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I was watching the Rachel Maddow Show the other day and she was interviewing Senator Warnock from Georgia about the restrictive legislation just passed in his home State seriously restricting voting “rights”.

Rachel commented to the Senator that it must be difficult not to give up hope with all of the restrictive legislation being presented in Republican states.

Senator Warnock replied, “I didn’t say I was optimistic.”

This got me thinking as I really did not consider the difference between being hopeful and being optimistic.

In fact, I always thought that “hopeful” and “optimistic” were basically the same.

And, when I googled the two, that is what I found.  Optimism and hopeful are listed as synonyms.

But, Senator Warnock, implied that they were different.

And, maybe, they are.  But, how?

Here is my take……

Perhaps, being hopeful is looking toward a specific future outcome with the idea that it may or may not happen.

I choose to play the California Lottery each week because it is fun, involves a negligible expense, and, if I win, as I hope I will, there are lots of things I would like to do with the income.

Because of the incredible odds against my winning, however, I am not at all optimistic that my ticket will have all the winning numbers.

So, perhaps the distinction that Senator Warnock was alluding to was that while he was hopeful that he, and others, would be successful in combating the slew of laws restricting voting rights and that this hope would continue to fuel those collective efforts, he was not optimistic that success, at the State level, would be successful (at least in the short run).

“Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.” —Barack Obama.

Hope is a feeling that can be uplifting and motivating.

Hope says that what you hope for is feasible, desirable and worth working (fighting) for.

At some point, as you get closer to that which you desire, you become optimistic that it is, indeed, in reach.  And, you double your efforts to obtain it.

To the extent that this is true, you don’t want to give up hope because what you hope for seems to be very much out of reach.

The lack of hope (hopelessness) leads to resignation and, possibly, depression.

This is why you hold on to your hope and work and fight for what you want.

Hopefully (pun intended), your efforts bear fruit and your hope morphs into optimism.

So, you don’t need optimism to maintain hope.

And, hope is often sufficient to motivate action.

The difference between hope and optimism is basically the time frame in which the possibility of something happening becomes a likely probability.

Hope and optimism are emotions that can, and frequently are, strategically deployed as tools to motivate actions taken to produce impactful change.

You just need to know, appreciate and not be confused by the difference between the two.

A question was posted on Quora.com which caught my attention.  The question addressed the emotion of resentment and since my last post also discussed resentment, addressing this question gave me  an opportunity to expand on my last post.

The actual question was:

How do I get rid of the feeling of resentment towards a friend? Throughout my whole life, I’ve been everyone’s therapist/babysitter/agony aunt, but no one has been there for me, so it makes me feel angry and alone.

What I liked about  the question was that it touched upon many of the issues I discussed in my last post.

The short, and inadequate, answer to the question is that you don’t “get rid of the feeling”.  Rather, you master it as a tool to improve your life and your relationships.

The more involved answer is……

The questioner clearly addresses the emotions of resentment, anger and “being alone” (more accurately, the feelings here might be lonely or abandoned).

Recall that all emotions convey a message to you about how you perceive what is going on between you and those with whom you are interacting.

The Emotions as Tools Model advises that once you recognize the emotional reaction of resentment, you need to determine whether the perception which led to the emotional reaction is accurate or not and then choose how you want to respond to  what is going on.

The “head’s-up” here is that you should not take action on your emotional reaction.  Rather, you need to assess the situation so that you can choose a response.

As I discussed in my last post, the message of the emotion of resentment is that you perceive the other person as hurting or wronging you by utilizing some advantage that they have over you.

So, in the above question, this person is  saying she resents her “friends” who have relied on her to be their therapist/babysitter/agony aunt, but (have) not been there for (her).

The feeling of resentment appears to be elicited by the perception that she has been wronged by her friends who have taken advantage of (abused) that friendship in that they have not reciprocated and supported her when she needed it.

This reflects the message of resentment.

She believes that she provided these services to her friends because (emphasis added) they were friends and expected that they, again because of the friendship, would be there for her.

Aside:  Is this a reasonable expectation?  Yes.

The resentment reflects her perception that they used (or took advantage of) her based on the value of their friendship with her.

