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This is part 1 of a two part blog post on emotions…

We live in a world in which events like school shootings, a lone gunman firing an  automatic weapon into a crowd of people attending an outdoor concert, or a policemen beating up a person of interest or shooting and killing an unarmed individual pleading for his own safety strain our ability to understand what leads these people to act in this manner and beg for a reasonable explanation.

As these behaviors do not appear to be logical, the explanations often include some reference to mental illness and attempt to blame the behavior on emotions gone awry.

In other words, so the thinking goes, these people must be crazy to do what they did and they must be under the control of their emotions.

If they were “in their right minds”, they would control themselves and act more appropriately. The implication is that we need both more treatment for mental illness, and more  logic (less emotion) in our country.

Yes, having logical, in control, people making good decisions is both helpful and desirable. And, yes, we do need more to make mental health treatment more available in this country.

Is it possible that you can have logical, in control, people making, what most people consider very bad decisions and engaging in equally egregious behavior based on those decisions?

The answer is, “yes”.

The issue here is neither about mental health treatment or about emotions verses logic.

While I am in no way condoning the deplorable behavior listed above and it is possible that mental illness was a factor, I am questioning three primary assumptions that pop up every time some outrageous behavior appears in the news:

1. All human behavior is either logical or it is emotional.

If the behavior is logical, it is appropriate, controlled, and understandable.

If it is not logical, it must be emotional (erratic, driven, devoid of logic).

2. Any behavior that doesn’t seem logical to us must be the result of emotions gone awry.

If the behavior is illogical, it must be due to emotions which have hijacked the person and are causing the deplorable behavior.

3.  Out of control behaviors imply the presence of mental illness.

So, you are either behaviorally stable or mentally ill.

The implication is that we need more logic and less emotion.

If emotions led to insane, out of control people, we’d be crazy to want more emotions.

Indeed, nobody wants crazed automatons running around doing dumb destructive things. No argument there, we all want to avoid dumb destructive behavior.

But, bad decisions and the undesirable behavior that follows from these decisions do not necessarily prove the presence of mental illness.

And, the unfortunate spin-off from demonizing emotions in the case of egregious behavior is that all emotions (when experienced and misunderstood) begin to be seen as “bad”, “undesirable”, “intrusive”, etc.

Let’s dive a little deeper….

While there may be a modicum of truth in each, statements 1, 2, and 3 are for the most part limited, misguided, incorrect and misleading.

• Statement #1 is a false dichotomy.
• Statement #2 implies that one’s emotions have become both autonomous and cancerous.
• Statement #3 implies that anything we do not understand must be attributed to an underlying disease process.

So, if the issue is not the behavior on which we all agree, what is the issue that we need to discuss?

This is the critical question.

The answer is not the emotions, per se, although how we deal with our emotions is an important topic.

Rather, the critical issue we need to discuss is how we, as a culture, and you, as an individual, view emotions.  In other words, what do you think emotions are and how do believe they impact each of us?

If your picture of emotions is that they…

• force an out of control road-rage crazed driver to shoot at another car, or
• leave the out of control cop with no other alternative than to shoot or beat up a perpetrator, or
• compel the out of control  spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend to beat up their significant other, or
• cause the out of control  co-worker  to get angry with  and demean you, as a female, when you point out their inappropriate behavior in the office,

then, yes, less emotion is needed.

But, what if your picture is inaccurate?

“Out of control” implies that feelings….

• have taken over,
• are totally controlling,
• are forcing and compelling a certain behavior while eliminating alternatives, and
• are causing the individual to engage in the clearly unacceptable behavior they’ve displayed.

Take another look at these words…

>taken over  >totally controlling  >forcing  >compelling    >causing

These words imply that the individual’s (male or female) emotions have transformed this person into a  robot.

In this picture, emotions and logic are mutually exclusive.

• You are either an emotional time-bomb waiting to explode with no logical fail-safe mechanisms in place

or

• You are an unemotional, logic-only Vulcan (think Spock in the TV series StarTrek) who has eliminated emotion from his life.

I am suggesting that emotions and logic are mutually reinforcing and when used together can lead to better decisions and more appropriate actions.

This is where we’ll begin in Part 2.

In an earlier post (Dealing with Procrastination as Anxiety 5/11/16), I noted that most of the procrastination literature tends to focus on two strategies:

1. setting S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic) goals, breaking those goals down into smaller components, and
2.  rewarding yourself when you complete those smaller chunks.

These are both very good strategies.

Procrastination as Anxiety

I suggested a three step process based on The Emotions as Tools Model and the idea that procrastination is basically fueled by the emotion of anxiety.

