Coping with Emotions - When Should You Listen?
There are many things that connect people together in this world, but I can’t think of any that are more universal than emotion.
We all understand what it’s like to feel happy, or sad, or afraid. And we also understand the unpredictability of our emotional state and how difficult coping with emotions can be. We know from experience that things can change in an instant, sometimes in devastating fashion.
But this unpredictability raises an important question. Are emotions good or bad? Do they help us or hinder us on our journey towards becoming badasses?
If we ask society at large, the answer would almost certainly be that they help. After all, we’re all frequently told to be more expressive and more open to showing emotion to others. This is especially the case for men.
But is this openness really in our best interests?
Maybe. Maybe not. I’m a firm believer that the truth is usually somewhere in the middle of two opposing sides, and this is no exception.
When we look at how humans experience emotion, there seem to be both positives and negatives. Let’s look at both.
The Good
There are several important benefits to feeling a surge of emotion. The most notable is that it tells you you’re interacting with something important.
It might seem straightforward, but positive emotion tells you that you’re doing something good and should keep doing it.
Negative emotion on the other hand, tells you that something’s going wrong. You might be about to lose something or someone important, or you might be about to experience pain.
In both of these cases, the emotion is a catalyst for action. If it’s good, you’ll keep doing it. If it’s bad, you’ll change something to try and avoid the negative outcome.
The Bad
Emotions may trigger you to take action, but that doesn’t mean the actions you take are inherently good.
After all, just as we all understand the unpredictability of emotion, we also understand how overwhelming it can be.
When we’re experiencing this overwhelm, it can be all too easy to convince ourselves to take an action that not only doesn’t help, but actually makes things worse.
I can’t be the only one that’s done something they regret in the heat of the moment, whether it’s lashing out at someone important or saying something untrue.
The point is emotion left unchecked can cause both positive and negative consequences.
So, What Now?
When it comes to coping with emotion, it’s a simple game. You need to be able to tell the difference between emotions that are pushing you towards something important, and emotions that are spiralling you out of control.
And the key you need to do that, is self awareness.
You need to understand your own mind. How it works. The emotional triggers you regularly encounter. How you react when experiencing different types of emotions. Understanding these things in advance will give you a huge edge when they do show up.
And with this type of self awareness being so important, perhaps the prevailing societal message to be more in tune with our emotions isn’t so bad. If it leads to more people being able to recognise and diagnose their own emotional patterns, the world would be a less violent and less heartbroken place.
However, it’s important to remember that self awareness isn’t the only piece of the puzzle. We also need to compliment that awareness with control.
Together, they create the ability to recognise your emotions and resist them when necessary. Coping with emotions becomes possible. Which, funnily enough, leads me directly to one of the 5 pillars of badassery - stoicism.
With that in mind, I’m currently neck deep in stoic philosophy research. Naturally, I’ll cover everything I learn over the next few weeks. Stay tuned… and stay badass.