The message of anger is that she perceives a threat that she believes she can eliminate if she throws enough force at it.  Anger prepares her for battle.

Again, an aside… I’m guessing here but her question about how to get rid of the emotion she is experiencing suggests to me that she does not want to take the action she is thinking about taking toward her “friends”.  This could include telling them off, ending the friendship, etc.

In her case, the questioner seems to be saying that her friends are a “threat” to her beliefs about friendship and reciprocity.  It could also be that she perceives a threat to her feelings of endearment.  She may care deeply about her friends and her view of them as virtuous individuals and this “view” is now being challenged by their actions. While she was always available to them when they needed her, they abandoned her when she needed them.

That she feels “alone” is consistent with and related to her feeling of anger in that it expresses her perception that her friends (as I noted above) have “abandoned” her when she needed them.

Please note that I am not saying that her perceptions are correct.  They may be.  Mastering an emotion involves accepting the emotions as “valid” and then assessing the situation to confirm, or deny, one’s initial perception.

In my last post, I provided a list of several questions that should be asked in order to determine the validity of the perceptions which elicit the emotion of resentment.

There are three possibilities here:

1. Her friends actually did “wrong” her and knew what they were doing.
2. Her friends actually did “wrong” her but it was a misunderstanding.
3. Her friends did not “wrong” her. She misinterpreted what they did.

The point is that she needs to determine what actually happened and whether her friends actually did “wrong” (and abandon) her.

And, also, whether she is, indeed, alone.  Her friends may or may not be aware that she needs them for help, support, friendship, etc.

These are the questions:

• What is actually happening in your situation?
• What did the other person actually do?
• To what extent was I wronged, slighted, insulted or denied my “fair share”?
• To what extent did the other person take advantage of me? If they took advantage of me,  what was involved (position, power, gender, our friendship)?
• Was I actually “wronged” or is there some other explanation for what they did including a possible misunderstanding (by you or the other person),  poor communication skills, inadequate social skills, etc.

Once these questions are addressed, it is possible for the questioner to choose how she wants to respond to her friends.

If she misunderstood her friend’s actions or intent, she can admit this, apologize, renew her feelings toward her friends and move on.

It is, however, important to note that she needs to be specific when she talks to her friends.

In other words, while she could say that her friends “were not there for me”, it is far better for her to say specifically that her friends did not step up to baby sit for me, were not there when I needed to talk to someone, etc..  Being specific helps to avoid any misunderstandings and enables her friends to directly address her concerns.

She has options:

• She can express her disappointment  regarding her friend’s (specific behavior)
• She can point out that she is hurt and does not understand the reason her friends did not (specific behavior)
• She can ask her friends what was their reason for not (specific behavior)

To summarize, the questioner clearly experienced and acknowledged the emotions of resentment, anger and “being alone”. Her question implies that she did not particularly like either the feelings or the actions the feeling motivated her to take and decided she wanted to “get rid of” the emotion.

My response, from an emotions as tools perspective, suggested that she master the emotion, which involves acknowledging what you feel, taking a physical and psychological step back from the situation, assessing her initial perception and choosing an adaptive response.

When you perceive  that you have been mistreated, slighted, wronged, or victimized and taken advantage of by someone and you were not in a position to do anything about it (emphasis added), the emotion you experience is resentment.

To put it another way, resentment involves the perception that someone has taken advantage of, or victimized, you because they have an “asset” such as power, position, or influence that you do not have.

This is the message of the emotion of resentment.

By contrast, if you were focusing only on the issue that someone has wronged or victimized you without the element of some unfair advantage, this action on their part would represent a threat and the emotion you would be feeling is anger.

I will address anger specifically below.

Resentment can be accompanied by other emotions including frustration, hostility, bitterness, other “hard feelings” and, of course, anger.

The downside of resentment is that your self-esteem, self-worth or value can be diminished if you put yourself down relative to the other person.

On the upside, however, short-term resentment can bolster self- esteem by allowing you to blame others for what may be your issues.

“Blaming others” is not, however, using your emotions either adaptively or strategically.

