Emotional Strength is a philosophy and a way of living that promotes a different way of responding to all emotion, particularly those labelled ‘negative’ emotion. We are taught that happiness is the only acceptable emotion. There are songs written about ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. Children are taught that if they have a sad expression on their faces, they need to “cheer up, it’s not that bad”. They are often told that “there are lots of people worse off and you should be grateful”. This type of response invalidates all people particularly children. The implied meaning is that the only valid feeling is happy. Even if you feel sad, you must smile.
Challenging the Happiness Myth
Whereas from an Emotional Strength perspective, feelings of sadness, anxiety or anger are normal everyday experiences and yet they are often judged by society as ‘bad’. These ‘negative’ emotions are frowned upon. Many people have inadvertently learned to suppress or avoid feelings that may feel uncomfortable, painful or are deemed socially unacceptable. Children who are feeling uncomfortable sensations require someone to ‘hear’ their experience and help them work through it. They need a caregiver to respond by validating their emotional experiences in that moment.
The Importance of Validating Emotions
There are many examples that demonstrate unintentionally invalidating a child – take bad dreams for example. When a child wakes up in the middle of the night having a bad dream and the parent goes in to see what is happening. The child says I saw a monster in my room. Instead of saying “there is no monster in here, go back to sleep”. Another way of responding is by asking the child to describe the monster, what did the monster look like? how big was it? what colour was it? As the child tells the story about the dream and the caregiver listens intently to the words and the feelings, the child calms down and goes back to sleep. Try it out.
Redefining Anger
Another myth that we are taught growing up is that the emotion labelled anger is the same as the action of violence. If we separate those two concepts for a moment the emotion labelled ‘anger’ is high energy and is used to set healthy boundaries, whereas violence is a non-feeling action that can be called ‘acting out’. Children learn how to behave in the world by watching parents, teachers and their peers. If a parent ‘acts out’ in response to conflict with aggression or violence, then the child will learn that response in times of conflict. For example, when the young child is playing in the sandpit with a friend and there is a disagreement, the child who has been role modelled violence, will ‘act out’ by throwing sand in the other child’s eyes and then there is tears for both children.
Another way of responding to the high energy labelled ‘anger’ is to help children connect to the energy in their bodies. The behaviour of children who feel ‘angry’ energy is when the child cannot sit still, or ‘ants in your pants’ type feelings. The angry sensation for adults may feel like a big energy rising from your feet all the way to your head. It often feels hot (hence the term ‘hot head’). The experience is different for everyone, there is no one best way of feeling these high energies.
The Anxiety Myth
The other myth is that anxiety is bad. Anxiety is blamed for a lot of things. Take the fear of public speaking as an example. People are often coached to distract, avoid, or numb the anxiety related to the fear of public speaking. However, from an Emotional Strength perspective, the other way of responding to one’s anxiety just before a speech is to become aware of the anxiety in your body, feel the sensations and notice what you are saying to yourself. You can use this technique before you sit your final exam or any other time you become aware of your high anxiety.
Connecting to Anxiety
This response is different to judging the feeling or worrying that feeling the anxiety will make your performance worse. You will notice that this also happens when a facilitator asks you to introduce yourself going around the group one by one. For those who experience performance anxiety, your heart rate will increase the closer the facilitator gets to you in a ‘go around the room’ technique. At those times you cannot remember what the participants said before you, you are just surviving the anxiety that is increasing as it gets closer to your turn to speak. This type of response involves feeling your heart rate increase the closer you get to the moment that you are required to speak. In this instance, you are not trying to manage or reduce your anxiety, you are practicing feeling the sensations in your body. You are not trying to make it go away, you are letting it do its thing and then trusting whatever happens.
The Benefits of Feeling Emotions
The reason feeling our emotions is so beneficial is that it enables us to navigate our world. Feeling (as opposed to suffering) helps us respond in healthy ways which mitigates ‘acting out’. Acting out can result in destructive behaviour. This is not the same as acting on your feelings. From an Emotional Strength perspective, feelings and actions are two different concepts. Feelings do not always lead to actions. Actions can happen without feeling at all. Often actions taken from a disconnected place can be destructive. Those emotions labelled as ‘negative’ emotions have a bad reputation and are blamed for causing all kinds of negative behaviour. However, from an Emotional Strength perspective, it is not the emotion that causes the problem, it is a disconnection from the emotion that causes the problem.
When you practice connecting to your feelings or sensations in your body in any given moment, your acting out behaviour will reduce automatically. Once you understand that emotions and actions are separate, life becomes a lot easier.
“It challenges the dichotomous view that negative emotions are either a danger to ourselves and society and must be controlled or hidden or that it is unhealthy to keep negative emotions inside so they should be let out. This is a false dichotomy” 1