Anger and aggression sometimes seem to be protective, because they bring energy to bear on a particular situation, but that energy is blind. It takes a calm mind to be able to consider things from different angles and points of view.
—Dalai Lama
Imagine as a captain, you let the sails on your boat stay in the same position as they started—with no adjustment to storms, ships, or the wind. You may start out soaring, but eventually you would reach disaster.
Managing your emotions allows you freedom to choose your response in your MTMs. If you encounter storms or even a shifting wind, you can recalibrate your course. You can adjust your sails.
The late Steven Covey, who authored one of the most popular self-help books of all time, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote, “Look at the word responsibility—‘response-ability’—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”
Covey said, “You can choose the best response for the situation rather than being a slave to impulsive emotions.” In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how you respond lies your freedom to choose. Ultimately, this freedom to choose your response defines who we are as human beings (Covey 2004).
Let us go back to a list we shared at the beginning of the book. Ask yourself again, “How would you respond in these situations?”
• You walk in on a work celebration for your newly promoted coworker who took your idea to your joint-boss and got promoted for it. You might want to snub your coworker and his celebration that should be yours! However, you can choose to shake hands with and congratulate your coworker.
• Your boss presented you a great development opportunity to lead a strategic project completely outside of your area of experience, and you lack the internal relationships to succeed in it. You might wish to say, “Thanks, but I really like what I do” so that you do not have to fail and look incompetent. Or, you can say, “If you are willing to show me the ropes, I know that I can learn this and be of value.”
• As you enter your home, your spouse starts a conversation showing you that clearly you are about to have a heated, all-night argument. You might rush to say, “And right on schedule, it’s time to have this pointless argument yet again!” But you can just as easily say, “I would like to have this conversation, but not on an empty stomach. How about we fix dinner and eat, then talk about this on a walk afterward?”
• Your most important customer says your organization is not delivering enough, and they are looking for a new vendor. You might get defensive, telling yourself and everyone on your team that the customer is just a big pain in the butt. Or you could choose to reach out to your customer and ask, “What could I have done differently to satisfy your needs and keep you?”
• You received a big promotion, and now you are managing your former peers. You might not recognize the need to do anything differently or even that your former peers might have feelings on your promotion…until they make it obvious that you must do something. Or you could demonstrate empathy after thinking how you would feel in their shoes.
• Approaching the kitchen, you hear your teenaged son cursing at his mother as he gestures threateningly. You might raise your arm as if to slap your son while yelling, “Don’t ever get up in your mother’s face again!” But you could recognize that how you act in that moment of conflict will model more for your son than a thousand lectures.
• Your new boss has an entirely new strategy for future success, and you do not believe she sees you as part of the solution. You might feel victimized and start looking for another job. Or you could meet with your new boss, ask her to clarify her vision for the future, and tell her how you might be useful in helping her realize her goals.
• Your success on a key project is dependent on successful collaboration with a coworker who is not delivering her part. You might go to your boss and rat out your lazy coworker. Or you could ask your coworker how she thinks the project is going, find out what barriers she might be facing in delivering results, and discuss how to work together to succeed.
• After being separated from your spouse for six months, your 10-year-old daughter gets called into the principal’s office for being sent to school by your ex in a skirt that is too short. While there, you discover that your ex also did not pack her a lunch or send lunch money. Last week, your ex failed to sign a field trip permission slip. Because you are listed first on the school’s call list, you are having to deal with this—again. You could tell the school counselor, “Well, that’s just like my
ex—never taking responsibility,” before hanging up to call and chew out your ex, a conversation wherein you threaten to pursue full custody. Or you could breathe and take time to plan the most important points to discuss to ensure compliance with school rules in the future.
• You scroll through social media and notice that someone
you considered a close friend posted an article with what you consider incorrect information based on political biases. You could block or hide this person online, but you also have to work together on a community project. You stay up all night, scripting responses in your head. You could type a heated, mean-spirited response to set this person straight. Or you could consider whether an offline conversation to clear the air is needed to pursue your mutual project—or not.
• As protests erupt around a racially charged shooting, your coworker continues to make comments that make you feel uncomfortable. You could fire back in spite, or ignore the comments. Or you could gather your thoughts and ask to have a conversation with this person.
• As a public health crisis emerges, you and your spouse differ in your approaches on how to keep your family safe. You could call your spouse an idiot and argue why you are correct. Or you could call for a discussion wherein you negotiate a family policy that keeps everyone safe and considers all viewpoints.
