5 Things I Recently Learned About Emotions and How It Impacts Mental Health
I can tell you with near certainty—and my wife would agree—that I am not as emotionally aware as I ought to be. While I may cry during every training montage in each of the Rocky movies. I most certainly cried when Iron Man died in Avengers Endgame. I even cried during the closing song of Les Miserables. But the truth is that I am determined to avoid any outward appearance of emotion during each of those moments. Somewhere in my childhood, I learned to hide it, bury it, and avoid riding the roller coasters of emotions. Slow and steady would win the race.
However, believe it or not, my kids are teaching me something different. Each of them is working through a new and different developmental stage with new emotions and challenges.
About a year ago, my eleven-year-old had her first experience with a bully. Before I even had a chance to coach her, she handled it beautifully. But the experience created some unfamiliar emotions, which, in turn, created frustration because she was confused about how to process it. That confusion began to affect her mental health. Here we sit a year later, and she is finally starting to understand and heal.
Emotions are powerful. They can be an incredible gift. But they can also create unfamiliar chaos in our minds. My wife and I learned some valuable lessons along the way. I want to share five things we learned—and continue to learn—as we journey. To go even deeper into these ideas and more, Click Here.
Emotions are not your friend..or your enemy.
We have to learn to express emotion constructively.
We can’t stop emotions, but we can manage them.
Emotions are a guess, they are not always true.
Be curious about emotions. Ask lots of questions.
Emotions Are Not Your Frienemy
I used to think emotional best practices involved a significant dose of right-sizing of emotions and, if necessary, suppression to appear emotionally “even.” To put it more simply, I was under the impression that some feelings are good while others are bad. Yeah, that’s wrong.
Emotions aren’t good nor bad nor healthy nor unhealthy, friend or foe. The goal is not to suppress or even out emotions; it’s to change your relationship with them. The goal is to pay attention to them and be curious about them. Instead of avoiding emotions, we learn to respond to them better.
Next time you, a friend, or a loved one is experiencing an emotional moment, instead of avoiding, ignoring, or burying it, pay attention to it.
Click Here to Learn More About Embracing Your Emotions
Serenity Now
One of my daughters woke up one morning and, without warning, burst into an emotional word vomit. My response was far from empathetic. I lectured her on the importance of deciding our emotions. When I was finished, she wisely asked only one question. “If I can decide my emotions, how come I’m not feeling happy right now? I want to feel happy, I just don’t, and I don’t know why.”
What a great question. Simply deciding what to feel—and always feeling the right emotions at the right time is not as easy as it sounds. But neither can we allow our emotions to spin out of control. My daughter is right that her feelings are hard to understand, but she also has to learn—and so do the rest of us—that she has more influence over feelings than she realizes. She has to learn to take responsibility for her emotions and express them properly and constructively.
My lecture may have been well intended and slightly informative, but it wasn’t all that helpful. Conversely, my daughter’s own question helped her to see just how critical constructive expression is.
Click Here to Learn More Ways to Help Your Kids Navigate Through Difficult Emotions
Ride The Wave
I have made this mistake far too many times in my relationships—whether with my parents, wife, kids, or even my friends. I used to treat emotions as an inconvenience. Please tell me I’m not the only one who has made the grievous error of using the phrase, “stop that crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about!” When we give that kind of instruction to our kids—heck, even ourselves—we ask our minds to stand up against a force far too strong. Clinical psychologist Julie Smith likens this to standing in the ocean, attempting the hold the waves back. Instead of resisting, the waves overtake you, and you quickly become engulfed and overwhelmed.
Our emotions are like that ocean. “When we try to stop our feelings in their tracks, we easily get knocked off our feet and find ourselves in trouble, struggling to catch a breath and work out which way is up.”
Putting Emotions Into Perspective
When our emotions seem to overtake us, they can begin to dominate our emotional state and mental health. It’s easier than you might think to allow emotions to become your mind's driving force for truth. But while your emotions are genuine, that does not necessarily mean they are true. Emotions are a guess. It’s our brain on overdrive, trying to make sense of the chaos around us. It’s an interpretation. Interpretations can be wrong.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean. Suppose a meaningful relationship in your life suddenly comes to an unexpected end. You are convinced you’ll never find someone as great, or the relationship ended because you have something fundamentally wrong with you. Or perhaps your child comes home from school after failing a test. At that moment, they believe they will never get it right because they are too dumb, so why bother trying? Do you see where I am going with this? Just because we feel something is true in a given moment does not mean it’s true. You will find love again. Your kid is not dumb, people do like you, etc. Your feelings are not wrong—embrace them. But provide just one possible perspective. Accepting them as truth can drastically and negatively impact your future behavior.
The goal is to move from uninformed reactions to fully informed decisions.
Curiosity Did Not Kill The Cat
My wife is brilliant, and I have learned to take most of my emotional cues from her. Being more informed about our emotions and allowing them to pass over us requires curiosity. If I come home after a frustrating day at work, feeling depressed, inadequate, or anxious, she knows almost intuitively to allow me to express emotion. Still, she encourages me to think about why I feel the way I do. It might cause a brief argument (mostly because I would rather she not be right and me wrong), but in the end, it forces me to see my emotions from a higher vantage point. And the higher we are, the better we can see the whole picture.
We now do the same thing with our kids—teaching them to be curious, ask questions, and get a better view.
Keep in mind, however, that these five things we have recently learned only scratch the surface. There is so much more to learn and to experience how our expression of emotions contributes to our overall mental health.
