Oh goodness, it has been a long time since I’ve posted anything on the Blog portion of the website! Since I last posted in October 2019, the world has come undone. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, the country is more divided than ever, and racial injustices remain horribly common.
I recently agreed to give a talk for the Teaching and Faculty Support Center at the University of Arkansas. I came up with a title before I fully decided on the topic of the talk, and the title I landed on was “Practical strategies for managing emotions and stress in the elusive search for work-life balance.” Yet, in working on the talk, I decided to veer away from the predictable directions of “self-care strategies” or “how to say no when people want more from you” (which is closely related to the tantalizing idea of “setting boundaries”). Instead, I decided to lean into the idea that life is hard right now. Many people are stressed, but in different ways. Some people (like those of us with young children) are overburdened with too many responsibilities and not enough time. Others might have too much time and not enough social contact, resulting in rumination and loneliness. Because everyone has different stressors, providing strategies for people to de-stress their lives seemed daunting and impractical, since few strategies will work well across the board.
But what is common among most people who experience stress and significant negative emotion is that these experiences are often unwanted and unpleasant. Aha! I said. Now that is something I can address as an emotion researcher. So instead of talking about methods of coping or emotion regulation, I decided to focus on strategies for trying to befriend emotions rather than strategies for pushing emotions away. Why? Because emotions are there for a reason. They guide our actions (e.g., fight or flight reflex), they help us connect to people, and emotions can also help us understand ourselves better, if we let them. Emotions are messages that want to be received. Just like the Hogwarts letter in the first Harry Potter book/film, emotions are messages that will keep coming back, stronger and stronger, until we receive them. So why not open the envelope and see what the emotion has to say?
In developing the talk, I sifted through some of the psychological literature (as well as a few books I’ve read in the last year) and landed on this three step plan for getting the emotional message.
Step 1: Label your feelings. Beyond recognizing that you are experiencing an emotion, labeling which specific emotions you are experiencing can facilitate emotion regulation and help guide you toward the message.
Step 2: Give yourself the message of the emotion with self-compassion. Each specific emotion is a guide to what matters to you; we don’t have emotions about things that don’t matter. Feeling fearful or anxious? You are feeling uncertain and threatened about the future. Feeling sad? You have lost something or feel like you lack something. Feeling guilty? You have violated your own moral code. Feeling disgusted? Someone else has violated your moral code (or you’re trying to avoid a perceived physical illness, like not eating broccoli when the smell of it disgusts you). Recognizing the message of the emotion with self-compassion–which means with current-moment awareness, with self-kindness instead of self-criticism, and with the recognition that other human beings feel similarly–can give you a window into what matters, and help you understand yourself better.
Step 3: Decide whether or not to act. Some emotions suggest actions. Anger often prompts attack, whereas fear and sadness tend to promote withdrawal. Sometimes it make make sense to act on these emotions, if the prompted action tendencies are consistent with your goals. Other times it is better to just feel the feeling. Emotions are like waves, they crest and then the fall. If you feel the feeling, you can “surf” the wave and the emotion will come back down. (Note: if you feel as though you’re drowning in the emotion, that’s a sign to maybe try something else–drowning is dangerous!) And yet other times, you might want to exercise, try to think about the situation in a different way, seek support from someone you trust, or maybe even watch Netflix to just put your mind somewhere else. It’s completely understandable to not want to feel bad and to want to distract yourself from an unpleasant feeling, but these distraction techniques are better used after you’ve received the message of the emotion so that your actions are intentionally moving you toward something rather than in the service of avoidance.
I’ve put together this handout of resources from my talk, which include links to resources for emotional labeling, self-compassion, and a table of common emotions and their messages, as well as a brief description of the steps I’m providing here. Or, if you prefer to watch a video, I’ve recorded a slightly shorter version of the talk and posted it on my Professor Emotion YouTube channel. These steps are what I suggest my graduate student therapists teach their clients, and they are backed with evidence as strategies that support psychological well-being. Yes, strategies to regulate emotions are helpful, but strategies to acknowledge the emotions are maybe even more helpful in the long run, because they help you truly use emotions functionally. Good luck!
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