Adaptively and strategically deploying your emotions is the approach advocated by the Emotions as Tools Model which focuses on mastering one’s emotions in order to improve your life and your relationships.

Let’s unpack this approach from an Emotions as Tools perspective:

How do you master resentment?

In order to answer this question, I need to revisit the emotions cycle.

Remember that you constantly scan your surroundings for any “threat”.

When a threat is perceived, the amygdala in your brain reacts, generates an alert which triggers the sensation of an emotion and prepares your body to take action consistent with the emotion and the perceived threat.

This reaction happens unconsciously and is what you are referring to when you say “I resent (whatever is your target)”

At the same time as this reactive message goes out, a signal is sent to the cerebral cortex which is the thinking part of your brain.

Emotional mastery engages the cerebral cortex to assess the situation and choose how you want to respond to what is happening.

Remember the message of resentment.

When you resent another person, you have perceived them as hurting you by utilizing an advantage that they have over you.

Thus, there are two parts to this interaction.  One is the wrong that may have been done to you and the second is the use of an unfair advantage.

From this perspective, you need to question your perception which elicited the emotion.

And, so that you can do this as objectively as possible, you need to take a psychological step back from the situation to create some “space” between you and the other person. This is not easy and you may have to get some help to do it. But, it is doable.

Mastering an emotion involves…

1.  Accepting that no-one causes you to feel anything.  You create what you feel by how you perceive what is happening to you.
2. Questioning the message of the emotion in terms of the extent to which it informs you about…

• what is actually happening in your situation
• what actions, if any, are needed to bring about adaptive changes in your situation and
• the energy you have access to in order to facilitate taking those actions.

Let’s apply this to the emotion of resentment…

An important element in the Emotions as Tools Model is the awareness that, while you may or may not have been victimized, wronged or taken advantage of, you are not “powerless” and may have options available to you to deal with the situation you are in.

Here are the questions you need to ask and get answers to:

• What is actually happening in your situation?
• What did the other person actually do?
• To what extent was I wronged, slighted, insulted or denied my “fair share”?
• To what extent did the other person take advantage of me? If they took advantage of me,  what was involved (position, power, gender, my situation)?
• Was I actually “wronged” or is there some other explanation for what they did including a possible misunderstanding (by you or the other person),  poor communication skills, inadequate social skills, etc.

If there was no “wrong”, you may only need to clear up any misunderstanding.

If there was a “wrong”, then you need to ask and answer several additional questions:

• Given that there was a “wrong” which led to my being “taken advantage of”, what are my options for “making the situation right” ?
• What options do I have available to me which won’t put me at greater risk including office policy and power differentials between me and the other person? (This acknowledges the “advantage” the other person may have.)
• Can I approach this situation directly or do I need to take a more indirect approach?

If there was, indeed, a “wrong” then you will need to engage the emotion of anger and you will need to “forgive” the other person.

WhileI have addressed both anger and forgiveness in other posts, let me give a quick overview…..

Anger is a primary emotion which serves as a primitive threat detector.  Anger subconsciously alerts you to and prepares your body to engage with and eliminate a perceived threat.

The message of Anger is that you perceive another as a threat and you are ready to go to war to eliminate the threat.

In the context of resentment, anger is important because it provides the energy to pursue your plan to “right the perceived wrong”.

The concept of forgiveness is NOT that it absolves anyone of any responsibility for their actions.  Forgiveness is for YOU and involves the process of stepping away from and disengaging from the other person so that you can focus on your options.

So, you experience resentment, assess that you have been both wronged and taken advantage of, and use your anger to develop and carry out a plan to make things right.

If you were only wronged but no unfair advantage was utilized, your resentment resolves into anger and you can pursue your plan.

A reminder..

When you experience yourself feeling resentful toward someone, keep in mind that resentment is often a compound emotion which includes anger.

Because anger is both a very powerful emotion and a very familiar emotion, you may identify your anger before you identify your resentment.

I am not saying that one feeling is more predominant over the others.  In fact, they are all mixed together.

Dealing with mixed feelings is often difficult because you may only be aware of one feeling and may not recognize that others are present.

