Blog – Page 25 – The Emotions Doctor

Sometimes you do everything right and still get the wrong results. A suggestion

The scenario.

This is a picture of a bicycle frame and a bicycle tire both of which are securely chained to the stand. Unfortunately, all the rest of the bicycle is gone. I am sure the owner of the bicycle thought he (or she) did the right thing by putting a chain with a secure lock through the frame and detached wheel. Clearly, the owner did not get the result (a secure bike) that he had anticipated.

The same thing can happen when you express your emotions.

I discussed the emotional process in 3 earlier posts (3/31/16, 4/6/16 and 4/13/16).

Emotionally, you are a threat detecting organism. Once you perceive a threat and your Amygdala subconsciously prepares your body to REACT and engage the threat, your cerebral cortex kicks in and enables you to assess the nature of the threat and choose how you want to RESPOND.

So, let’s say that you correctly assess the threat your feeling informs you about (The threat is genuine.), you choose your response (rather than react), and the reaction you get is not at all what you expected.

As an example. You are standing in line to get to the cashier and someone cuts in line. This is a “threat” to your view of right and wrong. In other words, it isn’t right and it isn’t fair. You get annoyed (mild anger) or even angry, gauge your response to the situation and assertively tell the person that you (and others) have been waiting in line and that they need to go to the back of the line.

When we get angry, it means we have perceived a threat to our egos, our goals, our values, our relationship, or our resources from our point of view. This is what anger, as a threat detector, is designed to do.

You expect the line-cutter to apologize and exit the line. This is what they “should” do.

Instead, they glare at you and tell you to mind your own business.

What went wrong?

In short, the person with whom you are interacting had not read the social “script” which states what a reasonable person should do in this situation. Notice the italicized words. Their anger tells you that they see you as a threat and that they are attempting to minimize the damage they believe you have caused them.

To put it another way, you viewed the “threat” from your point of view and acted accordingly. They did the same thing.

Who is wrong here?

You can answer this question in several ways.

The word “wrong” implies a judgment.

So, this person has violated a “social norm” regarding lines. In this sense, we judge him (or her) to be wrong.

Emotionally, however, everyone’s feelings are based on their view of the world. This is important to keep in mind when we deal with other people. Your emotions are always valid for you (and the other person). Valid means that your feelings are consistent with how you view the world.

Your feelings may be valid for you but wrong for the situation.

Or, in this case, his feelings may be valid for him but wrong (according to social norms) for the situation.

You, however, have experienced a valid feeling (anger), your emotion is right for the situation, and you took the right action to nullify the threat. Unfortunately, what you did resulted in the situation escalating.

Another example.

A few months ago, I posted a question on “Connect A Professional Woman’s Network (LinkedIn). I wanted to know how professional women were treated when they showed anger (both appropriate anger and anger appropriately displayed) in their work settings.

Over 2000 responses indicated that when women got angry, the men in their work settings demeaned and marginalized them and/or called them derogatory (misogynistic) names.

These women did all the right things (from an anger mastery point of view) and got all the wrong results.

So, what can you (as a man or a woman) do?

The short answer is that you shift your point of view and use the energy of your anger (or other feeling) to motivate and energize the actions you need to take to nullify the threat.

My assumption here is that you have correctly perceived a threat and that some action needs to be taken to nullify that threat.

In this situation, you need to shift your point of view to that of the other person. The questions to ask are: How does he (or she) see the situation and in what way does he see you as a threat?

Please note that I am not saying his point of view is correct (by any standard). Nor am I suggesting that you ignore your perception of threat. On the contrary, he (or his actions) are a threat which you need to address. But, you can’t address these issues until you understand and work around his perceptions.

There are several actions you can take.

First, you can apologize for any misunderstandings that may have occurred. Note that you are not apologizing for your getting angry. You are only attempting to soften any misunderstandings.

Next, you need to take a “project manager” approach. By this, I mean that you need to step back and review what your goals are in the situation, what the stumbling blocks are, what risks you might be exposed to, and what resources you need to move forward.

You are approaching your situation with this person as if it were a project and using your anger to give you the energy you need. You are still angry but you are not outwardly showing your anger as this will only escalate the interaction.

Your “project” goal is to address the threat.

The stumbling block is that his ego, sense of vulnerability, misperceptions, or hidden agendas are preventing you from addressing his actions.

Your resources include your ability to find a different way to approach him. Perhaps, you need to bring in a third person or you need to approach this individual from a different angle perhaps a cost-benefit analysis or a productivity or a workplace environment suggestion.

The point here is that you look for an approach which will grab his attention, take the focus off of you as a possible threat, and enable you to address the issue of his behavior that needs to change (for a reason he sees as important).

This approach will work in a professional setting or at home with your kids or spouse. In using this approach, you are mastering your anger by using it as a source of energy and you are mastering the anger of the other person by understanding his perception of you as a threat and working around it.

I welcome your comments.

Why you might dislike having emotions.

Let me start by explaining my (and others) take on what emotions are. I will then address why you may dislike having them. By the way, academic writers will distinguish between emotions and feelings but, in every day use, they are the same.

There are 6 primary emotions that we, as humans, and some subhumans are born with. You can see these emotions develop over time in your kids.

The six primary emotions are mad, sad, glad, fear, disgust and surprise. Some of these emotions appear at birth and some develop a little later. Many of the more common feelings with which you may be familiar can be thought of as a combination of these primary feelings.

