March 2017 – The Emotions Doctor

A solution to old grievances- IWBNI’s

Do you ever find yourself holding onto old grievances?

Someone did something to you in your past and every time you think of it, you get pissed off. Examples include a history of abuse, an indiscretion, a social put-down that embarrassed you, a lack of support you thought you deserved but which was never given and so forth. While the incident could have happened years ago and the person who did it might even be dead, it is just as real as if it happened yesterday when you begin to think about it.

The incident could also have happened last week and you are still both angry and obsessed about it.

It is important to note that if you are able to talk to the person and, in some way, resolve the issues between you, this is the best action to take.

Sometimes, though, resolving the issue in real time is not possible because the person is dead and, therefore, not physically available to you or the emotional barriers between you are so formidable that the person is not available to you psychologically.

If this applies to you, I have some suggestions for you.

But first, let me help you understand how it is that an incident that may have occurred years ago can still be so real to you.

Your ability to think about something is a powerful gift. This is your imagination. When you imagine a situation and allow yourself to experience it, your brain can’t tell if it is a real experience or only in your head.

The upside of imagination is that you can relive your vacation, playing in the pool with your kids, or your mom’s great Thanksgiving meals. The downside is that you can become tethered to your past.

Let me give you an example of the power of your imagination.

Stop for a moment and try to make your mouth water.

Most likely, you won’t have a whole lot of success as you can’t force your body to make this happen.

Now, if you can, copy this section of the article and have someone read the script to you as you close your eyes and imagine the scene they are reading.

You walk into your kitchen and go over to the refrigerator.
You open the door to the fridge and feel the blast of cold air on your face.
You, then, notice the lemon sitting on the shelf. You pick it up and feel the cold skin.
You close the fridge door and put the lemon on the cutting board on the counter.
You take out a sharp knife and as you cut off a slice of lemon, you see the juice pool up on the board.
You pick up the lemon wedge, put it in your mouth and bite into it.

Your imagination made your mouth water. It is as if you just bit into a real lemon wedge.

You can, now, understand how it is that every time you think of what happened to you in the past, you relive it as if it were yesterday.

Ultimately, you want to forgive the person as this will allow you cut the ties with and move beyond your past. I addressed forgiveness in my last post.

Sometimes, however, forgiving a person is difficult and you need to add a step before you can engage forgiveness

The step you can add is to view the past through the filter of an IWBNI.

The word IWBNI is an acronym that stands for It Would Be Nice If.

The process behind using an IWBNI is this;

Labeling the incident as an IWBNI as in “It would be nice if the incident had not taken place or the person had not been such a jerk and so forth.” allows you to both acknowledge the onerous nature of the incident (because what you are saying about it is TRUE) and let it go (because the unstated implication of IWBNI is that it did occur.

When you replay it in your mind, you are trying to resolve or understand it. Many things that happen to us are often beyond any typical logical understanding because they are so onerous and, therefore, seem to defy logic.

Using an IWBNI acknowledges that you may never understand it and that you are choosing to let it go and move past it. This is after-all what you want.

Like forgiveness, which I discussed in the last post, using an IWBNI does not justify, minimize, or excuse what took place. It only accepts that it did take place.

Following this acceptance which begins the process of moving on facilitates the process of forgiveness which allows you to fianally cut the ties that bind you to your past.

By the way, I discussed using IWBNI’s in my 7/20/16 post on dealing with regret.

I welcome your comments.

Forgiveness

In a recent series of 3 posts, I discussed a six step process for mastering anger that is directed at you by another person. Step 4 in that process involves forgiving the other person. As the concept of forgiveness is often misunderstood, I’d like to elaborate on it in this post.

Generally speaking, there are two perspectives you can take to assess and give meaning to the actions of another that:

hurt you (or has hurt you in the past)
you believe are not right for them to do
you view as inconsiderate and unnecessary
you believe call for retaliation.

Perhaps, you have a history of physical or sexual abuse that you can’t stop thinking about. Or, someone has done something to you that continues to upset you and ruin your relationship with that person eventhough they may have apologized.

Why is perspective important?

The perspective you adopt regarding what the other person has done will act as a filter through which you assess both the nature of their behavior and the options you choose regarding what you will do about that behavior.

One perspective involves subjectively viewing and assessing the interaction from a personal point of view. When you are being subjective, you look at what is going on through the lens of your own emotions, prior beliefs and experiences, and prejudices. The subjective perspective tends to distort how you view your situation.

