a peaceful resolution » Emotions

What you are really in control of

Andrew — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:22:54 +0000

When dealing with confict, crisis and other high-stakes situations, it can help to have clarity on what is in your control and what isn’t.

Here’s my map.

Under your control: Your words. Your body. Your actions.

Under your strong influence: What you focus on.

Can sometimes be affected by you: Your feelings. Your background thoughts. Their feelings. Their thoughts. Their words. Their actions.

Understanding that you only really have a reliable choice about your words, your body and your actions can help you be a bit humble when you go into a situation.

The first two categories can affect the latter category, but it’s an oblique effect.

I find that when I think I am in control of my feelings (or, even worse, their feelings) it all spirals into weirdness.

Don’t be discouraged though. You might be able to do a lot to change a situation just by changing how you hold your body, for instance, or how you listen (and for how long) or the words you say, or what you’re focusing on…

Comments: Yes please! Does this match your experience? Am I overstating or understating anything? How is this helpful?

Comment policy:

(a) Half-baked, unfinished thoughts very welcome. Systems With Capital Letters? Not so

much.

(b) Feel free to share your own experience, but no advice, please.

(c) Be nice.

A purpose for anger

Andrew — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:08:30 +0000

The emotion most often associated with conflict is anger.

It can help to know the kind of things that trigger anger.

Think back to recent situations where you felt anger (remembering that anger goes from irritation through annoyance even as far as rage).

Line up three or four examples in your mind.

What pattern do you notice?

I think that anger has a major pattern.

Anger is what we feel when we’re not getting what we need or want.

More specifically:

Anger is what we feel when a part of us thinks it’s not getting what it needs or wants.

This is helpful because when we recognise we are feeling angry, things aren’t just out of our control.

A useful question can be:

What do I need or want that I’m not getting?

I’m not saying it solves the problem, but at least it gives us more information.

Ne?

Comments: I love it when you leave a comment. Does this jibe with your experience? In what situations does this help?
Comment policy:

(a) Half-baked, unfinished thoughts very welcome. Systems With Capital Letters? Not so much.

(b) Feel free to share your own experience, but no advice, please.

(c) Be nice.

Internal check-in

Andrew — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:53:10 +0000

There are times when your sensitivity is turned way up.

These are times when you need to be extra patient with others, as they will be seem ridiculously annoying.

A mnemnomic that helps some people is HALT. (I think it’s originally from Alcoholics Anonymous. You’re not meant to get too H, A, L or T when in recovery. Hey, we take useful wisdom where we can, right?)

These help you do an internal check to see if you might be more touchy than usual.

H – Hungry
A – Angry
L – Lonely
T – Tired

Julia Cameron adds an S

S – Sad

I add a W and an O.

W – Withdrawing (from caffeine, for example)
O – Overwhelmed

HALTSWO.

Er…
HOWLS AT?

SLOW HAT?

Whatever.

If you can ‘go inside’ and check if one of these might be going on, you can give people the benefit of the doubt until you’ve sorted yourself out.

Comments: I love comments. Useful? Do you have anything else that is a general trigger for you? Any other letters to add? A better acronym for this?

Comment policy:

(a) Half-baked, unfinished thoughts very welcome. Systems With Capital Letters? Not so much.

(b) Be nice.

Related posts:

Your jaw is your friend

Emotional fluency – the first pillar

The four difficult emotions

Your jaw is your friend

Andrew — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:29:43 +0000

The more you can stay open in high-stakes situations, the better.

Adrenalin narrows your window on the situation, making you see fewer options and getting you to rely more on ingrained habits.

It’s difficult to monitor your own state of stress, though.

It’s a bit like drinking. Alcohol affects your judgement, but it also affects your judgement of your ability to judge. I met a woman in a bar once who slurred to me that as soon as she got in the car, no matter how many drinks she’d had, she ‘sobered up’.

Obviously untrue, but difficult to tell from the inside.

