it. Don't manage your love.
And so on.