With the exception of glad and surprise, all of the primary emotions are primitive threat detectors which have existed since we lived in caves and which were “designed” by evolution to keep us alive so we could procreate and survive as a species. Early man did not have sharp claws or teeth to protect him. He did have his emotional threat detectors.

Here is how the emotional process works….

You constantly (and subconsciously) scan your surroundings for threats. When you perceive a threat, a fast track message goes to your Amygdala in your brain and then to the Thalamus. This elicits fight or flight and prepares your body to react to the threat. At the same time, a slower message goes to the cerebral cortex or thinking part of your brain. The cerebral cortex allows you to assess the nature of the the threat and choose how you want to respond.

Two emotional myths are that there are negative emotions and that your emotions control you. These two myths (there are others) are the reason you may dislike having emotions. I address 5 emotional myths in my book Emotions as Tools: A Self Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings. You can download the first two chapters of my book without an opt-in by scrolling up to the “welcome” post.

Some emotions are labelled as negative because:

they do not feel good when you have them (a negative hedonic quality)
you may be negatively labelled by others when you express them, or
you may do things you later regret when you experience the feeling.

Feeling disgusted is not pleasurable and feeling anxious or vulnerable may be equated with powerlessness (also not pleasurable).

If you are a woman, you may be labelled a “bitch” or “hormonal” when you express anger.

When you are angry, you may do dumb things.

The emotion is wrongly blamed for the “negative” sensations, the misogynist labels, and the “negative” acting out.

In fact, there are no negative feelings in the sense that we would not want to eliminate any of them. We may turn off the smoke detector that blares when we burn toast or has a weak battery. This is not a good decision.

All feelings are adaptive and the behavior you exhibit is based on the choices you make in response to the emotion. The feeling may start the process but you are always responsible for the decisions you make and the behavior you exhibit.

So, you may dislike a feeling that is hedonically negative, elicits results you do not want or that appears to cause negative behavior.

Once you realize that all feelings are tools which give you information you can use to improve your life and your relationships, the hedonic quality of the emotion becomes secondary and unimportant. And, once your realize that your emotions do not control you and that you can use your emotions as tools and choose your response, you will welcome your feelings in the same way you “welcome” the little light on your dashboard that tells you that you need to service your car. You may say, “Oh, crap, I don’t want to service the car now (because you are out of town or don’t have the money)” but you ignore the warning at your own peril.

If anger is the emotion that you “dislike”, I recommend you xcroll up and download the first two chapters of my Amazon bestseller book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool. You can buy the book on Amazon.

As always, thanks for reading and I welcome your comments.

Understanding and Mastering Stress: A different approach

Nearly everyone has experienced “stress”. It is an overwhelming feeling that:

Things are not going right for you
You are being asked to do too many things at one time
You do not feel qualified or equipped to handle what is being asked of you

You have heard others, or have said yourself, that you are “stressed out” and that chronic stress can, over time, damage you physically.

But, have you ever wondered what stress is?

Mechanical stress

Think about what happens when a physical support on a bridge is overstressed or fatigued. It breaks and the bridge collapses. Put too much physical stress on a wooden pencil by bending it and it snaps.

Psychological stress

Psychological stress is, by analogy, similar. When you perceive that too many demands, or expectations, are being placed on you, your capacity to handle the load is surpassed and you feel overwhelmed.

Now, here is something you may not know.

You need a certain amount of stress in order to function. Think about a clothes line. If it is too loose, you can’t hang anything on it. Too tight and it snaps.

I. The Yrkes-Dodson Law and Overwhelm

The Yrkes-Dodson law captures this relationship between too little and too much stress. The graph below was copied from wikimedia

On the left, you can see the word “Performance”. Another word that could be used here is “effectiveness“. On the bottom, you see “arousal”. Another word that could be used here is “stress“.

In order to understand the Yrkes-Dodson Law, think about being asleep. If your arousal level is too low, as when you are asleep, you can’t effectively do anything except, perhaps, dream. As you wake up, your arousal level increases. Perhaps, you need a cup of coffee to get you going. You get to work, check your schedule, set your priorities and you are ready to go.

Being ready to be productive is “optimal arousal” on the curve. You don’t feel stressed but you are energized.

If your boss, or circumstances, begin to pile more responsibilities on you, you will move past your optimal arousal level and your performance (effectiveness) begins to drop. You are feeling anxious or stressed.

Anxiety is another word for stress. Three of my earlier posts directly address the emotion of anxiety and I have a chapter on anxiety in my book Emotions as Tools: Control Your Life not your Feelings

There are a few ways you can deal with this type of stress:

1. Take a deep breath.

Taking a breath lowers your physiological arousal so you can go on to step 2.

2. Prioritize.

Look at all the tasks facing you and prioritize them in any way that works for you (most to least important, easiest to complete to most difficult, time involved to complete the task from least to most, actions you can take from delegate through postpone to eliminate).

Having a plan brings order to the tasks facing you.

3. Make a plan.

Once you set your priorities, make a plan to deal with the issues one at a time, and execute your plan.

This step moves you back on the curve into your optimal range.

Eustress vs Distress

Stress that is enervating and moves you into your optimal zone is called eustress.

Stress that moves you past your optimal zone and lowers your effectiveness is called distress.

