The fastest compass we carry

On the evening of 24 September, at nine o’clock, we met on screen. For two hours we stayed with a single subject, emotions. It was the fourth stage of My Best Version, and that was its name too: My Emotions and Me.

I lowered my own sails first and began with myself. I talked about what happened to my health after the earthquakes, the weight I lost, the test results that improved. Then I asked anyone who wished to share what had been happening in their own lives.

I did not tell it as a piece of personal news squeezed in between subjects. The body holds what goes unspoken somewhere inside it, and once we begin to speak it lets go, slowly. I could show that best through my own story. What could be more genuine than something actually lived!

In my previous piece I promised you, my readers, that I would open up a little more what it means to meet our emotions. So here is what stayed with me from that evening, one thing at a time…

An emotion is not what happens to us. It is the information that what happened creates inside us.

Every emotion has a job

We usually talk about emotions as a state to be dealt with. In fact every emotion is a signal, and every signal has work to do. They are there to protect us and to show us the way. This is the fastest compass we carry.

This is why the sentence “you can’t feel that way” has always sounded wrong to me. If the emotion is there, it exists, and it is true. The real question is this: is the problem the emotion itself, or the fact that we have never listened to what it was telling us?

We were taught to silence them

That evening I asked the group: as a child, what were you taught about your emotions? The answers were almost identical. Don’t cry. Don’t be afraid. Don’t get angry. Don’t exaggerate. It’s not nice. Be strong. Don’t make a thing of it. Be reasonable. Real men don’t cry. Girls don’t behave like that.

Most of us were not taught to manage our emotions. We were taught to silence them.

Those voices do not fall silent as we grow up, they simply start speaking from the inside, quietly. And the reasons for setting an emotion aside pile up in much the same way. I asked myself, out of curiosity, why do we set emotions aside? Because we hold them cheaper than our ideas? Thinking it over, here is what I found:

And there is this too: at home, emotions are handed out by gender. A boy is usually allowed anger and pride, and forbidden sadness and fear. A girl is allowed sadness and hurt, and forbidden anger and saying “no”. Two children in the same family grow up with two separate emotional dictionaries, each believing theirs is the right one...

In your house, which emotion was allowed, and which one was hidden?

We talked about something else that evening. Women are usually more at ease naming their emotions. Even so, there is no shortage of men who decide with their emotions, they simply call it something else. A man is allowed anger, and forbidden tenderness and vulnerability. This distribution does no one any good, it only produces chaos. Which means a gendered culture is being produced again and again, every day, by us. And when a strong emotion arrives, the paths part. Men mostly withdraw and think it through inwardly; women understand by talking. Perhaps this is where we get stuck most in our relationships. When one withdraws into silence the other takes it for indifference; when one wants to talk the other takes it for an interrogation. Yet both are doing the same work, processing an emotion, in different ways.

Head or heart?

Why do ideas look more valuable than emotions? Stopping to think about it, I see that for centuries we have grasped reason as the essence of a person and emotion as the side that leads them astray. An idea can be measured, an emotion cannot; school and working life always reward what is measurable. An idea can be argued, but an emotion? I can defend my idea, yet if I say what I feel I look fragile, I give myself away.

Do you know, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio studied patients whose emotional centres had been damaged. Their intelligence was intact, but they could not make even the simplest decisions. He describes people who could not decide for hours which day to book an appointment.

“We are not thinking machines that feel; we are feeling machines that think.”

In my fourth piece I wrote that in determining the outcome of a decision, the way the decision is made matters more than the quality of the analysis. Damasio’s patients say the same thing from another direction. Emotion is not the decoration on a decision, it is what carries it.

The same event, three different paths

What we dwelled on most that evening was this: somewhere between the event and the behaviour sits the interpretation, and when the interpretation changes, the emotion, the body and the behaviour change with it. Let me explain with a single example. Say my manager criticised my idea in a meeting.

The event is the same. The only thing that changed is the meaning we gave that sentence. Noticing this halves the hold an emotion has over us.

Six steps for working with an emotion

An emotion wants to arrive somewhere. Suppressing it is tiring and so is carrying it; the real work is to show it the way. That evening we worked in six steps.

Behaviour is the tip of the iceberg

We look at a person’s behaviour and think we know them. Yet behaviour stays on the surface; the emotion sits below the water. That evening we read the list together, and there was a good deal of silence in the room.

This list is not a diagnosis, it is an invitation. Whichever behaviour you see most often in yourself, look underneath it once as well.

Name it and the way opens

What we call emotional granularity is really a matter of vocabulary. “I feel bad” is vague, it shows no way. “I am angry” is a name, it gives a direction. “I am hurt because my effort went unseen, and a little angry too” carries the emotion, its cause and the need in one sentence.

The clearer the name, the more open the way.

Research says the same. People who can name their emotions with fine distinctions respond more calmly and more accurately in difficult moments. The anger family holds angry, hurt, resentful, impatient, embittered. The fear family holds anxious, uneasy, insecure, helpless. The sadness family holds sorrowful, lonely, empty, full of longing. The joy family holds peaceful, grateful, excited, hopeful, tender. Between “I’m fine” and “I’m not” there is a whole country.

What an emotion asks for is usually not a solution

This was one of the things I dwelled on most that evening. When an emotion arrives, what it wants from the person across from it is usually not a solution but to be heard. With children and teenagers above all. When a child says “I’m scared”, the sentence “there is nothing to be scared of” does not end the fear; it only teaches the child to carry it alone.

Listening without interrupting is often the best answer we can give.

In my third piece I wrote about the difference between a position and a need. “I want to go out tonight” is a position; the need underneath it is something else entirely. Emotions work the same way. The visible emotion is usually the position, and underneath it sits an unmet need. Anger asks for a boundary, anxiety for safety, sadness for support, jealousy to be valued. Working with an emotion means finding that need and opening a healthy way to it.

The invisible participant at the table

We assume everyone comes into the meeting room with their ideas. In fact people bring their emotions in their pockets. When your manager criticises your idea, first your pulse quickens, then you think. The order is not wrong, this is the creature we are. Emotional intelligence at work, in four steps, is this: notice, name it, read the message, choose. “My pulse quickened, my face went warm.” “I was ashamed of looking inadequate.” “I need my effort to be seen.” “Which part could we develop together?”

In my previous piece I mentioned psychological safety. In a study of hundreds of teams, that was the first thing that set the good ones apart: an environment where people could say both their ideas and their feelings without hesitation. Those who say emotions have no place at work are in fact rejecting the very ground on which the most productive teams are built.

A last word

We closed the evening with a twenty-minute guided imagery. The aim was not to get rid of an emotion but to change our relationship with it. We returned to the body, chose an emotion, and asked it: what did you come to tell me? What do you want me to notice? Why are you trying to protect me?

Then each person looked at that emotion and said: I see you, I allow myself to feel you, I understand you are trying to protect me. But I no longer have to carry you at the same weight.

All my emotions are mine. I do not have to deny any of them. Nor do I have to let any of them run me.

On the way home I gave everyone a small piece of homework. Let me leave it with you as well.

My emotions do not tell me what to do. They tell me what to pay attention to. The question is whether I hear them, and who is standing beside me when I do… May our compass always hold 😊