The three steps were:

1. Accept and Validate Your Anxiety.
2. Turn Anxiety into anticipation and excitement. (eustress)
3. Let the excitement motivate you and move you past your procrastination.

These three steps remain relevant as long as you can identify the anxiety which underlies and perpetuates your procrastination.

Procrastination and factors other than anxiety: Mastering Procrastination

But, what if something else (either as a unique factor or in combination with anxiety) elicits your procrastination?

I’m suggesting that you approach procrastination as if it were an emotion. In all my posts, I talk of emotions as tools that provide you with information about how you perceive and interact with your surroundings.

Procrastination is a behavior not a feeling.  But, you can look at your behavior as a “messenger” and learn to master it.

Mastering your procrastination involves assessing what is going on with you and your choice to procrastinate and choosing a more adaptive response rather than the avoiding/delaying reaction which constitutes your procrastination.

The mastery process of dealing with your procrastination requires:

• validating the procrastination
  • accepting instead of getting mad at yourself for procrastinating,
• assessing the message of your behavior
  • what is leading you to avoid the important task and focus on the urgent task which is demanding your attention,
• noticing what you are gaining by procrastinating
  • avoiding an uncomfortable task,
  • being forced to accept that you are not up to or sufficiently prepared for the task
  • accepting that you were not being assertive in making it clear that the task was not appropriate for you or in saying “no”,
  • denying your anger because the task was forced on you
  • etc
• attending to what you are telling yourself to justify your procrastination,

Moving past your procrastination by making a choice.

Once you understand the message of the procrastination and what your procrastinating is doing for you, you can decide how you want to respond to and deal with your delaying/avoiding behavior.

Possibilities include:

• Setting better goals
• Taking a different approach to the task
• Choosing not to complete the task

Make a plan and get to work.

I welcome your comments.

This is the second part of a two part post on understanding feelings.

In my last post, I spoke about a conversation in which my emotionally neutral comment was met with an emotionally tinged reaction which was not expected, did not match the intent, tone or nature of my comment and seemed confusing.

I suggested that the response I received may have been impacted by the filters through which the person I was addressing was interpreting my comment.

These filters, like sunglasses, change how an event is perceived.

I should add here that I am using a conversation as a generic, or general, example of an interaction.  The same mismatch between what you do and how others react to you can involve any action on your part such as making a suggestion in a meeting, asking for a favor, asking someone out on a date, offering to help a friend, refusing a request, and so forth.

Let’s dive deeper.

Feelings and actions

Fact #1: Our actions (behavior) follow from and are directly related to what we feel about the situations in which we find ourselves.

Fact #2: Our feelings (emotions) come from our thoughts about how we perceive our surroundings.

There are 6 primary feelings (mad, sad, glad, fear, disgust and surprise) which have helped us survive as a species since we lived in caves, appear very early in infants and adults across all human cultures (and some subhuman species) and which function today just as they did millennia ago. With the exception of glad and surprise, all the primary emotions are primitive threat detectors.

All the threats Mr. and Mrs. Caveman faced were survival based.

The way the emotional “system” works is that you constantly scan your surroundings for threat.  When subconsciously perceived, threat activates the fight/flight reaction in your brain, generates and emotion, and prepares you to go to war or get the hell away.  This reaction was basically all our cave ancestors had available to them to stay alive in the face of a threat that would kill them.

Today, most of our threats are psychological, not survival based, and we have evolved a mechanism to evaluate threats.  When a threat is perceived,  a second message is sent to the thinking part of the brain (the cortex) which allows us to use the emotion as a tool and think about, assess, and validate the nature of the threat so that we can respond rather than react to the threat.

When feelings are viewed as problematic and as autonomously “forcing” us to take action, we do not assess the feelings (or the nature of the threat) and our feelings become part of the filters through which we view others.

Spotlight effect

FYI: Here is a YouTube segment on the SpotLight effect.

This is the tendency of a person, when emotional, to believe that they are the center of other’s attention and that the actions of others are both directed at and specifically involve the individual.

A classic study was done in which volunteers wore tee shirts with sayings  which could be seen as “provocative” (Barry Manilow ) by a group of others (college students participating in an experiment).

Note: At the time, Barry Manilow was not very popular among college students.

When asked if they were noticed, the volunteers believed that a majority of people in the study group noticed and their shirts.  Most of the college students, when asked, didn’t even notice the Barry Manilow shirts.

When we view the world through a set of filters, we tend to react as if everything that happens around us is all about us.  This is often an incorrect assumption. It is called the Spotlight Effect because we act as if there is a spotlight on us which illuminates and sets us apart.