II. A definition of psychological stress.

Stress ==> Expectations ≠ Reality

Stress happens when what you expect to be taking place(your expectations) is not the same as what is actually going on (your perception of reality.

This approach to stress fits into Yrkes-Dodson but can be applied more broadly. In many situations in which you find yourself, you will have an expectation regarding the way things should be. You have expectations:

about work,
about your relationships,
about how your computer should work,
about your kids
and so forth

While you may, or may not, be aware that you have expectations and they won’t become an issue unless they don’t pan out, you do have them.

It is only when the reality of your situation violates your expectation that you feel stressed and you become very aware of how you think things should be (your expectations).

Handling psychological stress.

There are two possibilities here, both of which are designed to reduce stress by aligning your expectations with your perception of reality.

You can reassess your expectations and adjust them to match reality.
You can reassess and adjust your perception of reality to match your expectations.

In the first strategy, your assessment may tell you that your expectations were unrealistic. You believed the other person would do more or act differently than they did but you either did not do your due diligence, did not carefully read the contract, or misunderstood what was supposed to happen. When you realize that you have erred with unreasonable expectations, you make an adjustment, your expectations match reality, and your stress is gone.

In the second strategy, your assessment might tell you that you have misperceived reality. The other person is doing exactly what you expected and you incorrectly judged them, reacted inappropriately, or just misunderstood. In this case, you adjust your perception of their actions, the match between expectations and reality is reestablished and your stress is gone.

You now have a more adaptive view of stress and some suggestions for mastering it.

Thanks for reading and I welcome your comments.

How can you look into the cause of your own anger?

This is similar to a question that I was asked on Quora.com. I thought it was a good question that you, my readers, might enjoy so I decided to post my answer here.

To whomever asked this question.. I really like the fact that you did NOT ask “What makes me angry?”

While it may seem like the two questions (What makes me angry? and What is the cause of my anger?) are the same, they are not.

When one asks about what “makes” me angry, they imply that the source, or cause, of their anger is outside of themselves. Not only does this change their relationship to their emotions but it gives away any power their emotions provide them to deal with their surroundings and the challenges they face. I mention this because you will hear people question what makes them angry or, worse, blame someone else for making them angry.

In order to understand the cause of your emotions, you have to know what emotions are and how the emotional process works.

There are 6 primary emotions (mad, sad, glad, fear, disgust, and surprise). This number will vary depending on whose list you read but 6 is representative. The emotions in bold are primitive threat detectors and focus our attention on a threat that could hurt us. The other two emotions focus our attention on an activity we might like to engage in. All emotions are adaptive.

Here is how the emotional process works today and has worked since we lived in caves. You are hard wired to unconsciously scan your surroundings for any threat. When our ancestors lived in caves, there were many threats all of which wanted to kill them. These are called survival threats and the emotional process developed in response to these threats and helped us survive as a species. The problem is that today, while survival threats still exist, most of what we face are psychological threats such as traffic jams, difficult deadlines, and exasperating co-workers. While the nature of the threats we face has changed, the emotional process has not.

Once you perceive a threat, your senses alert the emotional center in your brain (the Amygdala)which unconsciously prepares you to deal with the threat. This is the fast track message. Your body does not distinguish between types of threat. It just reacts. Your body’s reaction to the perceived threat informs you that you are experiencing an emotion. At the same time, a slower message goes to the thinking part of your brain (the cerebral cortex). This slower message gives you the opportunity to examine the “cause” or your feeling and choose a response.

So, let’s look at anger and directly address your question.

Each of the emotions has a unique message.

The message of anger is that you perceive a threat that you believe you can eliminate if you throw enough force at it. Your body is prepared to go to war and you have unconsciously determined that you can win the war. Your anger prepares you for battle.

Once you know how your body reacts when you are angry (which muscles tighten, how your breathing changes, the thoughts you have about to eliminate the threat), you are on your way to finding out the cause of your anger.

Your next step is to take a step back from the situation and take a breath. This gives you both physical and psychological space between you and the threat. It also can stop you from reacting and later regretting what you might have done.

Your third step is to assess the nature of the threat. This is the cause of your anger and is the information you are seeking. You can ask yourself, “What is the threat that I am reacting to?” In most cases, it will involve a challenge to your beliefs in right/wrong, your values, the way things should be, your goals, your finances, and so forth. When you identify the perceived threat, you know the cause of your anger.

You master your anger when you take the fourth step which is to choose how you want to respond to the threat. My book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool discusses the anger cycle and anger mastery in more detail.

I welcome your comments.

Does Sadness Transform Into Anger

I contribute to a website where people ask questions. Several people noted that their sadness seemed to transform into anger and they wondered why this happened. I wanted to address this issue as you, my readers, might have experienced this (or know someone who has). Note: For those of you who have read all of my posts, some of this post will be a review.

To begin, sadness does not “transform” into anger. Sadness and anger are both primary emotions which exist in nearly all human species and some subhuman species. The number of primary emotions varies depending on whose list you look at but most writers in the field agree that the main primary emotions are mad (anger), sad, glad (happy), fear, disgust and surprise. If you have kids, you will have noticed these emotions appear early in your kid’s development.