• After months of working long hours on a difficult cross-divisional team project, a manager from another department goes to your boss, asking that you be replaced because “you’re difficult to work with.” You might march into that other manager’s office asking, “What makes me hard to work with?” Or you could recognize that you and that manager have different perceptions and leave it at that.
• You wake up on a Saturday morning to the sound of your new neighbor taking a chainsaw to your tree on the property line. You might run out into the yard waving your arms and screaming. Or you could pause and collect yourself before speaking with your neighbor.
Let’s make this more personal. Think of a recent situation when your emotions turned negative. Remember, most of your negative emotions come from threats to your perceived Autonomy, Relatedness, or Competence. What were you feeling? How did you feel threatened? How did this affect your Outlook—or the lens you were looking through? And one of the most powerful questions is this: What were you afraid of losing?
Every parent who has ever broken up a fight between his kids has heard the children defend themselves by saying, “But he started it!” or “I did hit him, but it’s because he made me sooo mad!” And, every parent recognizes that those responses are excuses, not reasons.
At this point in the model, we have not shared a best practice or steps to resolve these conflicts; however, we are suggesting that choosing your best Outlook is always your choice. By being aware of what threatens you (your Autonomy, Relatedness, Competence—ARC) and practicing mindfulness (explored in this chapter), you can change your Outlook to respond instead of reacting to the impulse of raw emotions. Let us explore how mindfulness can help you do that.
Mindfulness and Meditation Today
Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard the words mindfulness and meditation. They have become buzz words like Zen, nirvana, and a guru doing a deep dive around the horn to leverage synergies and disrupt the peeling of the onion from other corporate ninjas (see why we are not fans of buzz words?).
We like the definition from Mindful Magazine: Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us (Jaret et al. 2020).
Notice that the definition includes the word “aware” and the phrase “not overly reactive or overwhelmed.” What happens when we feel socially threatened? When our ARC is triggered, we become overly reactive or overwhelmed! Under a perceived threat, we react in an emotional, kneejerk fashion instead of responding in a mindful manner.
But while everyone has heard of these concepts, few know how to act with mindfulness when confronted with MTMs.
Trigger-Happy Hormones
The same stress hormones—dopamine, epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and cortisol—kick in when you are under an existential threat of life or death, or when you feel socially threatened!
Is it any wonder that you might feel jacked up for mortal combat when you get emotionally triggered?
The oldest, most proven way to achieve mindfulness is the practice of meditation. When you meditate, you focus on breathing while sitting calmly. Some people meditate to reduce stress or increase focus, while others see it as part of their spiritual practice. Meditation can also be used to describe deep thinking, like when you meditate on what to say to a friend who is feeling sad.
Scientific interest in mindfulness has exploded recently, with the number of academic papers published on the topic increasing by nearly 300 percent over the past five years. Research has shown how the brain can change in response to training and experience such as meditation (Williams and Kabat-Zinn 2011).
When facing your supercharged MTMs where ARCs may be threatened, mindfulness helps you slow your reactions and choose a better Outlook for success.
Note: This is another example of the dynamic nature of SOAR and how you will revisit concepts like mindfulness from the Outlook phase even in the action phase.
Now be honest: When you think of meditation, do you picture a robed, elderly, bearded monk sitting in the lotus position on a mountaintop while smoke curls from incense wafts about his head? Fortunately, the good news is that you do not have to change religions, wear different clothes, move to the mountains, or feel smoke stinging your eyes to reap some of the benefits of meditation! This chapter will show you how.
Benefits of Meditation
While we explore mindfulness and not meditation specifically, we do want to mention some benefits of meditation. Earlier we mentioned Headspace is a great app for learning how to meditate, and they have also written a research paper named “The Science Behind Meditation,” which highlights some of the following quantifiable positive outcomes:
1. Stress and anxiety reduction. Helps change the way you think about and respond to difficult experiences.
2. Depression prevention. Helps you interrupt cycles of ruminative thought that can lead to depression.
3. Cognitive skills. Improves your attention, memory, and other everyday skills.
4. Immune function. Improves your body’s ability to fight infection.
5. Compassion. Helps you feel kindness for others and yourself.
6. Relationships. Boosts empathy and makes you less judgmental, positively affecting how you relate to others.
7. Creativity. Boosts innovative problem-solving.
8. Pain control. Helps you relate differently to unpleasant feelings and provides an effective tool in pain management.
9. Sleep. Helps you fall asleep quicker and stay asleep for longer.
10. Heart health. Has a significant and positive effect on heart health.
Even with all the research highlighting the benefits of meditation, many have not yet taken it up as a regular practice. So, how can either novice or non-meditators reap benefits of being mindful in MTMs? In your moments of triggered emotions and even before they occur, we will show you how to slow yourself down and step into the best Outlook.