So, you may have to ask yourself, when you are angry or resentful of another person, if there are other feelings present.  If so, label each one accordingly and attempt to “master” it as best you can.   As anger and resentment are the strongest emotions here, once you master them, the others may just resolve themselves.

And, I NEED TO EMPHASIZE, if you believe that the situation you are in represents a risk that you do not feel you can safely handle alone, seek help from a professional.  Dealing with emotions such as resentment in any context in which someone is taking advantage of you can be dangerous so proceed with caution if necessary.

This is the second part of a 2-part series designed to both educate you about the emotion of guilt and provide you with the steps you need to take to deal with and resolve the emotion.

In part 1, I discussed several emotions which you might experience when you consider some action you took in the past that yielded results you did not anticipate or want.  The one emotion I wanted to specifically focus on was guilt.  I defined and explained this emotion.  I also introduced you the Basic Relationship Rule (BRR) and listed the 6 steps.

In this post, I will discuss each of the 6 steps and tell you what you need to do to implement them.

Enjoy.

Steps 1 -3 focus on you and the other person.

Steps  4-6 involve you dealing with your guilt.

Step 1: Assess the situation. 

The emotion of guilt tells you that you believe you have done something wrong.  Your first step is to review what you did, in light of what happened after you did, including any consequences, and determine whether or not you did anything wrong.

It is entirely possible that you did nothing wrong and that your guilt is not giving you accurate information.

Step 2: Accept responsibility for your actions.

 If you did something wrong, it is imperative that you accept responsibility  for your actions.  Your guilt is motivating you to make the situation right and accepting responsibility for what you did is critical.  If you don’t feel responsible, you won’t see any need to take corrective actions.

Step 3: Make it right with the other person (if possible and appropriate). 

Here you decide what needs to be done to correct whatever it is that you did. This might involve nothing more than sincerely apologizing.

(Incidentally, I wrote a blog entitled: Saying “I’m Sorry” in a Business Setting. My Take in March 2019)

Or, it could involve additional actions.  What you need to do will  vary with the situation, what you did, the context in which you did it, your relationship with the other person and so forth.

You may need to reestablish your credibility, your reliability, your reputation, your honesty and so forth.

Step 4: Understand your actions.

In order to resolve your guilt, you need to understand what led up to your doing what you did. Please note that understanding does not eliminate responsibility which is why you had to take responsibility for your actions in Step 2.

This is where the BRR comes in.

The BRR reminds you that you did the best you could given your Model of the World (how you perceived what was going on at the time) and your Skill Sets (what actions were available to you to deal with your situation).

Your best, in the situation, was not THE best possible action. It was just the best you could do.  Clearly, you need to figure out what you need to do so you have more options available to you going forward.

Your actions stemmed from your perception, understanding and instant analysis of what was happening at the time. Clearly, since you did not get the results you wanted (You’re feeling guilty about what you did!), you need to look at your Model and your interpersonal skills, at the time and ask some important questions.

• Did you misinterpret what was going on?
• Did you overreact?
• Were you defensive when you didn’t need to be?
• Were you feeling awkward, embarrassed, or inadequate and, therefore, over-compensated?

Perhaps, the actions you took came about because you did not know how to respond to what was happening.  You may have correctly understood what was going down but did not know what to do.

This happens with men who may feel anxious and inadequate in dealing with others and, because the emotion of anxiety leaves them feeling “weak”, go to their anger (as a secondary emotion), feel empowered, and make dumb decisions.

Once you understand and have learned from the actions you took, you are better prepared to make some changes in yourself about how you view and respond in your interactions with others.

Step 5: Forgive yourself.

I have written several articles on forgiveness.

The concept here is that you give yourself permission to move on. You did what you did, you accepted responsibility for your actions, you understand what precipitated those actions and you have made both amends and changes.

Now, it is time to remind yourself that you can let the past go of the past and move on.

Step 6: Let the guilt dissolve.

I’ve added this step as a reminder to you that, just because you have done all the other steps, the guilt you feel may not just go away.

So, when (or if) you experience guilt when you think about your past actions, this is normal.  Should this happen, remind yourself that you have done everything necessary involving the incident from your past and you are ready to move on.