In other words: They did something wrong and you continue to be righteously pissed off about it.

It is important to note that emotions by their nature, are highly subjective.

As I discuss in both of my most recent Amazon best seller books Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool, the message of anger is that you perceive a current threat that you believe you can eliminate if you throw enough force at it. You perceive a threat, the threat, in your mind, truly exists, and your anger is valid.

The problem is that the behavior is in the past and can’t be changed and your anger, in the present, can have negative impacts on your body and your relationships.

The second perspective involves objectively assessing what is going on. You are being objective when you, to the degree that you can, attempt to assess what is going on with you from the point of view of an unbiased observer. You temporarily put your emotions aside and try to understand how this observer is viewing the situation, how you might be overreacting or misunderstanding what is happening, and how your initial subjective emotional reaction might be inaccurate.

In other words: What is going on with me that I am still pissed off with them?

The Anger Mastery Cycle, a copy of which is available above, calls for us to move into anger management after the initial emotional reaction. Anger management involves reducing our emotional arousal.

Anger Mastery is the next step after anger management and entails assessing the nature of the threat. It is in this step that forgiveness becomes relevant.

Here is the reasoning connecting forgiveness, objectivity and mastering the anger that someone directs at you:

In order to be able to effectively interact with another person you need to keep your own arousal level down and accurately assess what is going on. This is an important part of anger mastery and involves taking a deep breath and taking a step back from the situation.

Forgiveness moves the process of mastering the anger at another person one step forward.

Regarding forgiveness, most therapists and people in general do not understand what forgiveness is. You and most other people

believe that forgiving someone involves absolving them of any bame or responsibility for their actions. This is what happens when your past debts are “forgiven”. They are erased. Or, when in the Bible (Disclaimer: I am not a biblical expert.) when Christ forgave someone’s sins and that person was “born again”..

When I suggested to the young women I worked with in the California Department of Corrections-Juvenile Division that they forgive the men who abused them (often their fathers) or the women who abandoned them (or worse), they often refused stating that these men (women) did not deserve to be forgiven for what they did.

Psychologically, people do not want to forgive others because it doesn’t feel right that the other person should be “let off the hook” for what they did. It just doesn’t feel like justice has been served.

And, maybe it hasn’t. But, psychologically, this is not the point.

There is an old joke about a guy who comes home very late from a round of golf. His wife questions him and he says. “It’s all Harry’s fault.” After additional questioning, the guy explains that Harry died on the second hole and they had to carry him for the rest of the 16 holes of golf.

When someone holds on to feelings about what someone has done in the past, they carry that person (Harry) with them everywhere they go. One’s feelings about the past can color the perception of threat in such a way that one may see a current threat where none exists and remain angry.

As I am using the word, forgiveness means (psychologically) “letting go”. When you forgive another person for what they have done to you, you are choosing to disengage emotionally from that person and their actions. This letting go frees you up to decide the best way for you to deal with this individual and their behavior in your current context.

There is no absolution of guilt or responsibility. Rather, you decide that you can’t change the past and you will move on with your life. Psychological forgiveness is for (and exclusively about) you and has

nothing to do with the person (or people) you are forgiving. In fact, they may never know you’ve forgiven them.

Forgiveness allows you to be more objective about the interaction between you and the other person. In being objective, you have the opportunity to use the energy of your feelings about the situation to both choose and implement your best option to resolve the issues you are facing. Two options you have include resolving issues with this person (if the person is available and willing), or seeing your situation as an I.W.B.N.I (We will talk about this in a future post.) and doing nothing more.

So, forgive them for you so that you can let go of the emotional baggage (your Harry) and get on with your life.

I welcome your comments.

Motivation: Master Your emotions to move you forward.

Motivation is the energy which moves you forward to start, work-on, and complete a project. The word emotion comes from the Latin word emovere which means to move out, stir up, agitate. When you feel motivated, you are energized, excited, or driven to accomplish a specific task.

You can be “motivated” by someone or something outside of (or external to) yourself. External motivation “pushes” you to accomplish a task. An example is your boss giving you a deadline.

You can also be motivated by an internal desire to accomplish a task because it is important to you for whatever reason. In this case, you can think of yourself as being pulled toward a future desirable “payoff”.

In some ways, being pushed is easier. However, being pulled is often more rewarding.