Are you starting to see how checking in with your emotions links to the practice of mindfulness?
Three Mindfulness Strategies to Regulate Emotions
Emotional regulation is key to preparing your Outlook to serve your MTMs. The following three strategies will help you achieve emotional regulation when your ARC is threatened.
Mindfulness Strategy #1: Pause
Acting on impulse and raw emotions costs you time, money, success, and relationships. How do you stifle that natural urge to react immediately and instead respond thoughtfully? You become aware of your emotions and pause first. Pausing allows you to catch up with your emotions and not react. Hint: Do this often, especially during the action phase (in your High-Stakes Conversations)!
Two Tales of a Pause (or Lack Thereof)
In the late 1960s, Walter Mischel from Stanford University started conducting tests on instant versus delayed gratification, now referred to as the Stanford marshmallow experiment. In these tests, Mischel offered a young child the choice between one small marshmallow provided immediately or two small marshmallows if they waited 15 minutes. Since the first test, researchers found that the children who delayed gratification to receive two marshmallows instead of one tended to perform better on their SATs, obtained a higher educational level, and maintained a lower body mass index (BMI) (Mischel and Ebbesen 1970).
We wrote earlier about Esau exchanging his birthright to his brother Jacob because he was hungry. It sounds similar to the impulse control test done with children and marshmallows. In Esau’s case, his inability to pause, think through his options, and choose wisely cost him his inheritance.
The children who took one marshmallow immediately instead of two in the near future chose to pause to weigh the consequences of that decision. Had Esau been less impulsive and not made a critical decision when he was hungry, he could have practiced the pause, perhaps making himself instead of Jacob (later renamed Israel), the father of a great nation.
We will go into the mechanics of what it means to pause, but first let us explore: When should you pause?
Put simply, pause when you feel triggered, based on the factors we have explored. We have spent a lot of time covering what it looks like to get triggered, because self-awareness protects you against your emotional reaction and guides you toward thoughtful response. Being aware of that space is half the battle. When you are on the verge of a reaction, it’s hard to pause and think about your best choices. But, when you are aware that you need to and desire to Get It Right, hit your pause button.
Pausing will feel like you are stopping your natural inertia, and you will resist it as unnatural. But continue to review your natural state when you are triggered: your Outlook is clouded, and Your Worst Self comes out! An old Alcoholics Anonymous standby quote is, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”
Granted, it is easier to say pause than to practice it under fire. And this is precisely why so many well intentioned, intelligent, highly skilled, and competent individuals make awful decisions in those moments.
Perhaps some simple, homespun wisdom from Mark Twain can help you remember when to pause: “When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.” Count to four before you respond. That four-count is your cue to pause. As for the swearing part, go ahead and swear inside your head if you must, but we suggest moving on to Strategy #2 as quickly as possible.
Mindfulness Strategy #2: Breathe
Now that you have paused, what do you do with that space? Breathe. But not just any kind of breath. Breathing is automatic. If you are reading this, you are breathing. We all breathe. Athletes, singers, and public speakers have keen awareness of their breathing, and they understand the link between breathing and optimal performance.
Most of us have an almost intuitive understanding that our breath can regulate our minds and emotions. Have you ever prompted yourself to “take a deep breath” to calm down when things became challenging? Most clinical psychologists and medical doctors use some sort of breathing practice with patients. However, because breathing happens automatically, many do not give breath its deserved attention, nor have we learned to harness its full calming potential.
So how should we breathe to regain control?
Researcher Pierre Phillipot made two profound discoveries about the connection between breathing and emotions.
1. First, our breathing mimics our emotions. This one is fairly simple to understand. When you are excited, you breathe quickly and in a shallow manner; when you are calm and relaxed, you draw in slow, deep breaths.
2. Second, our emotions mimic our breathing. That means we can change how we feel by using our breath. If you want to get worked up quickly, start taking in fast, shallow breaths; if you want to calm down, take in slow, deep ones (Philippot et al. 2002).