Here is how the emotional process works… you are constantly and unconsciously scanning your surroundings for any threat. When your senses (eyes, ears, nose) sense a threat, a fast track signal goes to the emotional center in your brain (the Amygdala) which then sends out signals, through the Thalamus, to the body to prepare for a fight or flight REACTION. This is all done very fast and totally outside of your awareness. If you were facing a Sabre-toothed tiger or a marauder from another village who wanted to kill you, you would want this process to happen without you having to think about it. Humans have done this since we, as a species, lived in caves or roamed the Savannah. The emotional process evolved to protect us and keep us alive.

I discuss the emotional process (and the primary emotions) in my book Emotions as Tools: A Self Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings (Amazon)

At the same time as the fast track message goes out, a slower (still quick but relatively slower) message goes to the thinking part of your brain (the cerebral cortex) which allows you to assess the nature of the threat and choose a RESPONSE.

You can begin to understand all emotions by looking at the message of the emotion.

The easiest way to start this learning is to look at the primary emotions. The message of the emotion alerts you to the threat that you have perceived to exist. The messages of the primary emotions are as follows:

Mad: you perceive a threat you believe you can eliminate if you throw enough force at it. You are prepared to go to war

Sad: you have experienced a loss. Your body slows down, you want to be alone so you can mourn your loss, tie up loose emotional ends, and, when ready, resume your life.

Glad: you are engaged in an activity with is enjoyable and which you want to continue to do.

Fear: you have a perceived a threat which will kill you unless you either escape from it or freeze in place and hope it will go away.

Disgust: you have experienced a threat which totally turns you off and which you want to get away from. It might be bad food, a nautious smell, or a person whose company you no longer want.

Surprise: you have encountered a new experience that grabs your attention and which you want to know more about.

While it may seem that sadness morphs into anger, they are, in fact, two separate emotions. What is probably happening is that anger replaces sadness.

Anger might replace sadness in this way. You are sad because you have experienced a loss. You become angry when you begin to focus on something either you did, or did not do, that led to the loss. The perceived threat indicated by the anger is to your sense of right and wrong, your belief that the loss could have been, but was not, avoided, and so forth.

Let me give you an example. My wife and I have been friends with the Smiths (a pseudonym) for over 30 years. Recently, Mr. Smith passed away. Mrs. Smith was understandably sad.

As it later turned out, Mr. Smith’s death might have been prevented if he had gotten some recommended tests that he chose to avoid.

When this information came out, Mrs. Smith found herself highly conflicted. Being angry at a spouse who recently died is not a feeling you expect to experience in these situations and she wasn’t sure how to handle it.

She was very sad about losing her husband and she was angry at her husband for “leaving” her by not getting the test that could have saved his life. As you can see, her sadness and her anger reflected two different perceived “threats” and the body’s emotional reaction to those threats.

When I explained the emotional process to her, Mrs. Smith was able to master her emotions and proceed through the process of grieving (being sad about) the loss of her husband.

By the way, you can learn to master your emotions and strategically apply them to improve your life. Emotional mastery involves understanding the message of the emotion, assessing the validity of the message, and choosing an adaptive response. I cover this process in depth in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool (Amazon).

Thanks for reading and I welcome your comments.

It’s 2 AM and you are wide awake. What you might be feeling and what you can do about it.

When questioned about the possibility of Donald Trump being elected as POTUS, many non-Trump voters expressed grave concerns for the future of America. I must admit, I was one of those voters. After the election, I found myself awake at 2 AM worrying (or being anxious) about the future of America and the World. This post is the result of that experience.

Anxiety is another word for worry.

Anxiety is the speeding thoughts, the churning stomach, and the inability to sleep because you are thinking about something that has happened, that is happening, or more likely, that might happen and your brain is trying to sort it all out and keeping you awake while it does this.

It is very important for you to to be able to identify that you are anxious as opposed to having a stomachache or just plain insomnia. Knowing how your body expresses anxiety will enable you to do this.

For me, anxiety presents as my stomach churning, a focusing of my thought/attention on a specific issue which gets replayed over and over. Sleep is elusive because my brain is churning. Your physical correlates might be different.

It is important to note that anxiety is always a future based emotion.

Anxiety is worrying about some outcome that hasn’t happened yet. If something has already occurred or is in the process of taking place, it is what it is. Your worry is about where it might go or what might happen as a result of what is going on. That is a future based concern about a current situation. Mr. Trump is the President-Elect. That is a fact.

As I mention in my book Emotions as Tools, the message of anxiety is: There MIGHT be a threat out there and that threat MIGHT kill me.

While the focus of your anxiety can be on anything, you can experience anxiety in two different forms. You can learn to master anxiety so that it doesn’t control you regardless of the form in which you experience it.

The most common type of anxiety is distress. This is the anxiety that keeps you up at night. It is worrying about an unwanted future outcome to which you react as if it were inevitable, you are unable to to prevent it, and its consequences to you will be disastrous.

Another way to look at distress is the process of catastrophising.

You catastrophise when you take an unwanted situation and project it into the future in its worst possible form and then react in the present as if this future outcome is inevitable.

As an example, when I was in college, a med student jumped off the roof of a building. He survived and when questioned about why he did it, he noted the he got a “D” in an Organic Chemistry class. The interviewer could not understand why one bad grade could lead to a suicide attempt and questioned the student further. The student’s reasoning was as follows:

A “D” grade would keep him out of med school,
if he could not get into med school, he would never be a Doctor
If he could not be a Doctor, he would not be able to support a family
If he could not support a family, he would be a failure
Since he is a failure, he had no reason to live any longer (emphasis added)
In summary, the “D” grade meant that he was a failure and his life, as a failure, was not worth living.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the logic is flawed in that

it leaves out a whole lot of other possibilities,
it focuses on the worst possible outcome in each situation and
it treats that outcome as if it is the only option.