Do this whenever it is needed and the guilt will, in time, dissolve and go away.

You can do it.

This is my first post of 2021 and, in the spirit of getting off to a new start and moving beyond your past, I want to talk about one of the feelings that you might experience after you’ve done something that turns out bad and yields an unwanted result.

This is part 1 of a 2 part series of posts.

Part 1 will give you an overview of the emotions which might be elicited (NOT caused!)  by some action you took in the past and will introduce you to the Basic Relationship Rule.

Part 2 will discuss the actual steps you need to take to deal with, dissolve your guilt and move on.

Part 1

Actions taken and the feelings these actions might elicit.

If you feel guilty, you are focusing on the “bad” thing that you did.

If you shame, you are focusing on yourself as a horrible person for having done it.

If you feel regret, you are wishing that you had not done it.

If you are angry, you view the results as representing some sort of threat to your expectations, your goals, your values, and so forth.

You can feel any, all, or none of these feelings following what you did.

Past articles

The last article in which I discussed guilt and shame was posted in September 2017. I discussed regret in July 2016. You can view these posts by going to the Archives to the right of this page and clicking on the specific month of the post you want to read.

The Index Tab: A reminder.

By the way, you can access all of my posts by clicking on the Index tab in the upper right hand corner of this page and opening up the PDF.  To make your access easier, I have listed all of my posts by category, title and date.

The Emotion of Guilt

In this post, I will revisit the emotion of guilt and the message it conveys, discuss how to strategically deploy this emotion, and talk about how you can get rid of the feeling by applying the Basic Relationship Rule (BRR) to yourself and deploying I.W.B.N.I’s once you have validated and strategically deployed the emotion.

Guilt is a powerful emotion the message of which is “I did something wrong.”

Guilt is a backward oriented feeling.  Its focus is on the past.

In other words, you do not feel guilty when you are engaged in the action, you later feel guilty about.

Rather, you feel guilty when you reflect back on what you did in light of the consequences that resulted from the action you took.

The downside of guilt is that, if not handled appropriately, it can weigh on you, negatively impact your effectiveness in life by eliciting feelings of worthlessness (shame or depression), and impact your relationships with others.

It is this downside that probably leads some writers to advocate that you get rid of, or eliminate, guilt.

Unless you are talking about guilt that is persistent, intrusive and not connected to a specific set of actions, I do not agree that you should eliminate the feeling.  This approach to guilt implies that there may be something wrong with the emotion, per se.

I maintain that ALL emotions are adaptive and need to be viewed as tools that inform us about situations which require our attention.  This is the upside of an emotion.

Using this emotion as a tool, the upside of guilt is that it alerts you to an action you took which needs to be examined, perhaps corrected and learned from. This alert is the message of guilt.

Put another way, you strategically deploy your guilt as  a tool when you validate it, use its  power as a motivator to critically revisit your actions and examine the circumstances that existed at the time, the decisions you made, and the actions you took from the perspective of what you did, the results you experienced and what you intended to happen.  Once you do this, you can use the power of the emotion as a motivator to “make it right” and resolve to learn from your mistakes and move forward.

So, how do you resolve and dissolve  guilt once you have strategically deployed it as discussed above?

The process of resolving guilt involves applying the principles of the Basic Relationship Rule (BRR) to yourself.

The BRR states: Everyone, in every situation, does the best they can given their Model of the World (as it applies to the situation in which they find themselves) and their Skill Sets.

Usually applied to others..

Typically, the BRR is used to understand the behavior of another person with the goal of developing, maintaining, or correcting the relationship you have with that person.

Equally as valid when applied to you…

As it applies to you and the behavior about which you are feeling guilty, the BRR tells you that the “offensive” behavior was the BEST you could do, in the situation, given how you viewed that situation (your MODEL) and the SKILL SETS (your interpersonal abilities) you had, at the time, for dealing with what was happening between you and those you interacted with.

Here are the steps to deal with guilt.

1. Assess the situation.
2. Accept responsibility for your actions.
3. Make it right with the other person (if possible and appropriate).
4. Understand your actions.
5. Forgive yourself.
6. Let the guilt dissolve.

