BUT I DON’T WANT TO DO EMOTIONS!
December 8, 2022 | Emotions
“Human beings are not born with self-control. We have to learn what to do with the mad that we feel. Learning to control ourselves is a long, hard process. It happens little by little. In fact, it is something we work on all through our lives.” – Fred Rogers
Energized. Appalled. Furious. Apprehensive. Desolate. Amused. Ashamed. Content.
Did you know that the list to describe emotions that we feel goes on for days? We have an 8.5×11 sheet that is filled with small print words just to describe variations of anger!
But do we need to know all those words? And how do we figure out all those words and what feeling they correspond to? And where do those feelings show up in our body? These questions are ones that relate to our emotional literacy and can sometimes be hard to answer!
Emotional literacy (sometimes called emotional intelligence or EQ) is our ability to recognize, understand, label and express our emotions. We need an awareness of our own feelings and an ability to manage and express them appropriately, which requires the right words. But we aren’t born with the language needed to identify our emotions. We experience the emotions in response to our world, but learn about them, what they mean, and what to do with them as we experience them. That’s a tough job for our little developing brains!
For example, a small child is trying to get dressed by themselves, but is having difficulty with their shoes and socks. The more they try, the more frustrated they start to feel. As the intensity grows, they don’t know how to tell their caregiver that this is frustrating; instead they have what the adults in their life call a meltdown. The feeling becomes too overwhelming and they don’t know what it is or what to do with it. How the caregiver responds will give them information about whether the feeling was good or bad, and what it means about them as a person. And so we learn about our emotions from our experiences of them and others’ reactions to them and us.
Unfortunately, for many of us, the lessons did not give us great language or skills to be able to confidently and effectively manage the emotions. How your immediate family, communities, culture and peers responded to or spoke about (or not!) emotions gave you information about how emotions were supposed to be managed (or not!). Again, for many, this is often in silence.
And for men, the lack of teaching on emotional literacy has been even greater. Many clients have shared with us the messages of “be a man”, “don’t be a sissy”, “suck it up” that they heard growing up. In turn, the emotions were stuffed down, not to be shown or talked about. When any of us manage our emotions in this way, it results in not learning the language or skills needed to recognize, label, understand or express our emotions.
But as Brené Brown says, if we don’t do emotions, emotions will do us!
So when people come and see us, we often end up exploring emotional literacy in order to support them in learning different skills to manage the emotions. To increase our emotional literacy, we want to look at 5 things:
1. Recognizing the emotion – we can get caught up in what is creating the emotional state and, if uncomfortable, our M.O. may be to avoid, distract, stuff, or ignore it. But when we can pause to be aware of and recognize the emotions we are experiencing, we are in a better position to manage them and honour what we need.
2. Labelling the emotion – Many people tell us they are upset. This is clearly an uncomfortable state for the client, but does not tell us anything else about their experience because upset can mean so many things. There are so many words that can be used to describe our emotions. When we can find the right word, again we improve our ability to manage it. Hence the lists of words for days!
3. Scaling the intensity – We can also experience emotions at different levels of intensity. On the anger scale, we might just be mildly irritated or we might be furious. Similarly, on the fear scale, we might be a little nervous or we might be terrified. We often measure this on a scale of 1 (irritated) to 10 (furious). Scaling the intensity can help us find the right words and also help us to understand the emotion better.
4. Locating the emotion on our body – Our emotions usually come along with a physical sensation that we may or may not be aware of. Sadness might be accompanied by a lump in our throat, tears in our eyes, and heaviness in our chest. Anger might be accompanied by tension in our neck, shoulders, arms or fists, burning in our stomach or chest, and clenched jaw. When we can recognize what our bodies do with certain emotions, they can be clues for recognizing, labelling and scaling the emotions.
5. Determining what we need when we experience emotions – Different emotions require different approaches. For example, a person who is feeling grief and sadness right now may need something very different than when they are feeling enraged. When we can honour the feeling and do what we need to do when we are feeling it, we leave more space for us to process and move through the emotion.
Regardless of how we learned about emotions, it is a constant process to manage and control the emotional world in which we operate. Want to learn more about emotion regulation, emotional literacy, and how it can impact you day to day? Reach out to connect with one of our therapists today at info@journeywell.ca.