September 2021 – The Emotions Doctor

Note: In my last post, I discussed the concepts of “emotional self-defense” and “mindfulness”. Both of these are especially critical when it comes to the emotion of hate.

America, today, is portrayed as a divided society. In the news, we read about “hate” groups and “hate” crimes on a regular basis.

So, let’s look at the emotion of hate.

The Emotions as Tools Model notes that each emotion informs you about how you perceive your surroundings. This is the message of the emotion.

The message of hate is that you perceive a situation or person as extremely negative, or even demonic (emphasis added),

Hate is a very strong emotion that is usually reserved for people whose actions you view as totally unacceptable, evil, or reprehensible. Presumably, you would want nothing to do with this person because he, she, or it is extremely toxic, negative or hurtful.

Logically, you’d think that your emotional reaction to hate would be to cut ties with or avoid the person or situation you view with such disdain.

This is not, however, what frequently happens.

How the word “hate” is commonly used.

Brussels sprouts, anyone?

(Full disclosure.. I really like Brussels sprouts.)

When you say “I hate Brussels sprouts.”, the word “hate” is the same as used in the word “hate crime” but the intent expressed is VERY different.

To be accurate here, while you might say that you “hate” Brussels sprouts…. in reality, you just dislike them. And, you may really dislike them a lot!

But (and these are the critical differences here)…..

When you “hate” (or dislike) Brussels sprouts, you just do not order them in a restaurant.
And, while you might dislike them a whole lot, Brussels sprouts remain emotionally insignificant to you as you do not become attached to them.
With hate (the emotion), however, what you do emotionally is exactly the opposite of what you would expect.

Hate can consume you.

Instead of emotionally moving away from the object of your hate, you bind yourself to the person or situation just as powerfully as if you were in love with them.

To put it another way, you are just as securely connected to the object of your hate as you are with the object of your love. Where they go, you go. And, they are with you all the time.

If you truly hate someone, you can be consumed by your hate. Just as you can be consumed by your love.

This may be okay with love. It isn’t okay with hate.

When you truly hate someone, you might find yourself engaging more deeply with them perhaps to get revenge on or to hurt them in some way.

When this happens, you are most likely also experiencing anger.

The emotion of anger.

The message of anger is that you perceive a threat to your values or sense of right and wrong and you believe you can “eliminate” the threat by throwing enough force at it. Hence, you are motivated to take forceful action against the person (or people) you perceive as a threat.

Anger and hate together: A bad combination.

To mix anger and hate together can be very dangerous.

The hate emotionally binds you to the person (or object of your hate).
The anger emotionally energizes you to take destructive action.
Under these circumstances, logic and thinking about consequences often get eliminated. Think about hate groups, hate crimes, extreme discrimination, and so forth.

This is why you might want to avoid hating another person.

A visual example: love and hate

Let me show you what I mean.

Imagine that you are facing a person and you are firmly holding both of their hands in yours. Everywhere they go, you go. And vice versa.

Think of this as love. You are emotionally connected to the person you love and they are with you all the time.

Now, let’s look at hate. You can visualize the emotion of hate by standing back to back with your partner and then firmly taking both of their hands in yours. As you can see, you are now opposite them in the sense that many people consider hate to be the opposite of love.

“Huh”, you say, “what does that mean?”

Well, as I said above, hate is a very strong emotion. When you are under the influence of hate, you tend to react rather than respond to your situation and you do not take the next step in mastering an emotion which is to assess the validity of the message the emotion is communicating to you.

Thus, with hate, you should assess both whether the object of your hate is, indeed, demonic AND whether the actions you are about to engage in (moving toward rather than away from that which you hate) will, improve the situation in which you find yourself.

So, what are your options?

If someone or something is, indeed, terrible, reprehensible, or demonic, you can decide to feel disgust toward them.

The message of disgust is that you need to avoid or dispel the disgusting object.

Think of Brussels sprouts as disgusting.

If you find the actions of this despicable person as reprehensible and as a threat to your values or safety, you can use the energy of your valid anger to develop and execute a plan to neutralize this individual.

You are now engaged with, but not necessarily irrevocably emotionally bound to, the person or situation.