Your World Model

Your model of the world is your set of filters through which you view the world.

Your model of the world consists of:

• The stereotypes you use to measure other people.

One example is the following: Marie is doing that because she is a woman (not because she is Marie taking action in the moment).

• The extent to which you tend to overgeneralize in how you interpret a situation as opposed to dealing with each interaction based on what is actually taking place.

An example is the following: All men are … (not Yes, Sam is a man but he is also an individual taking action in the moment). or The Boss always does XYZ as opposed to The Boss did XYZ in this situation.)

• The extent to which your past impacts your present interactions.  Being in the present moment is called mindfulness.

An example is the following: Every time I’ve tried to stand up for myself, I’ve been criticized. I’ll just shut up because nothing will happen anyway. as opposed to Well, I’ll give it a shot this time,  maybe, it will turn out differently.

Actions follow from our feelings.  Our feelings come from our thoughts and our perceptions.  Thoughts both create and come from our filters. We don’t question our own thoughts, we accept them as reality.

We take action based on our perceived reality (our filters, the Spotlight Effect and our worldview).

When another person reacts to you in a way that seems contradictory, disproportionate, or inappropriate, you may be able gain an understanding of their actions by attempting to gain some insight into their model of the world.

This is also true when your reaction to another person results in consequences you do not want.

If the relationship with this person is important to you, then learning how to understand their world view may be worthwhile.

I welcome your comments.

You probably looked at the title of this blog and said, “Huh?”

Well, if you will bare with me, I’ll explain a very important concept that will help you make sense of some of the experiences you (or someone you know) have already had.

A few years ago, I started a conversation with an acquaintance of mine by saying, “How are you doing?”.

To my surprise, without even a pause, he looked at me intensely and said, “What exactly do you mean?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

So, I rather lamely said, “Nothing, really.”

I found out later from a mutual friend that this individual had been accused of having done something about which he was embarrassed. His comment to me implied that he thought I was prying or drawing attention to his situation.

In fact, I knew nothing about what he was experiencing and was merely saying, “Hello.”

My initial question to him was only intended to communicate to him that I was acknowledging his presence.

In other words, asking “How are you doing?” was the same as  saying “Hello.”

Clearly, my friend viewed my communication very differently than I did.

If you have ever had a conversation “go sideways” and wondered what was happening, here is one possible explanation.

Each of us views the world, and our interactions with it, through a set of filters based on our past, what we may be experiencing in the moment, our expectations, and so forth.

When our interactions with others are not impacted by emotions and there are no effective filters operating, our communication, generally, are clear and absent of misunderstanding.

If, however, in an interaction, you get a response to which you automatically think “Huh?”, then it is quite likely that the person with whom you are interacting has misunderstood what you have said (or done) and is viewing the interaction through a filter.

Sunglasses

When you put on a pair of sunglasses (brown, green, grey, yellow), you notice that your view of the world appears to change. As you know you are wearing sunglasses, you realize the “change” is not real but is due to the filter you are wearing.

But, imagine that you did not know you were wearing sunglasses?

An experiment was done several years ago in which volunteers were fitted with glasses which turned the world upside down.  Initially, as you would imagine, they were disoriented.  Over time, however, they adjusted to their new perspective and were able to function “normally”.  They functioned as if the filters were not there.

But, the filters were there!

We do the same thing with the filters we wear. We get used to them and may not be aware that they exist and impact the way we interact with the world.

What are some of our filters?

• Gender:

Are you misjudged as a man just because you are a man?

Are you misjudged as a woman in a professional setting just because you are an assertive woman.

• Age:

Do people misjudge you based on their perceptions of your age (too old or too young)?

• Race/Ethnicity:

Are you misjudged by others based on your race or ethnicity?

• Past experiences related to abuse, unfair treatment, feeling misunderstood or inadequate.

To what extent might the past experiences of the individual with whom you are interacting be impacting how they are interacting with you?

If this person’s past experiences have led them to be excessively self-protective, it is possible that they are relating to you, in the present, as if you are similar to those people in their past who misjudged, or mistreated, them.

Disclaimer

It is important to point out that I am not, in this post, referring to someone who, as a “racist” or a “misogynist”, demeans an entire class of people based solely on a specific characteristic.  While there certainly are filters that are operative which impact this person’s actions, dealing with these individuals can be very complicated.

I am more interested, in this post, in people who may not be mean-spirited but who judge others and interact with them based on misinformation or stereotypes. For these folks, the extent to which their filters impair their interpersonal interactions is less severe than it is for a “racist” or a “misogynist”.

Misinformation and stereotypes can be corrected.