The other face of anxiety is eustress.

Anxiety as eustress looks at a future outcome and uses the upcoming occurrence of that outcome as motivation to take appropriate action to change the nature of the future and thereby eliminate or minimize the occurrence of the unwanted consequences. When my students study for an upcoming exam about which they are anxious, this is using anxiety as eustress.

The antidote to the 2 AM anxiety based sleeplessness is as follows:

1.Correctly identify that you are anxious.

2.Identify the issue about which you are obsessing.

3.Evaluate and rate the probability of the the future outcome on a 0 to 10 scale with 0 = I can’t really say, 1 = highly unlikely and 10 = very likely.

4. Determine what other outcomes are possible besides the unwanted future you are thinking about. In other words, is a different future possible?

5.Identify if the anxiety is distress or eustress by assessing whether or not you can do anything to prepare for, minimize, or eliminate the undesired future outcome.

if you can do something about it, then it is eustress.
If you cannot do anything about it, it is distress.

6. Use the above information to make some choices all of which begin with the letter “D” which should eliminate the anxiety and let you go to sleep. The three choices involve…

Deciding what you can do and writing down the steps you will later take
Delegating by writing down who you need to contact for help or what new information you might need to get or
Dismissing the situation and moving on because you can’t do anything about it.

The serenity “prayer” comes into play here and goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The logic, behind this approach is this.:

If you can’t identify, determine the probability of, or do anything to prevent or minimize the undesired outcome or you can’t identify any alternative futures, you are catastrophising, your thinking is flawed and you need to decide to Dismiss or let it go. With practice, you will learn to turn off the anxiety by focusing on the catastrophising process and realizing the futility of it.
If you decide that an alternative future is possible, you can break the catastrophising process and the anxiety that goes with it by focusing on the possibility that another outcome is possible so you can wait and see how the future unfolds.
If you can do something to eliminate or minimize the unwanted future outcome, you can Decide or Delegate and take some notes to remind you to go back to the issue at a future time. You can then let the anxiety dissipate and you can go to sleep.
As you are not able to get to sleep anyway, so you might as well get up, get out a pad of paper, and take some notes. It may take you 20 to 30 minutes but you will be able to to back to sleep once it is completed. You are ahead of the game in the long run.

This process is not easy but it is doable with practice.

Oh, and about Donald Trump.. While my worries about future war, the uprising of Russia, China and Iran, and what can happen when an easily angered Narcissist gets real power are possible, it is also possible that Congress might unify, Trump might modify, and cooler heads might prevail. I’ll just have to wait and see.

I welcome your comments.

What type of “angerer” are you?

Let me start by saying that I made up the word “angerer”.

Think of the word anger-er in the same way you use the word driver (drive-er) or writer (write-er) or speaker (speak-er). The driver drives, the writer writes, the speaker speaks and the angerer gets angry.

Nearly everyone gets angry sometime and is, therefore, by definition an angerer. For most of us, our anger fits the situation in which it is expressed. For others, not so much.

With this in mind, I will discuss three types of angerers. I should note that this list is meant to be representative and not exhaustive. Other types of angerers most likely could be identified.

Type 1: The master angerer. This is the type of angerer you most want to interact with or you want to become (if you are not already there). This person gets angry but realizes that anger is a tool. He (or she) has learned to master his anger. He is emotionally intelligent, understands what anger is and the anger mastery cycle. While he (or she), accepts responsibility for causing the anger, he realizes that the threat he perceives may, or may not be legitimate. If there is a legitimate threat, he uses the energy of his anger to develop and implement a plan to eliminate the threat. If the threat is due to a misperception, he changes his view of the situation and lets the anger dissipate.

Two basic definitions:

anger: (a primitive threat detector)
anger mastery cycle: (unconscious sensory scanning, unconscious perception of threat and the body’s initial angry reaction, conscious awareness of the anger, validating and assessing one’s anger, lowering one’s arousal, and choosing a response).

Type 2: The managing angerer. This person gets angry but tends to view anger as a negative emotion that must be controlled. He controls his behavior, lowers his arousal and attempts to eliminate his anger. This is the individual who may be referred to Anger Management groups for treatment. This individual may attempt to learn what his triggers are so that the situations which elicit his anger can be avoided.

Type 3: The primitive angerer.

Subtype A: The Blamer. This person, when he (or she) gets angry, tends to blame others for “making me angry” or tends to lash out without much forethought and later blames the anger for any maladaptive things he may have done. He has a sense of entitlement, feels totally justified in being angry and lashing out at others because his anger is controlling him.

Subtype B: The Suppressor. While this person does not show anger outwardly, he (or she) is angry on the inside. The reasons for not showing anger will vary and may include a concern about retaliation, a belief in the anger myth that anger is dangerous and should not be displayed, or a past experience in which the anger was displayed and an unwanted negative outcome occured. The problem for the suppressor is that anger is a response to the perception of threat. As long as the threat exists, there is a real possibility that the held-in anger may become chronic and lead to either unwanted physical illness or an uncontrolled angry outburst that exceeds the situation in which the outburst occurs.