I’ll discuss the specific steps in detail in the next post.

In my 11/4 post, I discussed the emotion of surprise.

In my 11/18 post, I addressed the emotion of gratitude.

As I write this, it is the beginning of December.  We have just finished with Thanksgiving and are about to enter the “Holiday Season”.  While covid-19 may change the way we experience this Holiday Season, I’d like to suggest that you thoroughly engage and experience two emotions you probably don’t think too much about.  Specifically: Anticipation and Surprise.

Some basic concepts:

The emotion of Anticipation

Anticipation is the flip side of the emotion of anxiety.

Anxiety is a future based emotion the message of which is that there may be a threat in the future that may “kill” me.  When we get anxious, we often act as if the possible threat is an actual threat and react by being unable to take any effective action.  This is anxiety as distress.  Anxiety as eustress takes the energy of the emotion and uses it to prepare for the possibility that the threat may occur.

Note: The Index Tab above will take you to a PDF which lists all of my previous posts, including those on Anxiety, by category, title and date.  Click on the tab and look for the specific post which interests you.

The emotion of anticipation is also a future based emotion.  For anticipation, however, the message is that there is a possible event in the future that I want to experience.

Anticipation both sets up an expectation regarding and prepares you for something good.

The emotion of surprise.

Surprise, as an emotion, grabs your attention and focuses it on an event. The message of Surprise is that an unexpected event has occurred and you need to assess it to see if it is beneficial or detrimental.

The issue of perceptual sets.

Did it ever occur to you that you might not see your surroundings as they actually are?

Huh, you say, what does that mean?

Well, the psychological fact is that, while you may see something, like a fast food restaurant, you may not notice it because it has little value to you unless you are hungry.

The concept of perceptual set says that your emotions and your expectations will impact how you interpret what you see.  In other words, you will “see” what you expect to see.

We see what we look for…..

A rather interesting experience was conducted several years ago in which groups of subjects were asked to watch a video of two teams playing basketball. One group was asked to count the number of times the red team dribbled the ball and the other group was asked to do the same thing with the blue team.

Each group did as they were instructed to do.

However, in the middle of the video, an actor dressed as a gorilla was shown dancing on the screen.

Each group was asked if they noticed the gorilla and a significant number of subjects indicated that no gorilla appeared on screen.

The subjects were so focussed on counting, they failed to notice the gorilla.

In previous posts, I’ve written about driving down a  street and not really seeing any of the fast food restaurants and driving down the same street when hungry and “seeing” all of the restaurants.

How does all this fit together and what does it have to do with the Holiday Season?.

Typically, the Holiday Season is upbeat and a time when we engage with others in a feel good way.  Yes, I know that there is downside to the Holidays as well including the stress we may experience having too much to do and too little time to do it, thinking about past Holidays and so forth.

Surprise

But, this Holiday Season, try setting yourself up to look for, and find, things that surprise you. This is strategically deploying the emotion of surprise so that it works for you.

You want to be surprised!

When surprised, you will be motivated to engage with the object/issue of your surprise.

You will see things about others and yourself you haven’t noticed before.

Here is what you are going for…

A gift to others...

The “gift” you give others will involve seeing them in a new light and, perhaps, improving your relationship with them.

Look for something new in a friend that you can compliment them about or something interesting that you haven’t really paid attention to before that you can engage with them about.

Look for something new in your kids or your spouse that is surprising to you because you haven’t really paid attention to it before.

A “gift” to yourself...

Look for something new about yourself that’s either always been there or that is something you’d like to do, build upon, or engage in as in “Wow, I never realized that about me!”

Anticipation

I don’t know about you but I suspect that you, like me, remember Christmas morning waking up experiencing the emotion of Anticipation of what might be under the tree when I went downstairs. I was all excited.  I didn’t know what I would find but I was anticipating that it would be good.

This is the emotion I want you to experience but I want you to expect that you will be pleasantly surprised by what you observe in and  learn about those who are close to you and yourself.

Putting It All Together

If you set out to do this as I’ve suggested, you will be looking for new “positive” ways to view yourself and others which will surprise you and you will anticipate or expect to find what you are looking for.