Mention and Manage Your Difficult Emotions
“How’s your week going?”
Can I be real with you for a moment? Because if I’m being honest, I’ll tell you it was a sad week for me. Coronavirus economic realities took their toll. I’ve wondered what more I can do. It’s all weighed heavily, and I’ve had a hard time sleeping.
Thank you for letting me mention it. It’s so tempting to just pretend like I’m fine.
What about you? When someone asks you how you’re doing, do you reveal the full story or just the parts that reflect the image you’re trying to maintain?
A lot of us find it difficult to talk about our feelings, particularly those feelings that don’t reflect success, power, and control. Many people fear others will reject them, viewing them as weak. They don’t want to contend with the discomfort of these kinds of feelings. Or they’ve been conditioned to think certain feelings are incompatible with their idealized self-image.
So they don’t mention their difficult emotions. But that can have its own consequences.
The Consequences of Not Being Real
- It makes you less psychologically safe. Humans are highly attuned to the emotions of others. If someone senses you’re upset but you’re not mentioning it, their brain will assume you’re hiding something, so they’ll be on guard.
- It won’t foster an open dialogue. When one person mentions their feelings, especially feelings that take courage to admit, others implicitly gain permission to do the same. Moreover, when people around you acknowledge how they are feeling, it allows for more meaningful interactions and mutual support.
- It will amplify and sustain hard feelings longer than necessary. Psychologists use the term labeling to describe the act of naming emotions. Research indicates that labeling difficult emotions reduces not only the draining psychological effects but also physical effects that come from stress.
- You’ll miss a chance to demonstrate courage. Over the past six years since Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft, many people have said that he has dramatically improved the company’s culture. This has not only resulted in higher employee engagement but also improved company performance. Central to Nadella’s leadership is the courage to admit how he’s really feeling, like he did in this message to employees early in the COVID-19 crisis: Like many of you, there have been times over the past weeks where it has felt overwhelming and all-encompassing for me. I worry about the health and safety of my family, my co-workers, and friends. My wife and I worry for her aging parents, who are far away from us in India.
- It is hard to manage something that you don’t acknowledge. Can you imagine trying to manage an employee at your company who showed up but wasn’t on payroll, was outside the reporting structure, and who no one mentioned? Who could manage this person!? Yet too often we try to do that with emotions. They’re hanging around and people can see them, but we don’t acknowledge them. When we do declare emotions, we have the chance to deal with them in a healthy way.
It’s not easy to find people and places where it’s appropriate to mention difficult emotions. Even when the people and place are suitable, it requires courage and intention to talk about how we’re feeling. But by mentioning our feelings more consistently and honestly, we can avoid these kinds of consequences.I love this quote by Fred Rogers:
Everything human is mentionable and everything mentionable is manageable.
During uncertain and difficult times, let that be a mantra for us. If we mention and manage our feelings, we’ll ultimately build greater trust and healthier lives.
How’s your week going?
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