Subtype C: The Substituter. This individual (usually male) is not comfortable experiencing or expressing feelings such as vulnerability, anxiety, guilt, jealousy, etc. He is, however, quite comfortable with anger. Consequently, when he experiences an uncomfortable feeling, he replaces that feeling with anger. The cover-up works to shift his focus away from the situation as it is but does nothing to resolve the issues which exist and which elicited the uncomfortable feeling.

Subtype D: The Displayer. This person uses anger instumentally to achieve a desired end result. This person displays anger (looks like they are angry) eventhough they are not angry.

Two possible outcomes the Displayer desires are:

Creating space. Anger, as an emotion, tells people to back off. This, by the way, is what anger, as a primitive threat detector, is supposed to do and may have helped our cave ancestors survive. By displaying anger, the Displayer, can get people to back away and give him (or her) some physical and psychological space.

2. Manipulating others. Another desired outcome might be to manipulate people into doing what the Displayer wants. When anger is displayed, other people might want to appease the angry person by giving in to them. When this occurs in the context of a relationship and the anger is legitimate, understanding, validating, and responding to the anger by “giving in” may be totally justified. When the anger is used instrumentally to manipulate another person, the anger is primitive, dishonest and inappropriate.

If one of these subtypes of angerers is you, and your anger is working against you and making your life more complicated, you might want to take some time to assess whether your anger is working to improve your relationships and get your needs met. I have three recommendations for you.

Scoll back up to the “Welcome” entry on this blog and download the first chapter of my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.
Click on this link which will take you Amazon and buy my book.
Leave a comment below that you want more information and I will attempt to provide it for you.

If you have to deal with any of these angerers (except the suppressor), the initial approach is the same. The main idea behind approaching these people is that they believe their anger is appropriate to the situation. You will use the principles of anger mastery to deal with the angerer and the emotion being displayed.

Note: There is not a whole lot you can do with the Suppressor as he is not showing any anger.

The process of anger mastery involves validating the initial feeling, assessing the nature of the threat, and choosing a response that fits the situation.

Your first intervention is to take a step back from the. Your second intervention is to validate their anger. When you do this, you are NOT saying that you agree with their assessment of the situation or of you as a threat. Remember that the message of anger is that the angerer perceives a threat they believe they can eliminate if they throw enough force at it. They believe that anger is the best emotion for the situation and you are not challenging this. All you are doing is acknowledging their “right” to be angry. Whether or not the anger is indeed, valid (appropriate to the situation) will come later.

Once you have given them some space, you can then ask for clarification regarding anything you may have done which led them to be so angry with you.

If you receive some information about the threat they perceive, you can choose how you want to respond to it.

I welcome your comments.

The application of the Emotions as Tools Model to Business Part 2

Last week, I discussed the Emotions as Tools Model, the concept of threat, and anxiety. In this post, I discuss anger.

Anger

Anger is a here-and-now emotion the message of which is: I am facing a threat that I believe I can overcome or eliminate if I throw enough force at it. While you can get angry about something that has already happened (the past), or about what you expect to happen (the future), you are always angry in the present concerning a threat you are motivated to do something about now.

My book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool specifically addresses the emotion of anger.

As an entrepreneur, you might get angry at suppliers who do not fulfill the terms of a contract, at employees who are irresponsible or fail to deal appropriately with customers, your computer for not working right, yourself for not doing something you “should” have done, and so forth. Now, you might rightly say that getting angry at a computer makes no sense. And, you would be right. But, I did not say your anger had to be appropriate for the situation. I only indicated that the message of anger is that you perceive a threat you believe you can eliminate if you throw enough force at it. Ever heard of someone destroying a computer?

Employees can get angry at you for a perceived injustice, angry at each other, or angry at a customer. I know of an individual whose job is technical support. While she is technically very good and can answer any question that comes up, she does not do well with customers who “blame” her for advice they don’t like or unwanted results due to their not following the advice that was given, who direct their frustrations with the company or its policies at her, or who become “belligerent” for reasons unknown. Notice the highly subjective nature of the words in quotes. While she does not express her anger at the customer, she carries it with her and chronic anger can lead to physical issues for her or her leaving the company.

Customers can get angry at you or your employees for any number of reasons.

I recently had some landscaping done and the employee assigned to manage my “project” did a horrible job. I was angry at both this staff member and the company for the poor work that was done. The company was “angry” with the employee who they chose to fire because his “failure” could have negatively impacted an otherwise very good and hard won reputation. Fortunately, the company sent out a different employee who handled my concerns and alleviated my anger.

Understanding what anger is and how to master both one’s own anger and anger directed at you could benefit you, your employees, and your customers.

You can download a copy of The Anger Mastery Cycle for free by scrolling up to the Welcome post.

When you perceive a threat you decide that you can eliminate or, in other words, that is less powerful than you, you label the emotion as anger. If you are naïve about your anger, you probably will react and later, if inappropriate, will regret what you did.

If you know what anger is and the message of anger, you can move into anger management and protect yourself by taking a step back from the issue (physical space) and lowering your arousal by taking a deep breath (psychological space).

You can then move into anger mastery which involves assessing the nature of the threat and choosing how you want to respond.

If the threat is genuine, you can use the energy of the anger as motivation to make a plan and deal with the threat.