Breathing that Works against You
Scott: The Spider that Stole My Breath
It takes time to change your emotions using thoughts alone. I am afraid of spiders, which I acknowledge is not a rational fear. My dad used to say, “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” which did little to alleviate my fear (however, it did make me wonder how they measure fear levels in spiders). I know the chances of any given spider I see being deadly or harmful to me are in the 0.001 percent of likelihood. Yet my fear persists. Why? It is hard to “talk myself out of” intense fear or anxiety. When I walk through a spider web in my driveway, I do black-belt-level karate moves and spins in midair, all while my wife calmly walks past me saying, “Don’t be afraid. It’s just a web.” Guess what? Her calm, sarcastic comment does not take away my fear!
But, Phillipot’s research taught me that I could breathe my way through my emotions. How? I tell myself, “Pause. Then breathe. Breathe like I’m calm. Breathe like my wife. When I breathe like a fighting ninja, I flail about like a fighting ninja; when I breathe like I’m calm, I quickly become calm.”
This is a work in progress. Check in with me to see how I am doing on overcoming my fear of spiders! Just don’t throw one at me.
We take sharp, shallow breaths when scared (whether of something tangible or emotional). That quick intake of air releases adrenaline and other hormones to prepare our brains and muscles to respond to threats—fight, flight, or freeze (in hopes the threat will go away). Additionally, our pupils dilate, heart rate accelerates, and breathing rate picks up to fuel the muscles.
Gasping or taking a sharp breath when scared comes from our autonomic nervous system, the mechanism that primarily controls our fight–flight responses. We do not have to think in order to suck in air when scared. And, the chemicals released in our bodies serve us very well when we find ourselves in a life and death situation—or in certain sports. Picture a boxer at the edge of the ring getting ready for a match, where he or she is jumping up and down, breathing in and out like a bull about to enter a fight, intentionally preparing to react.
But reactions are not so useful when meeting with coworkers or talking with our spouse in an MTM.
Practice Breathing for Emotional Control
Although it is perfectly natural to respond to anxiety with breathing too much, the good news is that we also can change our breathing pattern to promote relaxation. Inna Kahzan, a clinical instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, recommends a 4:6 ratio—40 percent of the breath cycle spent on inhalation and 60 percent on exhalation (Khazan 2013). Though the exact breath count that is most helpful for you may vary based on your natural breathing rate (some breathe at a higher or lower rate than others), a rough estimate of this ratio is to inhale for a count of 1…2…3…4 and then exhale for a count of 1…2…3…4…5…6, where each count lasts one second.
While nature has equipped us with a “fight, flight, or flee” emergency response for dealing with threats, it has also provided us with a “calming” response to restore peace and equilibrium, which is essential for successfully navigating challenging and important social interactions. You can trigger a calming response whenever you like by pressing the “button”—your breathing.
Bookmark these pages. As you establish this exercise as a new practice, consider doing these breathing exercises twice each day initially: in the morning and before going to bed. If you have ever tried to teach a puppy how to sit, you know it’s not difficult in the right environment: a place that is free from chaos, distraction, loud noises, over-stimulation, and so on. However, once the puppy has mastered this skill, he can practice it even around horses, kids, or other puppies.
Likewise, once you have mastered these five steps, you will be able to expand your practice until you breathe in real time throughout the day whenever you need to gain control over your emotions.
Keep Breathing
You will be able to use the pause and breathe techniques during your High-Stakes Conversations (described soon) to keep your emotions regulated. This is why we are making such a big deal of them!
This is another example of how you dynamically revisit phases of the SOAR cycle throughout your MTM.
Prepare your environment before you begin. Find a quiet place. If you wish, light a candle and play soft instrumental music. Do not put on the television or listen to the news. The same goes for playing music that will tempt you to sing along. As much as possible, remove yourself from anything that will draw your attention away from focusing on your breathing.
Here is our simple readiness checklist:
Sit on the floor.
Cross your legs.
Place your hands on your knees.
Keep your back straight and neck and shoulders relaxed.
Force all the air out of your lungs as you tighten your abdominal muscles.
Now you are ready to practice breathing for emotional control:
1. Take a slow breath in through your nose while counting 1…2…3…4.
2. Hold your breath while counting to 2.
3. Tighten your abdominal muscles while exhaling slowly through your mouth as you count slowly 1…2…3…4…5…6.
4. Count to 3 before taking another breath.
5. Repeat for at least 5 to 10 breaths.
As with any habit, daily practice will strengthen your ability to engage in extended exhalation when in a state of high anxiety, panic, or stress.