When I schedule an exam for my students and they study for it, the motivation can be external if their focus in on the deadline of the test and the negative consequences of not doing well or internal if their focus is on doing well because it is important to them to maintain a good grade point average (GPA).

External motivation can be negatively impacted if it is extreme and elicits resistance or resignation or disinterest if it is viewed as too difficult to obtain as in a poorly developed incentive system.

Internal motivation can also be negatively impacted.

On the one hand, the power of internal motivation can be negatively impacted or sabotaged by anxiety.

Secondly, the energy of internal motivation can increase or decrease. This fluctuation in the power of internal motivation can happen over time or it can happen if the task becomes more difficult then initially anticipated.

Here are three scenarios:

You get this great idea and, as you think about taking action and start to focus on all the possible things that could go wrong, you lose your motivation to act, get stuck, and procrastinate.
You have begun a project about which you are all excited and, at some point during the process, the level of your excitement begins to waver and you want to put the project aside.
You are motivated and working on a task and things are going very well. At some point, you encounter difficulties you did not anticipate. While you know you can get the job done, you begin to wonder if it is worth the effort.

Scenario #1

When you think about

asking your boss for a raise,
asking someone out on a date,
bringing up a sensitive topic of discussion with a spouse or a friend, assertively dealing with a vendor,
turning down an invitation to do something,
and so forth

and you find yourself hesitating because you are worried about the outcome, you are experiencing anxiety as “distress”.

As I discuss in my book Emotions as Tools: A Self Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings, anxiety is a future based emotion which informs you that you are thinking about a threat that might happen and are acting as if that threat will happen.

So, you get all excited because you believe you deserve a raise, have gathered all the facts you need, and have set a date on which you will go to your boss and ask for what you want. The closer you get to the date, the more you begin to think about all the possible bad outcomes that could occur and your motivation to act noticeably declines.

Not only that, but you may begin to focus only on the worst things that could happen. This is called catastrophising.

And, based on your desire to avoid experiencing these clearly negative outcomes, you decide not to ask for the raise.

Your anxiety about the future has stopped you in your tracks and it doesn’t occur to you that there might be a positive outcome and your boss will give you the raise.

There are two antidotes to anxiety as distress.

The first antidote is to use anxiety as eutress. When you use the nervous energy of the emotion as a motivator, you engage the sister emotion of anxiety which is the emotion of anticipation. The message of anticipation is that there MAY be a desirable outcome that would benefit me. With anticipation you act as if the positive outcome will occur and you get excited about (or motivated by) that possibility. Think about how excited you get when you are anticipating an upcoming vacation.

The second antidote to anxiety is to approach your emotion from a different point of view. Your anxiety stems from the implicit question “What if everything goes wrong and the result “kills” me? Note that I am not talking about physical death here but rather about a possible catastrophic death from which it will be difficult to recover.

Instead of this typical question, ask yourself, ” If the worst possible outcome does occur, can I survive it?” In nearly every case, the answer will be “yes”. If you know you can survive the worst possible outcome, you no longer need to be overwhelmed by it. Getting out from “overwhelm” frees you up to continue with the task you are working on. Your motivation can come back.

Scenario #2

Excitement is an emotion. Understanding an emotion is the beginning of mastering it.

All feelings, by their nature, tend to be temporary in that they happen, move you to take action and then subside. This process takes place physiologically.

But, it also takes place psychologically. It is natural for your interest level in a project to lessen over time as you are working on the project. If you don’t understand this, then you may mistake your fluctuating interest level and the associated level of motivation as indicating that you no longer believe the project to be important, relevant, or desirable and stop working on the project.

You don’t want to confuse your fluctuating excitement for disinterest.

The antidote to fluctuating motivational energy is to take a break from the project, get a good night’s rest (or a few days) and then go back to the project and do an “assessment”. What you want to ask yourself is whether you still believe the project is worthwhile and whether the original elements of the project which so excited you when you began are still relevant. If they are, your motivation will come back and you can get back to work on the project.

Scenario #3

You are humming along on your project and you hit a snag. Perhaps, you get “writer’s bloc”, your imagination isn’t giving you any good material, you need to do more research than you anticipated, and so forth. When this happens, you may become frustrated and find that your motivational energy tank feels like it is “empty”.

As in scenario #2, you don’t want to assume that you no longer interested in (or motivated to complete) the task at hand.

The antidote to frustration is to take a break, acknowledge your frustration, make a plan to get the information you need and continue to work on (take action) your project. In time, because the project is worthwhile, your motivation will return.

