Do you ever experience sudden bursts of intense emotions — like joy, sadness, anger or anxiety — that can sometimes feel overwhelming or difficult to manage?
Do you wish you could deal with your feelings better?
In “You Don’t Always Have to Process Your Emotions,” Jancee Dunn writes about how to shift your big feelings so that you can make them work for you:
Emotions are a fundamental part of what make us human. They can be overwhelming, complicated or quiet — but we experience at least one emotion 90 percent of the time, according to a 2015 study that examined the emotional lives of more than 11,000 people.
This finding doesn’t shock Ethan Kross, the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan, who has been studying the science of emotion for over two decades.
What did surprise him, however, were results from another study, which found that about 40 percent of participants believed that you can’t control your emotions.
“I was really floored,” Dr. Kross said. “If you don’t even think it is possible to manage your emotions, why would you ever try to do it?”
He contends that emotions, even negative ones, are information, and that we can often find ways to make them work for us. It’s not possible to control every part of our emotional lives, said Dr. Kross (who admits that he sometimes still feels fear before he has to speak publicly). But people who are good at managing their feelings, he said, are less lonely, live longer, maintain more fulfilling romantic relationships and are more satisfied with their lives.
Ms. Dunn shares some lessons from Ethan Kross’s book “Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don’t Manage You” to help navigate the emotional curveballs that life throws at us every day. Here are excerpts from the first two:
You don’t always have to ‘process’ your emotions.
The prevailing wisdom in therapy and on social media is that we should face negative emotions head on — and that if we don’t, they will fester inside of us, Dr. Kross writes.
There’s no doubt that coping with stressful situations through chronic avoidance is harmful and can lead to more psychological distress, he said. But the trouble with the “avoidance is toxic” argument is that it assumes that all avoidance is bad, he explained.
Sometimes, it’s best not to choose between approaching or avoiding, but to shift between the two intentionally, he said. Avoidance can allow the intensity of a negative experience to diminish, and it can provide distance that helps us see the experience from a broader perspective, he explained.
How can you figure out whether to avoid or to confront your feelings? Dr. Kross suggested asking yourself, “Is what I’m doing making me feel better about the problem in front of me? Is this issue still a concern after I take some time away from it?”
Talk to yourself in the second person.
When we use the word “you,” it is almost exclusively to refer to other people, Dr. Kross said. But when you use it on yourself, it’s a tactic known as distanced self-talk, which can be a powerful way to regulate negative emotions.
In a 2017 study, Dr. Kross and his colleagues found that people who used distanced self-talk to regulate their feelings showed signs of feeling better within seconds.
So instead of saying “I’m stressed out,” which may cause your heart to race, tell yourself “you’re stressed out,” he said. This casts you in the role of “someone else,” and may help you feel more compassion and empathy.
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
Do you have big feelings? If so, describe a recent time when you experienced powerful and intense emotions. What did it feel like — mentally and physically? How did you feel afterward? Do you think that those strong emotions had a positive or negative affect on you or on those around you?
What role do your emotions play in your life? Do you think that they are ever a problem or issue? If so, how?
Do you wish that you could control or manage your feelings and emotions better? Why or why not? What strategies have you used to navigate them? Have any of those strategies been successful?
What do you think about the strategies presented in the article, like talking to yourself in the second person or recognizing that your senses are an emotional superpower? Which, if any, do you think you might try to use in your own life?
Dr. Kross says that people who are good at managing their feelings are less lonely, live longer, maintain more fulfilling romantic relationships and are more satisfied with their lives. Does that resonate with your own experiences? What benefits have you seen in your own life when you manage your emotions in a healthy way?
What did you learn about emotions from the article? Were you surprised that a study from 2007 found that about 40 percent of participants believed that people can’t control their feelings? What more would you like to learn about the emotional life of humans — or about your own?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
