Importance of emotions and regulation

Last week I was having a conversation with this friend of mine and somehow the it did not go well. Something unpleasant was said and I felt cornered. Instead of addressing the issue, I felt emotions like intense fear, shame and couldn’t say anything at that time and I withdrew from the conversation.

Do you think fear was the appropriate emotion in that circumstance? Do you think that anger would have been more appropriate? Would that have allowed me to take an affirmative action to address the issue at hand? Do you think I was able to manage and regulate my emotions appropriately? And if I had would the conversation have turned out differently?

Yes I couldn’t regulate my emotions at that moment.

Our emotions are important and they are key to our survival. They help us to take appropriate actions. Having said that, when we experience one emotion in place of another appropriate emotion, or when we experience an emotion where the intensity is disproportionate to the situation at hand then it means it is not helping us.

At the same time feeling intense emotions and hiding or supressing them is also not helpful. It is like a pressure cooker with no safety valve.  You see this in the level of stress that people experience today, number stress related ailments that are prevalent.

So in this video I talk about emotions. And how they are important for us. Why managing them is crucial for us?  Shall we?

Well we all have been children at some point in time. And we learned to manage our emotions based upon our own childhood experiences.

What did we observe as a child in terms of how our parents or other care givers behaved? Or what kind of parenting did we experience? And what was the overall emotional climate that existed in our family. What emotions were allowed what were not allowed what was expressed very intensely etc.

We may also be holding on too many misconceptions about emotions. It is very common for people to believe that feeling emotions or expressing emotions is undesirable as it seen as a weakness.

Our emotions act as a significant sign post for us to take appropriate actions to deal with challenges, overcome barriers, take care of our own self and others, to build relationships etc.

As I spoke about my example before, if an emotion is not relevant to the situation or the emotional intensity is not commensurate with the situation, then it can keep us stuck or hurt us or the people around us.

This is where we need to learn to understand our emotions, access appropriate emotions, to regulate our emotions to bring it to a appropriate level then to be able to act upon it effectively.

Does it mean that you will not have any problems in life or that you won’t get affected by the problems?  Lets us look at that.

You can Look at progress or growth in three different dimensions

For example of if you have the tendency to lose your temper with your colleague or your partner. And when you learn to regulate your emotions better you will see changes in

1. Frequency – How frequently do you get impacted by this particular issue at hand. Earlier if you used to get angry say 10 times in a given time period, now has it reduced to 8 times of 7 times.

2. Intensity – You may see a reduction in the intensity of the emotions that you are experiencing. Say in a Scale of 0-100 if you were getting angry at 80/90 the intensity might come down to 70 or 60 or so.

3. Recovery – or how long it takes for you to bounce back. Earlier if you needed about 4 hours to recover from anger now you may be able to bounce back in lesser time.

When we are able to accept and embrace our emotions, we are able to access appropriate emotions rather than pushing them away or covering it up with another.

About the Author:

Kala Balasubramanian is a certified Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist with a Masters in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Diplomas in Counselling and has further certifications specializing in couple/marriage/relationship counselling and family counselling. She is trained in different modalities like CBT, Gestalt, NLP, Family Systems Therapy, Transactional Analysis etc. As a trained therapist, she provides professional and confidential counselling services including Individual counselling and Couples counselling / Marriage counselling

Currently with the COVID-19 situation, all counselling and therapy services are offered online over video calls. Reach us at +91 9632146316 or write to us at counselor@innerdawn.in