7.5: Managing Emotions

Context for Managing Emotions

Managing emotions can be difficult given a lot of different factors, including aspects of our internal and external selves that may be impacting or impacted by the emotions we are experiencing. For example, our self-concept and self-esteem have a large impact on our emotions and our ability to be effective communicators when these emotions are running high. Managing our emotions does not mean that we are trying to suppress or make our emotions disappear, but instead it explains how we are reacting to the emotions we are feeling. There is an unlimited amount of ways we can react, just like there are unlimited amounts of emotions or combinations of emotions we can feel at any given time. Managing our emotions means that we are feeling our emotions and we are in control of how we are reacting to them given our surroundings (Course Hero, n.d.b). When people are able to manage their emotions, they understand that emotions are an important part of the self and that expressing emotions is a natural, healthy, and necessary part of life—but are also self-aware enough to realize that there are productive and nonproductive ways to react.

Facilitative and Debilitative Emotions

Choosing how we react to our emotions instead of allowing our emotions to overcome us is an important aspect of being a competent communicator. Being able to know what emotions are facilitative, or helpful, versus what emotions are debilitative, or harmful, allows us to be able to understand that our emotional reactions do not just affect ourselves and our internal dialogue but also the way in which we interact and engage with others around us.

When we explore the wide range of possible emotions one could feel, we can generally classify most of those emotions into one of two categories— and the difference between these two categories really relies on the intensity of the emotion itself. Facilitative emotions tend to be emotions that do not negatively impact us from the daily tasks or functions of our lives; they allow us to progress forward in a positive way. Debilitative emotions, on the other hand, tend to be emotions that stop or slow us down from tasks or functioning effectively. Debilitative emotions typically result in destructive behavior (Lumen, n.d.b). For example, if we are at work and a co-worker makes us annoyed because of a certain action or behavior, we can generally move past that emotion quickly and continue working without letting that emotion or the individual causing the emotion to impact our work. However if instead of annoyance, we were feeling anger, or even rage, that might make it more difficult for us to continue working in the environment. The emotion might take over us in that moment and it would become harder to make sure our actions and communication were effective and appropriate.

Ask yourself: “Have I ever felt a sense of rage?” How would you describe that feeling? Many people might say that they “saw red” in a moment of rage, and they were unsure of what happened next because their emotions were so all-consuming.

Another important factor that makes up debilitative emotions is the longevity of the emotion. There is a difference in feeling something for a moment in time and then allowing an emotion to pass, and for that emotion to be part of a person’s mindset and way of thinking. Debilitative emotions can take a person longer to recover from and tend to linger or get thrust into more intense or dramatic emotions more easily. For example, let's say that you work in a store: If you are having a bad day, it is much easier for that bad day to be made worse by the smallest things than it is for you to turn that bad day into a good one. If your co-worker has already annoyed you when you came to work, it might be easier for you to feel annoyed by customers whom you interact with throughout the day as well. This might make it harder for you to smile or act friendly when new customers enter the store, which then creates a negative emotional spiral in all of your interactions for the day. Table \(\PageIndex{1}\) details descriptions of both facilitative and debilitative emotions in comparison to one another.

Facilitative and Debilitative Emotions

Emotional State	Description
Facilitative emotions	Can result in constructive behavior (positive outcomes). Emotional states feel supportive and benefit personal growth. Include neutral emotions, such as contentment. Intense positive emotions may not last long, but create positive moods. Focus on aspects that bring the individual joy and happiness.
Debilitative emotions	Can result in destructive behavior (negative outcomes). Emotions tend to take control and become overwhelming. Take a long time to recover from or “snap out” of the negative emotion, creating negative moods. Fostered by irrational thinking. Focused on negative self-talk.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Facilitative and Debilitative Emotions by Elizabeth Encarnacion is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Minimizing Debilitative Emotions

Debilitative emotions are fostered by irrational thinking. Irrational thinking is when our mind wanders down a path of thought that links things together that are unrelated, or makes us only consider our options in a scenario as “black and white” when there are many possible outcomes that may occur. Irrational thinking can lead to overgeneralizing about the emotions that we are feeling or about the interactions that caused the emotions. In order to overcome debilitating emotions, there are four steps to help minimize them, in order to reduce how much impact they are having over us, so that we can instead manage them effectively both in the moment and in the long term.

Step 1: Monitor Emotional Reactions

What is happening internally at the moment? We should try to name the emotion we are feeling. It is important to be able to gauge the intensity and severity of the emotion we are feeling. By naming the emotion, we are better able to gain self-awareness of what that emotion is doing to us both physically and emotionally. Does the emotion change over time or does it stay the same? Does it get more intense or does it seem to fade? Are there certain people, places, things, phrases, etc. that bring the emotion back or make the emotion worse? Looking at the example that we provided earlier, if you are aware that you are working with a coworker whom you typically don’t get along with, it will be important for you to be aware that you get more easily agitated with them. Maybe you will shorten conversations with them or try to stay busy in areas where they aren’t so that you can avoid communication that might make you internalize that annoyance. This allows you to focus on communicating with customers and actively putting a smile on your face in order to hopefully help change your mood internally as well.

Step 2: Note the Activating Event

What caused this emotion to develop inside of me? Does it relate to the setting I am in? The types of people I am communicating with or interacting with specific people? Or maybe its specific topics of conversation that tend to make this debilitative emotion “rise to the surface.” One of the authors shares a personal example:

I have a difficult relationship with my mother that extends back the majority of my life. There are many times when I can remember getting extremely angry in conversations with her, where I have left crying or close to crying because of what was said. When I try to look back at all the times those types of incidents have happened, I might be able to identify what the activating event is that creates these extreme and long-lasting emotions. Once I can make the connection that the topic of conversation around weight or physical features tends to push me into debilitating emotions very quickly, I can then be aware of when those interactions might come up with my mother in order to have a greater sense of control on how I handle them, or if I need to avoid them all together.