Scuba divers master the art of breathing to preserve their oxygen while managing the right buoyancy—hovering above the coral reefs but well below the surface. After much practice, instead of bobbing up and down as they release air from or pump up their buoyancy devices to stay at the right depth, they can subtly adjust location by merely inhaling or exhaling. Eventually, you too will find a subtle rhythm to your breathing that keeps you emotionally steady and maximizes your return on the energy spent.
Five Minutes to Freedom
Each inhale or exhale cycle takes just 15 seconds.
You do not need an advanced degree in mathematics to figure out that 10 full breathing cycles will take you 2½ minutes; five cycles will take you 1¼ minutes. Doing this exercise twice each day at first will take 2½ to 5 minutes. As busy as we all are, we can find that much time each day.
Here is the return you can expect for that 2 ½- to 5-minute daily investment of your time:
• Reduced stress
• Increased blood flow
• Lowered blood pressure
• Stronger abdominal muscles
• Better sleep
• Release of toxins stored in the body
• Increased energy level
• Improved emotional regulation
You have read about how to prepare the environment and engage in the mechanics of deep breathing. To keep this from becoming academic instead of practical, we recommend you read no further until you practice the breathing exercise. Stop and do these steps now. Go ahead. We will still be here when you get back.
How did that feel? What was it like to calm your mind on demand? Did it feel like you had much more control over your own emotions than you realized?
Come back to this exercise often, until it becomes a part of your natural daily routine. And be willing to engage in it even in your High-Stakes Conversations, subtly if necessary (you can take deep breaths as someone else is talking!). This is an essential practice derived from meditation which will serve you in your MTMs.
Mindfulness Strategy #3: Label Your Feelings
Named must your fear be before banish it you can.
—Yoda, powerful Jedi master (George Lucas, Star Wars Trilogy)
Tony: Managing Parental Emotional Triggers
All my children have learned how to push my buttons, but one seems to have become a true expert. He is naturally quick with his words, loves to debate, and has learned if he can trigger me to react, my focus rapidly shifts off the original reason for our conversation.
I always strive to be the best parent and role model possible, but I am not that person when in reactive mode—which usually presents itself as anger or frustration.
After reading research about naming feelings, I decided to give it a try. The next time I engaged with my son and he said something that got me frustrated, I immediately stopped and verbalized to him that I was beginning to feel that emotion. Amazingly, processing and stating my emotion in that moment enabled me to regain my balance, so I could continue in a way that reflected how I wanted to parent. This little tip has been worth its weight in gold in improving my parenting.
Brain imaging now supports the ancient wisdom that psychotherapists, writers, and philosophers have always stated: Simply recognizing and naming an emotion quells its effect, making thoughtful management of future behavior possible. In other words, putting your feelings into words helps you.
According to research led by UCLA professor of psychology, Matthew D. Lieberman:
Putting feelings into words makes sadness, anger, and pain less intense. According to Lieberman, when you feel angry, you have increased activity in the amygdala, the region of the brain responsible for detecting fear and setting off a series of biological alarms and responses to protect the body from danger. But when we label a negative emotion, Lieberman and researchers found a decreased response in the amygdala and an increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is involved with inhibiting behavior and processing emotions.
When you put feelings into words, you are activating this prefrontal region and seeing a reduced response in the amygdala. In the same way, you hit the brake when you are driving when you see a yellow light—when you put feelings into words you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses. As a result, a person may feel less angry or less sad (Living 2017).
As we learn to identify, label, and express emotions, this area of the brain is strengthened. In turn, we are then better able to respond to our feelings. This is mindfulness in action.
Science repeatedly shows those quickest to recover from distress are those who can identify how they are feeling and put those feelings into words. Brain scans show verbal information immediately diminishes the power of negative emotions, improving well-being, and enhancing decision-making. The simple act of naming your emotion helps your brain move it from the areas equipped to address physical threat to the more rational parts that serve you in problem-solving, relationships, and creativity. At the simplest level, labeling a feeling takes it from an unspecified, terrifying threat to a finite, tangible word, making it easier to set it down and walk away from it. It allows you to mindfully regulate the volume of emotion you display to others—which is key when you encounter an MTM with another person who may also have an ARC response! Daniel Siegel says, “Name it to tame it,” to show how labeling an emotion diffuses its power (Siegel 2004).