If you, or someone else, are still angry and the threat is not “genuine”, there are three possibilities:

The first possibility is that there is no threat and you (or they) have misunderstood what is going on. For example, you thought your provider was intentionally messing with you only to find out that the delivery was delayed by an event beyond the provider’s control.
The second possibility is that the anger is being used as a secondary feeling. Anger, as an emotion, is both familiar and “comfortable” to men specifically. Anger is an energizing emotion and elicits a feeling of being “powerful”. Because of this, anger may be substituted for another feeling such as vulnerability, embarrassment, or hurt, which is less familiar and leaves a man feeling “weak”. An employee may express anger as a cover-up and substitute for feeling “dumb” due to a poor decision.
The third possibility is that anger is being used The individual isn’t really all that angry but knows that anger leads others to back off from or give in to the demands being made. Instrumental anger is deployed as a tool to bring about a desired outcome. This can happen in an office (or other) setting.

While both secondary and instrumental anger are “dishonest” anger, they still appear to be anger and must be managed and mastered.

With the above knowledge, if you are angry, you can evaluate your perceived threat and your angry reaction to it and choose how you want to respond so that you can effectively deal with the situation in which you find yourself.

With another person’s anger, you can use your knowledge about this emotion to begin to manage (help them resolve) their anger.

Three steps are involved in dealing with anger that is directed at you:

First, you need to validate their anger and their right to be angry because the emotion follows from their perception of the event and they are correct in their perception until helped to see otherwise. Once you have accepted their anger, you are no longer a direct threat to them. The reason for this is that they are angry at you (or what you represent) and assume you will act in a threatening manner which they are prepared to counter. When you validate their anger (acknowledge their right to be angry not that they are right in their anger), you change the equation.
Secondly, you can now assess the validity of the threat they perceive.
Thirdly, once you have done this, you can choose how you want to respond to them and resolve whatever issue they have reacted to.

This is what happened with me in the example I gave above.

In parts 1 and 2 of this post, I introduced you the Emotions as Tools Model and how it can advantageously be applied to a business. I also specifically addressed the emotions of anxiety and anger.

For additional information, you can download, with no opt-in, the first chapters of both of my books by scrolling up to the Welcome post.

Finally, I welcome your comments and if you would like me to address any specific emotions related topic in a future post, or as a speaker, please send me an email (TheEmotionsDoctor@gmail.com).

Thanks for reading.

The application of the Emotions as Tools Model to Business Part 1

If you own a business, have employees, or interact with customers, you know that dealing with emotions (or feelings as the two words are essentially the same) is an important element of what you do. Sometimes, your own feelings are problematic and at other times, it is the emotions of others that demand your attention.

And, if you are like most people, while you experience feelings all the time, you do not really understand what feelings are, how they can trip you up, or what you can do to get your feelings to work for you rather than against you.

I developed the Emotions as Tools Model is to demystify the topic of feelings so that:

Anyone could access and understand their feelings and
Anyone could learn to master rather than be controlled by his (or her) feelings.

In contrast to other approaches which tend to view emotions as negative and which advocate controlling one’s emotions, the Emotions as Tools Model views feelings as innate tools which, like any other tool such as your TV remote, you can learn to use and master to take back control of your life and improve your relationships.

I have written two books on the subject of emotions both of which are available on Amazon:

Emotions as Tools: A Self Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings
Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool

You can download the first chapters of each of these books if you scroll back to the top of this page. Both of these links are in the “Welcome” post.

It is important to note that contrary to the way some feelings are portrayed or experienced, there is no such thing as a negative emotion. All emotions are adaptive.

There are at least three “arenas” in which emotions can impact a business:

You: your own feelings, as a business owner, about your business, your customers, or your staff
Your staff: the emotions of your employees directed at you or at your customers
Your customers: the feelings of customers directed at you, your employees, or your business.

Two emotions that are likely to surface in business are anxiety and anger.

While both of these emotions alert you to a perceived threat, each has its own message and time frame. I will address anxiety in this post (Part 1) and anger in Part 2.

A threat which elicits an emotion is defined as any situation, action, event, or transaction which challenges, calls into question, or negatively impacts one’s beliefs, values, survival, finances, important goals, family, and so forth in such a way that the threat must be dealt with, eliminated, or avoided at all costs. Minor mistakes, disagreements, and unintended consequences, while inconvenient, usually are not perceived as threats.

In applying the Emotions as Tools Model in business, the goal is to master the emotion and either strategically deploy the energy of the emotion to further the pursuit of business goals or constrain and let go of the feeling if it is impairing the completion of important goals.

Anxiety

Any time you worry about whether a decision, situation or outcome will work out to your advantage or create a disaster, from which you will have to recover, the emotion you are experiencing is anxiety. I have a chapter on anxiety in my book Emotions as Tools

Anxiety is a future-based emotion the message of which is: There may be a threat facing me and that threat may “kill” me. The word “kill” is in quotes because I am not talking about physical death but about an outcome that could have serious consequences. The word “may” is in quotes to reinforce the idea that the threat, or negative outcome, about which you are concerned or worried, has not occurred and is, therefore, in the future.

Anxiety often ignores the possibility that the threat might not occur at all.

There are at least two subtypes of anxiety based on how you experience the emotion, the response you make to it, and the extent to which you master the emotion or it controls you. I discuss emotional mastery below.

Distress:

In this form, anxiety can be debilitating and result in your “freezing” in place and not taking any action at all regarding the perceived (possible) threat.

