Have you ever asked someone how they were doing, and they replied, “I’m fine.” But judging from their body language and tone they didn’t seem fine.
How well you know this person may determine if you probe a little deeper into their feelings or if you leave it as is. Either way, you don’t know if they’re fine, or if they’re ignoring how they feel. (Or maybe you’re the one who says you’re fine when you’re not!)
Many factors influence our emotions, but also our awareness of our emotions.
If you’re a healthy human being, you’ll feel the whole spectrum of emotions. There are also psychological defenses that may block certain feelings from awareness because these emotional experiences have been hurtful in the past.
Why Do We Ignore Our Feelings?
People have therefore learned to suppress them out of fear of negative consequences. Some of us have been raised in a culture where feelings are not openly discussed because that vulnerability is seen as a weakness. Those suppressed feelings are still there and may lead to other unpleasant manifestations.
For example, people experience physical pain from holding in unattended feelings. Other people unconsciously harm themselves or others in a futile attempt to work through their feelings. The common conclusion in the scientific community is that up to 90% of our decisions are driven by emotions. Ninety percent!
Without proper awareness of our feelings, we may act in contrary ways against our better judgment. George Loewenstein, psychologist, and economist at Carnegie Mellon University, identified the hot-cold empathy gap as people’s tendency to underestimate the influence of emotions over their actions. When emotions are dormant or “cold,” people can think and act rationally. When emotions are aroused and “hot,” people can make uncharacteristic decisions that lead to regrettable consequences. This means that people can think and act in surprising ways when they are hungry, afraid, or in pain. It is not just knowing yourself under calm conditions, but also knowing who you are in all emotional states. The ability to properly address your feelings will largely dictate the extent of your well-being.
Developing Emotional Intelligence
Increasing your emotional vocabulary and understanding will help you navigate complicated feelings. This is also known as emotional intelligence. Salovey, Mayer, and Caruso defined emotional intelligence as “the ability to engage in sophisticated information processing about one’s own and others’ emotions and the ability to use this information as a guide to thinking and behavior.
That is, individuals high in emotional intelligence pay attention to, use, understand, and manage emotions, and these skills serve adaptive functions that potentially benefit themselves and others.” Psychologist Daniel Goleman identified the main components of emotional intelligence as self-awareness, self-regulation, internal motivation, empathy, and social skills.
- Self-awareness is the ability to identify and articulate your thoughts and feelings, especially when they are happening in real-time.
- Self-regulation is the ability to manage the expression of your thoughts and feelings in a professional way, especially when emotions are felt intensely.
- Internal motivation is having the drive to live out your values.
- Empathy is the ability to understand, communicate, and sense how other people think and feel.
- Social skills are verbal and nonverbal actions that connect, build, and maintain healthy relationships.
Increasing your ability to make optimal decisions will naturally strengthen your emotional intelligence as well!
Emotions Tell Us to Pay Attention
Emotions may indicate whether something is important, but they will not tell you why. Think of emotions as a smoke detector. A smoke detector does one thing well: it lets you know that there is smoke in a certain area. Smoke detectors do not tell you the kind of fire, the cause of the smoke, or any other information. It just sets off the alarm! In the same way, our emotions tell us to pay attention, but we need to figure out what those feelings are trying to say.
For example, I may feel irritated when my wife criticizes how I do chores. Usually, I let the feeling lie and do not say anything. This particular day, however, I yell at her with intense anger when she points out a dirty dish. The reaction is grossly out of proportion to the offense. When I take a little time to process my anger, I realize my deeper frustration is about my coworker criticizing my work all week. I felt incompetent at work and my wife’s comment about the dishes thus triggered my insecurities. The angry outburst was my unconscious way of defending myself and protesting. My lack of insight and unprocessed feelings led me to mistreat my wife and cause her pain. When our emotions are left unchecked, we end up causing regrettable outcomes.
That is why we need to pause and think about our emotions. Even the simple act of verbalizing your emotions will give you more control over this abstract concept! By forming sentences about your thoughts and feelings, it engages the left part of our brain which helps ground our raw feelings into something more logical. With a more balanced integration of feelings and rationale, we are able to leverage our emotions to inform our decisions! Befriend your feelings to become a more holistic person.