Words matter. It is important for us to develop our feelings vocabulary so we can be as specific as possible when naming our emotions. The more specific we are in naming our emotions the more prepared we will be to take the right steps forward. If you are experiencing a strong emotion, take a moment to label it. But do not stop there: once you have identified it, try to come up with two more words that describe how you are feeling. This exercise helps you uncover the deeper emotion beyond the more obvious one. Table 6.1 is a chart that can help us get beyond the obvious to identify exactly what we are feeling.
Table 6.1 What are you feeling?
ANGER |
SAD |
AFRAID |
CONFUSION |
ANXIOUS |
Upset |
Unhappy |
Nervous |
Perplexed |
Stressed |
Mad |
Blue |
Fearful |
Puzzled |
Confused |
Frustrated |
Dejected |
Scared |
Rattled |
Worried |
Annoyed |
Depressed |
Uneasy |
Baffled |
Nervous |
Irritated |
Disappointed |
Panicky |
Bewildered |
Apprehensive |
Furious |
Mournful |
Intimidated |
Stumped |
Insecure |
Resentful |
Crushed |
Insecure |
Confounded |
Skittish |
Livid |
Heavy |
Shocked |
Helpless |
Uneasy |
Bitter |
Lonely |
Threatened |
Incapable |
Cloudy |
Know When and How to Let Go
Naming an emotion does not mean letting it own you. Spending too much time on your negative emotions can cause more harm than good. Label them with the intent of defining what you can control moving forward or letting them go so that the negative emotions do not have a negative impact.
Three Approaches to Identifying and Labeling Your Emotions
There are constructive and destructive ways of labeling your emotions. Following are three ways that tend to be safe and make matters better, not worse. Which one you use depends on your preference and the time you have before engaging in the MTM (especially your High-Stakes Conversation, which we will discuss later). Practice all three to determine what works best to clear your Outlook.
1. Talk to a trusted friend or advisor about how you feel and why. Feeling heard and validated is extremely effective at sorting out your thoughts and helping you regain perspective to see the situation more positively.
2. Identify and write down your feelings. There is power in writing and reflecting. This gets you back to a neutral state and helps you diminish negative emotions and improve decision-making.
3. Go somewhere where you can say out loud what you are feeling. This also helps you become aware of your feelings and creates separation between who you are and how you feel. This diffuses your stress and helps you think more clearly and creatively.
Scott: I Am Afraid
When I was a counselor, my client was concerned about her 16-yearold daughter who she believed was on the verge of delinquency.
After listening to her story, I said, “You seem afraid.”
She thought a second and replied, “I am afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?” I asked, because nothing this mom had told me about her daughter seemed inappropriate for her age or dangerous.
“I see her doing things,” her mom started and paused for a bit. “I see her doing the same things that I was doing at her age.”
“Going to the mall? Going to movies with friends? Having sleepovers at friends’ houses?” I asked. “Are these the behaviors that frighten you?”
The woman stared past me for a few moments. She took in a deep, long breath before letting it back out slowly. Then she said quietly, “She’s doing the same things that I told my parents I was doing when I got pregnant with her.”
Until we identify and verbalize our feelings, they tend to own us.
Let us reinforce the first three strategies for emotional regulation by examining the example of the woman Scott counseled. She went through the steps quite naturally. You can see how the steps flowed into each other.
1. She paused when Scott asked her a question.
2. She thought aloud while trying to “put her finger on” (a.k.a., label) her fear. And then she took a deep breath.
3. She was able to name her fear. She had projected her fear about her daughter’s friends and activities based on her own shame, guilt, and experiences that led to her unexpected pregnancy. Once she labeled her fear, she quickly got to its source.
Then she could start learning how to have open, honest conversations with her daughter to prevent another generation from experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. We will discuss how to have these conversations in later chapters dedicated to Action.
If you do not do the three things—pause, breathe, and label your emotions—you will be more likely to react emotionally instead of responding reasonably. Pausing creates a space, stopping action and, more importantly, over-reaction. Breathing floods you with calm, slowing you down to gain control of your emotions. Labeling your emotions prepares you to problem solve, moving away from your amygdala to the part of your brain that can take action. These three steps work in tandem to help you regain emotional balance.
Once you have emotional control, you can choose how to move forward. Hint: your objective is to move toward your best intention and your best goal. Read on to find out what we mean.