Attitudes that are mean-spirited, derogatory and demeaning typically are resistant to change. Racism and misogyny are often denied, are abhorrent, and are very hard to redirect.

In this post, I have introduced the concept of an individual’s filters and the idea that one’s behavior can be, unknowingly, impacted by their filters.

In part 2, I will explore feelings, the Spotlight Effect, and one’s Model of the World.

Happy Independence Day, America…

Our forefathers knew the consequences when they put their names on the Declaration of Independence. They risked being jailed, losing their land, or worse.

While emotions must have run very high in the room, we have to assume that each signer was emotionally prepared to face the consequences and take the momentous action facing them.

Anyone who reads the news is familiar with the First Responders who rush in to offer aid when emergencies occur.  These “heros” (they don’t see themselves this way) are firefighters saving homes, police protecting citizens and so forth.

These first First Responders are trained to both deal with the emergency they are called in to handle and with the emotions that must be mastered during the crisis so that these feelings do not interfere with the job that needs to be done.

First Responders are expert firefighters, policemen, medical personnel etc and they are masters of their emotions.

While I hope you never have to face a life-saving emergency or threat to your life, loved ones, or property, it is more than likely that, when you face your own emotional emergencies, you will find yourself in a situation in which your emotions seem to take over and get in the way of you “getting the job done”.

Like many people, you may believe (based on your experience) that your emotions control you.  You feel angry and you act out in an angry outburst.  You feel anxious and you worry compulsively about some future event.

While your experience may inform you that your feelings exert some irresistible power over you, your experiences and your interpretations of those experiences are incorrect.

Just like the First Responders who train for the emergencies they will certainly face, you can prepare yourself and “train” for your next encounter with your feelings.

This is what emotional mastery is all about.

Let’s review the emotional mastery cycle.

By the way, you can download a copy of the anger mastery cycle by scrolling up to the homepage above and clicking on the Emotional Mastery Cycle PDF on the right hand side of the page under “Pages”.  While this chart covers anger specifically, the same process (with some modifications) applies to all emotions.

The emotional mastery cycle starts with you constantly, and subconsciously, scanning your surroundings for any possible threat.  Once a threat is perceived, the body goes on “alert” and prepares itself to deal with the perceived threat.

No action on your part is required up to this point as your body is doing what it was designed to do.  Your body is engaged in a process to help you survive.

Once you become aware of the emotion that you are feeling, mastering your emotion calls for you to first “manage” the emotion by S.T.O.P (ing) the emotional process. As I discuss in my Amazon best selling book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool, the “S” in S.T.O.P  reminds you to stop or pause your emotion.

This sounds difficult but is quite learnable.  You pause the process by taking a deep breath.

While your current emotional process may involve feeling the emotion and reacting, you can prepare yourself to take a breath whenever you feel an “emergency” emotion such as anxiety, anger, jealousy, envy and so forth.

I call these “emergency” emotions because they alert you to a situation which you perceive to be problematic, needing your attention, or something you might need to avoid or go to war over.

These are the messages of the emotion.  They reflect your initial perception.  They do not, necessarily, reflect the “truth”.

After you take a deep breath, the “T” in S.T.O.P  reminds you to take a psychological and physical step back from the situation.  When you “step back” from the situation, you give yourself some “space” to reflect on what is actually going on.

Taking a step back creates the space so you can engage the “O”which reminds you to observe what is actually going on.

Now that you have taken a breath to slow the emotional process, taken a step back to give you some space to reflect, and used that space to observe, you are ready for “P” which reminds you to practice emotional intelligence.

Being emotionally intelligent is the essence of emotional mastery.

The final step in mastering your emotion is to assess and validate the emotion you are feeling and choose an appropriate response.

In this step, you objectively decide whether there is (or is not) an actual “emergency”, whether the feeling you are experiencing “fits” the situation, and what response, if any, will best serve to deal with the situation you are facing.

When a First Responder trains, he or she, goes through a variety of simulations which approximate the emergencies they will encounter and hone the skills they will eventually need.

Many professional atheletes not only physically practice their sport but “visualize” being successful.  They use their imaginations to prepare them for competition.

Your emotional preparedness.

• You can use your imagination by thinking about situations which, for you, elicit “emergency” emotions.  When you do this, you may actually feel that emotion. 
• Once you imagine the situation, visualize yourself going through the emotional mastery cycle (including S.T.O.P), assessing the situation, and choosing a response.
• You may have to do this several times.

By preparing yourself to master your emotions, you will be more adept at successfully dealing with your “emergencies”.

You also move toward emotional independence because emotional mastery means you are using your emotions as tools.

What I am suggesting is not easy but it is doable.

I welcome your comments.