This is the most common form of anxiety and occurs when:

you ask yourself the question, “ What if (the threat) happens and I fail.”,
you assume the future (unwanted) outcome will occur, and
you act as if it is a forgone conclusion, you can do nothing to prevent it and the negative consequences are inevitable.

This is the type of anxiety that most people think about, experience, and want to avoid. It is also an example of an emotion controlling you.

Eustress:

There is a second way to conceptualize, relate to, and experience anxiety. This second type of anxiety is called Eustress. You master anxiety as a tool when you relate to this emotion as Eustress.

Mastering an emotion involves:

accepting the emotion as representing your initial perception of your situation,
understanding the message of the emotion regarding the nature of the perceived threat
assessing the validity of the message (How real is the threat?)
choosing an appropriate response which either dismisses the emotion or uses the energy of the emotion to counter the threat.

Anxiety, as Eustress, accepts the valid probability of the possible threat and uses the energy of the anxiety as motivation to both prepare for the future threat and minimize any unwanted consequences. When my students study for an upcoming exam, about which they are concerned, they are validating their anxiety and mastering the anxiety as a motivator to prepare for and, thereby, minimize the impact of the exam. The entrepreneur uses anxiety to plan for and develop contingencies regarding future complications. This is mastering anxiety.

Anticipation:

A third option is to maximize the desired impact of the upcoming event.

You might think of this as positive thinking but it is more than that.

Maximizing the impact of an upcoming concern involves asking yourself the question, “What if the (exam, negotiation, meeting) turns out well and everything works out?” When you ask yourself this question, you engage the flip side of anxiety, the emotion you experience is anticipation, and the energy that consumes you is excitement.

Positive thinking is a “Pollyanna” point of view that assumes life is rosy and everything just works out for the best. It, often, does not. Turning anxiety into anticipation uses the energy (worry) of anxiety to make and execute a realistic plan for the issue about which you are anxious and then choosing to act as if your plan will be successful. If the Plan doesn’t work out, you can change your plan.

As a business owner, you can master your own anxiety to push your business forward and you can use your knowledge of anxiety to help your employees master their anxiety when it involves changes in policy or procedures, new responsibilities, dealing with difficult clients, seeking new business and so forth. Knowing that anxiety is a future based emotion which focuses on a perceived threat, you can anticipate the anxiety and allay that threat with information, training, calculated roll outs of new programs and so forth.

I welcome your comments.

I will discuss anger next week.

The 3M approach to feelings. Part 2

In my last post, I introduced you to the 3M approach to feelings and discussed the first M: Management. In this post, I will talk about the second and third M and conclude with how you can apply the 3M approach to the emotions of another person.

The second M ==> Mindfulness

When you are mindful, you are present in, and aware of, the moment.

While we experience an emotion in the moment, our perceptions of the situation we are facing may be impacted by extraneous information. As these perceptions elicit our feelings, “irrelevant” information can lead to misunderstandings and misperceptions.

This irrelevant information can involve:

any experiences we have had in the past which are similar to, but not the same as, our current situation,
our tendency to project ourselves into some unwanted future, or
our tendency to overreact for a number of reasons.

When we talk about our “buttons” being pushed or “jumping to conclusions”, we are referring to these three sources of misinformaiton.

Examples include:

getting anxious (a future based emotion) because we didn’t do well in a previous interview and we react “as if” our next interview will turn out the same way
getting angry (a present based emotion) because we misinterpret the actions of another as mistreatment without getting all the facts
becoming jealous because our spouse seems to be giving attention to someone else without really understanding what is going on

Mindfulness says that you should stay in the moment and fully understand what is actually taking place before you “interpret”, “judge”, “draw conclusions about”, or take action concerning the perceived threat your feelings are telling you exists.

When you are mindful, you ask questions about what is going on, you gain the information you need to decide what actions you will take, and you reserve to yourself the option of choosing what you will do.

The third M ==> Mastery

The anger mastery cycle, which applies to all emotions including anger, can be downloaded from this website and involves the third M or Mastery of the feeling. Mastering an emotion picks up where Managing one’s emotion ends. Once you have lowered your arousal, you can remain mindful, or in the moment, and assess or validate the threat you perceive exists.

The process of assessment involves:

gathering information about what is happening by asking questions,
learning about the process and intent of the other person with whom you are interacting, and
evaluating your own perceptions.

Assessment sets you up to make a decision about how valid your emotion is and how you want to respond to what is happening.

If the perceived threat is genuine, mastering your emotion dictates that you use all the energy the emotion provides to develop and execute a plan to eliminate the threat.

If the perceived threat is not genuine but is due to a misperception of what is happening, mastering the emotion dictates that you change the thoughts which are giving rise to the feeling and, by so doing, change the feeling or let the feeling diminish and go away by ignoring it.

The same three M’s can also be applied when you are dealing with someone else who is directing their emotions at you. The process involves lowering your own arousal (managing) so that you don’t react and escalate the interaction, (This can also result in the other person “powering down” somewhat.), remaining mindful so that you gather information about how the other person perceives you as a threat (mindfulness), and mastering their emotions by assessing how they see what is going on and responding to their perceptions (if they are open to this) by acknowledging or validating their emotion, apologizing (if appropriate), and suggesting a resolution.

I have a whole chapter on dealing with someone who is angry with you in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

I have covered the entire 3M process and I welcome your comments.