Month: September 2020

Becoming aware of (so that you can master) Your Emotions: Three options.

The key to mastering your emotions as strategic tools is being aware of what emotion you are experiencing.

In several earlier posts and in my book Emotions as Tools A Self-Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings,  I’ve discussed in detail what emotions are and how to use them as strategic tools.  I’ve noted that each emotion informs us about how we are perceiving the situation in which we find ourselves and prepares us to take action.

The information that the emotion conveys is the message of the emotion.

Thus, if you are experiencing anger, the message is that you perceive a threat that you believe you can eliminate if you go to war with and overpower the perceived threat.

If you are experiencing anxiety, the message is that you perceive a threat that might, or might not,  exist.  Anxiety is a future based emotion.

You strategically deploy your emotion when you assess the message based on the situation in which you find yourself and choose an appropriate response.

The emotional mastery process involves:

  • recognizing the emotion,
  • managing your arousal so you can be objective,
  • assessing the message of the emotion and
  • choosing an adaptive response

A major assumption is that you are aware of what emotion you are experiencing.

There are 3 main options available to you to become aware of your feelings.

Option #1: Your body

The process of emotional mastery, as discussed in my Amazon best selling books Emotions as Tools and Beyond Anger Management and as illustrated in the Anger Mastery Cycle (PDF) which you can download here suggests that you determine what you are feeling by becoming aware of your body and how that particular emotion manifests itself physically.  Examples include muscle tension, headaches or an increased heart rate.

In other words, which specific muscle groups tense when you are angry (tightened muscles, a warming sensation) verses when you are anxious or stressed (hot and cold flushes, racing heart, tightening of the chest, quick breathing, restlessness, or feeling tense, wound up and edgy)?

If you experience a sensation of warmth or coldness with a specific feeling, what is that specific connection?

Each emotion usually manifests itself a bit differently in your body and you can learn to read these physical correlates.

The assumption is that you can learn to connect specific emotions with their physical correlates if you are tuned in to your body and how it changes with what you are feeling.

Option #2: Your actions (Self-perception theory)

If, however, you are one of those people who not seem to know where in their bodies they experience emotions, there is another option.

Indeed, you can learn to become aware of your own behavior. Examples include yelling, arguing, cursing and sarcasm or withdrawing.

And, this gives you another way to become aware of what you are feeling.

Let me give you an example of how this process works.

Have you ever finished eating a meal in which you consumed more than you thought you would and said to yourself: “I didn’t realize that I was so hungry.”

This is an example of self-perception theory in action.

What you have done is to view your external behavior (eating a lot) and inferred an internal state (being very hungry) based on that observation.

By the way, we all do this with other people when we observe their external actions and infer (or guess)  what might be going on inside them based on what they’ve done. So, you might observe your child or a co-worker and comment, “You look really angry to me.”.  Their response, which is less significant here, might acknowledge your observation “Yeh, I am upset.” or deny it, “NO, I’m not angry!”

Option #3: Your thoughts

But, if you are one of those who is more sensitive to your thoughts than to your body, monitoring those thoughts and the desire implied by those thoughts might be a more effective way to becoming aware of the presence of an emotion.

The Latin root of the word emotion (emovre) means to move.  Emotions motivate (move us toward) a specific action.

You can think of this as a desire as in “I want (desire) to attack you.”  Just like in the above example of eating too much, you can observe your desire (before you act on it) and say “I really want to go after this person. I didn’t realize I was so angry.

Once you do this, the next steps in the emotional process (after recognizing the emotion) is to create some physical and psychological distance between you and the “threat” (take a step back and a deep breath).  You can then assess the nature of the threat and choose a response.

Some examples include:

You experience anger and think about lashing out. You take a deep breath, take a step back from the situation, and choose how you want to respond (direct or indirect attack, do nothing because you might have misunderstood what was done, etc.)

You get anxious and think about escaping. You take a deep breath, take a step back from the situation, and choose how you want to respond (use the anxiety as eustress to prepare for the upcoming event, temporarily withdraw to further assess what is going on and how to deal with it)

You get excited during a sales presentation and think about signing up. You take a deep breath, take a step back from the situation, and choose how you want to respond (decide to do nothing and get more information through research, decide that the information you have is solid and sign the dotted line).

Ideally, you have access to all three options.

For now, take some time to reflect on how you relate to, experience, label and master your emotions.

Mastering “sensitivity” to criticism?

I don’t know of anyone who likes being criticized.  I certainly didn’t (and don’t). Indeed, I am still sensitive to criticism.

But, I welcome criticism now.

In other words, I have mastered my sensitivity.

Let me start with a story.

I am a Senior Adjunct Professor at an accredited University.  I have been for over 25 years.

While the feedback I get from my students now is that I am fairly good at what  I do, this wasn’t always the case.

Indeed, I started teaching because I was highly anxious about public speaking. And, as you might guess, I was terrible at it.

NOTE:  I did not say that I was “afraid” of public speaking as the correct emotion here is anxiety and not fear!