Please let me know if the above has been helpful.

I welcome your comments.

You are the target of someone’s anger: Part 3 of 3

This is the third and final post in my 3 part series discussing six steps you can take when someone directs their anger at you.

This is the scenario I have been using:

You are at _____ (work, home, walking the dog) and someone interacts with you in such a way that it seems clear to you that this person is angry with you. He (or she) might be yelling at you, talking fast, accusing you of having done something and so forth. It is not immediately clear why they are angry.

In my first post, I discussed Steps 1 and 2 which focused on insuring your safety in the interaction

In my last post, I covered Steps 3 and 4 which focused on lowering the energy level of the interaction.

Steps 5 and 6 involve choosing a response.

Here is the overview:

Step 1: Prepare to engage. Sub-steps: a. Calm yourself b. Take a physical step back

Step 2: Insure your safety. Sub-steps: a. assess personal threat level b.Assess need for immediate action.

Step 3: Validate their anger. Sub-steps: a. Assume their anger is valid. b. Calm them down.

Step 4: Forgiveness. Sub-steps: a. understand what forgiveness is. b. Don’t take their anger personally.

Step 5: Empathize with and attempt to understand the other person’s anger. Sub-steps: a. Seek first to understand. b. Address 7 general issues.

Step 6: Decide how to respond. Sub-steps: a. If you did something. b. The issue is in their head.

Step 5 involves empathizing with and attempting to understand the other person’s anger. As you know that the message of anger involves the perception of threat, you need to know what those perceptions are so that you can tailor your response so as to move the interaction in the direction of a win-win resolution, if possible.

Sub-step (a) is taken from Steven Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and suggests that you seek first to understand and then to be understood. Your goal here is to gain some knowledge of what it is in you, or the situation, that has resulted in his seeing you as a threat.

Focusing your attention on the other person first gives you the opportunity to learn about him so that you can later develop a response which may let you get both your and his needs met.

Sub-step (b) involves addressing 7 general issues and will help focus your attention on the information you need.

Here are the 7 general issues that I originally addressed in my book Beyond Anger Mastery: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

What is the nature of the threat the other person perceives?
Are they telling you that you have done something wrong? If so, what is it? Is is something you did recently, are currently doing, or something you did in the past?
Are they just venting and you just happened to be in the way?
Is the threat, or the implied threat, that they perceive in the present and something you may be able to resolve?
Is the threat they perceive, or the implied threat, in the present but totally unrelated to you?
Are they using their anger to “manipulate” you in some way or get you to do something specific like back-off (anger as a communicator) or give in (instrumental anger)?
If there is no obvious threat, what else might be going on? Could they be using their anger to cover over some other feeling (secondary anger)? Or, if they are attacking you or demeaning your character, could they be attempting to divert attention away from issues you have raised and onto you as an individual?

With the information you get from addressing these 7 general areas, you can move onto Step 6 in which you choose a response.

In choosing how you will respond, there are two basic issues which are summarized by the two Sub-steps. Either you did something (Sub-step (a)) or the issue is in their head (Sub-step (b)).

When it is clear that you have done something about which this person is angry, the best you can do is to accept responsibility for your actions, sincerely apologize, address their concerns as well as you can, and ask what you can do to “make it right”. You do not need to make excuses or justify your behavior (although you can offer an explanation if you choose) and you want to be assertive and seek a win-win resolution if possible.

If the threat is a figment of their imagination, you are only marginally involved or if you are a “target” and the anger has little to do with you, the best you can do is ask for clarification (I’m not really sure what I might have done. Can you tell me what you are angry about?) and attempt to address their concerns.

If, as can happen with Professional Women appropriately expressing anger in a work setting, the anger is a cover for the other person’s feeling of vulnerability, the best course of action is to take a “Project manager’s” approach to the interaction. I have a whole chapter on Professional Women and Anger in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

What you do not want to do is argue with the other person as getting into an argument, even if you are “right”, will most likely just escalate their anger and elicit an attempt to defend and justify their perceptions.

Remember that your goal is to reduce the energy level of the interaction so that you can seek a win-win resolution if possible, or a compromise, rather than to prove that you are right.

If appropriate, apologize for any misunderstandings. Note that you are not apologizing here for anything you’ve done just for any misunderstanding.

If nothing works and they are still angry at you, you may have to offer to get back with them at a later date and walk away.

Has this series of three posts been helpful to you? Is there any topic you would like addressed further?