And, you have many different choices of how you want to RESPOND rather than REACT to the situation in which you find yourself.

When I was younger my fantasy was that, if I could sufficiently master some self-defense style, I would never have to worry about getting into a fight because I would be able to block any punch that was thrown at me.

I could always punch back if I had to but I wouldn’t have to.

If I successfully blocked all incoming attacks, my opponent would give up in frustration and walk away. My “victory” would be assured.

I say this was my fantasy because, while I did get into an occasional fight when I was younger, I didn’t hang around situations which would evolve into physical combat.

I have, however, been involved in some verbal altercations. But, that is another issue.

As The Emotions Doctor, I started thinking about how emotions are viewed as contagious.

An emotion gets “started” in a crowd and it escalates through the group.
Someone approaches you from a particular emotional “orientation” such as anger and you tend to react with anger. The situation can easily escalate and get out of hand.
Have you ever become emotional in a movie? There is no “real” situation but your emotions are very “real”.
The notion of an Amygdala hijack is quite real.

Now, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with “catching” an emotion.

What I am saying is that you, as a strategic deployer of emotions, should be prepared to master your emotions so that you are not blind-sided by the situation.

Every year at Christmas, I watch “It’s A Wonderful Life”. And, every year, I cry when the community comes to Jimmy Stewart’s rescue.

Do I want to prevent this from happening?

No.

I know the cause of the emotion and I am a willing participant in it.
The emotion is part of the experience of the movie.
I don’t catch anything. And, I am not blindsided.
In short, there is nothing I need to manage, control, or master.

Emotional Self-defense.

So, let’s explore what is involved in emotional self-defense.

Emotional Awareness (Mindfulness)

You will need to be consciously mindful of the situation you are in.

Mindfulness means you are in the moment. You are focusing your attention on yourself and the other person, or people, in the situation.

In other words, you will need to be aware of BOTH the emotional state of the other person and your own emotional state.

You…

In other posts, I’ve written about how you need to be aware of your body and the physical signs it gives you that inform you that you are experiencing a particular emotion.

For you, this might involve muscles tightening, changes in body temperature, thoughts “speeding up” or “slowing down” and so forth.

Sometimes, you may experience an emotion in a specific situation and not really know what is eliciting that feeling. In this case, consider the idea that you are reacting to another person.

Them…

For another person, you might have to infer, or “guess” what they are feeling from their actions.

Do they appear to be angry or sad or anxious in how they stand, gesture, distance from you or look to you?
Do they sound like they are experiencing a particular emotion in their words, volume, inflection, pauses and so forth?

Emotional Self-Mastery and a Mastery Mindset

As soon as you become aware of an emotion, either in yourself or in another person, you want to go into a mastery mindset.

A mastery mindset involves..

taking a deep breath (psychological safety)
taking a step back from the situation (physical safety)
assessing the emotion and
deciding how you want to respond to it.

Note: You might recognize this from the Anger Mastery Cycle

As long as you are in response mode, and not reaction mode, you are engaging in emotional self-defense.

Your own emotions.

If you become aware of your own emotions first, you can assess the situation and determine the extent to which you are either responding to what is going on or reacting.

A response is a choice.

If I am angry with you and can identify what it is about you that I perceive as a threat, I am responding to the situation.

If I experience myself crying, getting sad, becoming angry and have not chosen this response, I am reacting.

When this happens, I need to go into response mode.

Response mode gives me the opportunity to decide what I want to do. It does not mean I have to do anything.

The key to emotional self-defense is choice. The particular emotion is not the issue, per se.

Going back to my original fantasy, I didn’t think about what kind of punch or physical aggression I might face.

In my fantasy, it didn’t matter.

I would block whatever you threw at me whether it was a punch or a round-house kick.

If I am mastering my emotions and yours as they impact me, the emotion is irrelevant.

I will do whatever I have to do, in the situation, to control the situation by strategically deploying my emotions in the context of that situation.

All of the above are “blocking” strategies. Sometimes, you want to take a more active approach to mastering the emotions of others. This involves asking questions.

I have addressed this approach and other relevant issues in previous posts.

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