For several years, I did not seek out feedback from my students because I was both aware of my short-comings and I was “sensitive” to any comments (criticism) which brought attention to my lack of skill.

Any criticism only highlighted my sense of inadequacy.

My feeling inadequate led to my wanting to avoid being judged.

I was also fairly naive at the time about how emotions worked as tools.

Once I became a little more self-assured, I began to seek feedback from my students.

Seeking feedback is an effective way to deal with criticism and I’ll discuss this in more detail below.

When you talk about being sensitive to criticism, there are two issues.

  1. The first involves the nature of criticism.
  2. The second involves the nature of “sensitivity”.

Criticism

First, let me address the issue of criticism.

The root of the word criticism and critical is the same and involves passing judgment.

By its very nature, criticism involves a judgement or evaluation of your actions by another person.

When you are being criticized, someone else is telling you their opinion about what you have done. (Or, you are sharing with them your  opinion.)

Now, when you look at criticism from a psychological perspective, there are two categories and four possible actions involving criticism.

I. Giving Criticism:  (1) Constructive Giving  and  (2) Destructive Giving

II. Taking Criticism: (3) Constructive Taking and (4) Destructive Taking

Because I am addressing the idea of being sensitive to criticism, I will focus on the category of “taking” criticism.

Regardless of the focus of the criticism,  there are two elements to the message.

  1. One is the manner in which critical comments are delivered 
  2. The other is the validity (or truthfulness) of the critical comments.

However, when it comes to sensitivity, neither of these elements are critical.

Let me repeat that with emphasis added because it could be seen as a bit controversial…

Neither the way a critical message is delivered nor the degree to which the message is true have any connection to how you receive the criticism.

This is the reason that the message, per se, is of secondary importance to sensitivity.  (It is important for other reasons as I will discuss below.)

In addition, there are two ways to receive the critical message regardless of the focus of the message.

  1. One approach to receiving a critical message is constructive.
  2. The other approach to receiving the message is destructive.

How you receive a message, or your sensitivity, is totally under your control!

Sensitivity

As the person to whom the criticism is directed (the taker), if you wish to gain some mastery over your sensitivity, it is critical that you separate the content and the manner of delivery of the criticism from your response to the message.

Indeed, this is the key to mastering your sensitivity.

Typically, when one says that they are “sensitive” to criticism, it usually means that they are hypersensitive and their emotional reaction to the criticism involves anxiety, anger, or feelings of inadequacy.

And, hypersensitivity usually involves destructive taking of criticism.

“Sensitivity” might involve a desire to lash out at the person delivering the criticism.

There was a story in the news recently in which a customer of a well known consumer website published a critique of the website in an online blog.  Senior officers of the website were incensed, engaged in very offensive actions of revenge including sending live bugs to the authors of the blog, and ended up being fired by the website which was the focus of the criticism.

Clearly a case of “hypersensitivity” and destructive taking of criticism!

A prominent, and often overlooked aspect of destructive taking of criticism is that the message, or content, of the criticism is given too little consideration.

What do I mean by this?

Well, I mentioned above, that I now seek out feedback from my students. A few years ago, I had a student who did not like my class. Based on this information, I could have justifiably ignored any feedback from the student and assumed that he was biased. (Which, by the way, he was.)

However, when the quarter was over, I specifically reached out to this student for his feedback. 

While most of what he said involved his own issues and was not really relevant to me, he made one comment about how I approached the subject matter which was right on.  Attempting to adaptively deal with the criticism, I considered his whole message.  Had I not done this, I would have missed some useful information.  In other words, I would have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Put another way, I would have been guilty of giving too little consideration to the message.

So, in seeking to master your sensitivity to criticism, there are six issues:

  1. Do not attempt to eliminate your sensitivity.  While possible, this can be a difficult task and isn’t really necessary.
  2. Understand that the criticism is ONLY the opinion (judgement) of the individual directing the message at you. While the qualifications of this person might be a relevant question to consider in rating the value of the criticism, there could still be some value in what is said even if the person is less than qualified to deliver it.
  3. The message may contain some truth, little truth, or no truth.  Truth, here is the extent to which the information is applicable to you. The question to ask is: “What is the relevance of the criticism to me.”
  4. How you receive the message is ALWAYS a choice.  Attempt to constructively receive the message by considering and assessing all of the message.
  5. You can gain some insight into your sensitivity by looking at the emotions you feel when someone criticizes you and the message of those emotions. If,  for example, you get angry, then you are perceiving the criticism as a threat and you will want to identify the nature of the threat. A feeling of inadequacy indicates that you may have some doubt about your own abilities. And so forth. 
  6. Remember to take the time to respond and avoid reacting to the criticism.

For me, now, sensitivity means that I attempt to remain open to any important information that a critical message may have for me. While it also may mean that I still have a tendency to overreact to criticism, I am aware of this and master my emotions as tools to inform me of both how I view the criticism and how I choose a constructive response.