As always, I welcome your comments.

You are the target of someone’s anger: Part 2 of 3

This is the second of 3 posts which discuss what you can do when someone gets angry with you. Put another way, I am suggesting that you learn to master the anger of another person and use your knowledge to make the most out of the situation in which you find yourself.

There are 6 steps involved in dealing with the anger of another person. In my last post, I discussed step 1 and step 2 and the sub-steps of each.

Steps 1 and 2 were all about you, preparing yourself to engage the other person and insuring your own safety.

In this post, I will discuss steps 3 and step 4 and their sub-steps.

Steps 3 and 4 are also preparing to engage the other person but the emphasis in these steps shifts from you to them.

For review, here are the 6 steps and sub-steps.

Here is an overview:

Step 1: Prepare to engage. Sub-steps: a. Calm yourself b. Take a physical step back

Step 2: Insure your safety. Sub-steps: a. assess personal threat level b. Assess need for immediate action.

Step 3: Validate their anger. Sub-steps: a. Assume their anger is valid. b. Calm them down.

Step 4: Forgiveness. Sub-steps: a. understand what forgiveness is. b. Don’t take their anger personally.

Step 5: Empathize with and attempt to understand the other person’s anger. Sub-steps: a. Seek first to understand. b. Address 7 general issues.

Step 6: Decide how to respond. Sub-steps: a. If you did something. b. The issue is in their head.

Again, let me set the stage (from the first post):

Step 3 involves validating their anger and has two sub-steps. Sub-step (a) reminds you of the assumption you need to make regarding their anger and Sub-step (b) reminds you that your goal here is to calm them down by defusing their anger as much as you can.

When I suggest validating the anger of another person, the response that I get usually involves two separate focal points: the anger and the person who is angry. My audience will raise two issues. On the one hand, they do not like the implication that validating the anger is acknowledging the anger as both appropriate and acceptable (when is probably is not). Secondly, they do not like the implication that validating the person’s anger is rewarding this individual for both his inappropriate anger and, possibly his inappropriate behavior.

I am not suggesting that you either accept his anger as appropriate nor that you reward his behavior although I do acknowledge that he may think this is what you are doing.

Indeed, while it is true that the definition of “to validate” is to authenticate the authenticity of”, when you validate his (or her) anger, you are only saying that the anger is valid for him and that you agree he has a right to be angry based on how he perceives the situation. Your focus is totally on the other person and the perceptions which have elicited his anger not on the anger, per se.

This is an important distinction.

To put it another way, if his perceptions of what is going on are completely correct, then his anger both makes total sense and is valid. This is the underlying logic for validating his anger.

As you do not yet know what his perceptions are, you cannot say whether that the anger directed at you is either valid or correct for the situation.

Two points to keep in mind here:

Our emotions are always valid (appropriate) for us in that they are elicited by how we see the world.
The message of his anger is that he perceives a threat or a challenge to his values, goals, beliefs, ego, sense of self, identity and so forth.

In light of these two points, if you immediately question or challenge him or his anger, you may increase his perception of you as a threat and he will escalate his anger. Acknowledging that he is angry and that you would like to understand what he is angry about communicates to him that you want to work with him and that you may not be as much of a threat as he originally thought.

To the extent that you are successful in validating his anger, you move on to Sub-step 2 as he will begin to calm down.

Once you have validated the other person’s anger as authentic and appropriate for them given their perception of the situation, you can move on to step #4 which is forgiveness.

This is tough one for many people especially if the other person, fueled by their anger has said or done things that have hurt you.

So, let me explain how I am conceptualizing forgiveness.

Most people think that forgiveness means letting the person off the hook for what they did or absolving them of blame and responsiblity. This is what happens when your past debts are “forgiven”. They are erased. Or, when in the Bible (Disclaimer: I am not a biblical expert.) when Christ forgave someone’s sins and that person was “born again”.

As I am using the word, forgiveness means “letting go”. When you forgive another person for what they have done to you, you are choosing to disengage emotionally from that person and their actions. This letting go frees you up to decide the best way for you to deal with this individual and their behavior in your current context.

Forgiveness is all about you not about them.

So, now that you have taken steps to insure your safety (Steps 1 and 2) and to initiate the process of lowering the energy level of the interaction (Steps 3 and 4), you are now ready to move toward and choose a response (Steps 5 and 6).

I will discuss these Steps in the next post.

I welcome your comments.