It takes a lot of practice to monitor your emotions and what psychologists call, I believe, your state of arousal. (Come on.).

You, can, however, use your body.

A down-and-dirty way of monitoring your level of emotional clenching is track your jaw.

How tight is your jaw?

Can you loosen it?

I find that my jaw serves as a pretty accurate barometer for how stressed I’m feeling.

Conversely, the more I can relax my jaw, the more conscious I become about loosening up and slowing down.

Would that work as a mindful practice?

What’s your jaw doing right now?

~ What might that be about?

~ What happens if you loosen it?

Next step: jaw and shoulders.

Advanced practice: jaw and shoulders and facial muscles.

I loves me the comments. What are you thinking right now? Type it! In a comment! Half-baked thoughts totally welcome.

Comment policy:

(a) Half-baked, unfinished thoughts very welcome. Systems With Capital Letters? Not so much.

(b) Be nice.

Related posts:

The four difficult emotions

Emotional fluency – the first pillar

A purpose for anger

The four difficult emotions

Andrew — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:26:59 +0000

Sometimes it can seem like our emotions are out of our control.

A first step to getting in control can be to identify what the hell you’re feeling.

The big four adrenalin-triggering emotions, as far as I can see, are:

Fear
Anger
Sadness
Guilt

Fear has some little sisters – anxiety, unease – and some big sisters – panic, dread, terror.

Anger’s younger siblings are irritation, annoyance and frustration. It has one older one: rage.

Sadness at a lower register has things like wistfulness and nostalgia. Up a level is the wildness of grief.

Guilt is a strange one. I didn’t use to include it, but I realised that a lot of difficult situations are characterised by these very human emotions of guilt, shame and embarrassment. Less clear cut, but still powerful.

There are of course less problematic emotions like happiness, joy, excitement, comfort, peace.

Those are not so much of an issue, right?

A good habit to get into (along with noticing your jaw) is to begin to go:

What am I feeling right now?

If we want to be able to stay steady inside high stakes situations, we need to practice when things are less full-on.

Being able to identify what you are feeling is important. If we treat emotions as signals, it can help to bring them more under our influence.

Comments: I love it when you leave a comment, even a sentence or two. Is this categorisation of emotions useful to you? What questions does it leave you with?

Comment policy:

(a) Half-baked, unfinished thoughts very welcome. Systems With Capital Letters? Not so much.

(b) No advice, please.

(c) Be nice.

Related posts:

Emotional fluency – the first pillar

Your jaw is your friend

A purpose for anger

Emotional fluency – the first pillar

Andrew — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:23:36 +0000

Think back to the last three conflicts/arguments/altercations/disagreements you had at work or at home.

Bet you felt stuff, right?

The thing that makes high-stakes situations (conflict and crisis) so hard is, largely, emotions.

Emotions before an event, during an event, after an event. Yours, theirs, everyone’s.

The more you can be aware of what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it and how, perhaps, to take some of the sting out of it, the more you’re going to be able to stay steady in the face of difficulty.

Also, the more you can make a good guess as to what others are feeling, and, perhaps perhaps, take a little of the sting out it, the more you’re going to help things move out of conflict loops and up to a level of possible resolution.

Feelings… nothing more than feelings…

In the workplace, talking about feelings is often taboo.

Staying loose and open in the face of feelings is HARD, man.

And key, too, to so many aspects of conflict resolution and crisis management.

It does you no favours to avoid this topic, so I make no apologies for how full this category will become…

Comments: Feelings, eh? Full-on, strange, mysterious. Tough, at times.

What comes to mind when we talk about them? What do you need help with?

What do you reckon? You know, in general?

Comment policy:

(a) Half-baked, unfinished thoughts very welcome. Systems With Capital Letters? Not so much.

(b) Be nice.

Related posts:

Deliberate uncertainty – the second pillar

Listening: the third pillar

What you are really in control of