The longer I do what I do, the more I am convinced that managing emotions is one of the most vital life-skills. I think emotional regulation should be taught in schools right alongside other subjects (after a brief stent homeschooling, can we all agree that there are just some things being taught to our kids in school that they will have zero use for later in life?✌🏻)
Managing emotions, on the other hand, is a skill necessary for doing life well.
As the queen BB says, ‘you can either spend a reasonable amount of time managing emotions, or an unreasonable amount of time managing behavior.’
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think “Trust what you feel” is possibly the worst advice I could ever give anyone. Emotions can be unreliable and sneaky little chiggers. Emotions often lie and blot out our ability to be logical.
Please do not misunderstand me. YOUR FEELINGS ARE VALID and I believe that emotions have great value in communicating - within ourselves, and to others. They just very often screw up the message.
I think there’s a lot of room for nuance here.
I think that emotions are to be explored - not believed outright and immediately acted upon.
I think we should pay attention to our emotions, without giving them full reign.
I think emotions should be allowed a seat at the table, but they should not be allowed to sit at the head of the table.
I do NOT think that emotions alone are sinful (I created a whole course about this!) but I do think that our emotions can lead us to make some poor decisions and in our struggle to manage our emotions, we can get stuck in a vicious cycle of avoid numb & control, avoid numb & control.
What should we do instead when we have all these pressing emotions welling up, demanding attention?
We should remind ourselves that we don’t have all the information - because in the absence of data, we tend to make up stories and allow those stories to direct our next move or behavior.
We should check the facts. We should resist the urge to ignore or stuff down and numb emotions without exploring them first. We should dig a little deeper to find the source and root before falling prey to any emotion-driven behavior that we may regret later on.
I’m curious to hear from you, friends. What are your thoughts on emotions? Do you feel overwhelmed by them? Do you feel ruled by them? What is your favorite tip on managing them?