Step 3: Record Self-Talk

Recording our self-talk is an important part of being able to change the internal dialogue and take back control of the way in which we allow that emotion to take up space internally. Going back to the workplace example: If you allow yourself to get aggravated with your co-worker, you might start to hate your job as a whole. While you don’t work with this co-worker all the time, you are letting the interactions that you have with them impact your overall experience of the workplace. This might begin to impact your self-concept of your work ethic and your interactions with customers overall. Repeating the internal dialogue of “I hate this place” might perpetuate conflict with customers or co-workers that you don’t want to occur. For the author's example, she may feel that she wouldn’t get into these arguments with my mother if she lost weight, or if her body looked different in some way, or if she exercised more. She may believe that it is her fault these arguments occur because of the way that she looks.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Day 3 - Callen-Lorde-4196 by Zackary Drucker from The Gender Spectrum Collection.

Step 4: Dispute Irrational Beliefs

This leads us to the final step in minimizing debilitative emotions, which is to dispute irrational beliefs. You are not a “bad person” because you don’t get along with all of your co-workers, nor is our author's physical size or shape responsible for the relationship with her mother. When we start to monitor and take specific note of the self-talk that the debilitative emotions are making us feel, we can start to see how irrational those debilitative emotions truly are. Being able to see the logic—or the lack of logic—in our own thought patterns allows us to see that the emotion is taking over control of what we know is true and real. Even being able to read the self-talk that we used as examples earlier showcases the disconnect the thoughts have in response to the interaction that is causing these emotions. That does not mean those emotions are not valid—all emotions are valid —however, in those moments, our emotions are controlling us instead of us controlling our emotions.

Being able to get to a point where we can identify our own irrational beliefs is not always as easy as it sounds, and it is much easier when written into four steps than it is to practice in real-life examples—especially attempting to do it in the moment when the emotions are controlling us. But the idea is to challenge our internal dialogue by asking questions, and as with most things in life, practicing this technique makes us better able to see, recognize, and take back control of these emotions over time.

The four steps in minimizing debilitative emotions are challenging to complete, and require a lot of time, practice, and patience to work through. It is important to remember that becoming a more competent communicator takes time, and “perfection” does not exist. Once we feel we are at a place where we are continuously remembering to monitor our emotional reactions and to note the events that tend to activate certain debilitative emotions, where we are more aware of our self-talk and how to pinpoint the thoughts and beliefs that are interfering with our lives, we can begin to work on changing our self-talk.

There are many ways we can approach changing our self-talk, but some of the most common advice stems from treating ourselves like we would treat a friend, based on the cognitive behavioral theory (CBT) through self-compassion. Self-compassion essentially means that we are being kind to ourselves—understanding that we are all learning and growing, and with growth comes making mistakes. It is also important to remember that we are all critical of ourselves from time to time, and sometimes our mind does trick us into believing things that are not true about ourselves. Trying to catch negative self-talk in the moment, and either stopping it completely or challenging it, is an important way to stop debilitative emotions from spiraling and allow more facilitative emotions to come forward.

Maximizing Facilitative Emotions

Now that we have looked at ways we can work through overcoming debilitative emotions, it is equally important to learn how we can maximize facilitative emotions. It is important to understand that all emotions live in tandem with one another; while one moment we feel a high level of a positive emotion, in the next moment we could be met with a neutral or negative emotion. When working towards maximizing our facilitative, or positive emotions, it is important to keep at the forefront three important thoughts: emotions are complex, neutrality in emotions is facilitative, and how culture impacts how facilitative emotions are constructed.

Emotions Are Complex

Emotions are complex aspects of our identities. In the same way we view the intersection of our identities as being the overlapping and interdependent social systems that contribute to our understanding of ethnic and cultural identity, we can view emotions as having the same intersection and interdependence. Emotions do not live in a vacuum, and they are often difficult to distinguish because there are multiple emotional reactions being felt at the same time. Because of these complexities within emotions, it is important to understand that modeling facilitative emotions is going to look different for each person. Research has consistently shown that maximizing facilitative emotions depends strongly on “fit” or the ways in which the strategies to promote facilitative emotions positively connect to a person’s interests, values, strengths, motivation, or needs (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). In order to sustain facilitative emotions, it is important to make sure the strategies being used are ones that connect to the needs and goals of the individual. Choosing activities, exercises, or strategies to promote facilitative emotions that are uniquely satisfying to the individual will help create habitual commitment and increase the likelihood of the facilitative emotion being increased and sustained (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006).

Neutrality in Emotions Is Facilitative

This also leads to the understanding of what neutrality in emotions are. Neutrality is defined as

feeling indifferent, nothing in particular, and a lack of preference one way or the other. Note, when we use the term indifferent, we do not use it to indicate disliking something because that would imply a negative rather than a neutral reaction. (Gasper, et al., 2019)

This neutral emotion can also occur at the same time as other positive or negative emotions as well, relating back to the complexity that emotions can have within us. Neutral emotions are important to understand and acknowledge within the rollercoaster of emotions so they are not ignored. Oftentimes neutrality can be seen as a lack of emotion, where emotion is defined as the reaction to experiences, and in order to have a reaction, it must be charged as either positive or negative. However, neutrality is often the existence of a more subtle understanding that we do not feel one way or another about our environment, such as the feeling of contentment, or just feeling “OK” versus feeling “good” or “great.” Neutrality could have a “range of potential consequences, including helping people cope” with the given environment. As such, neutral emotions are not negative; they are stable in long-term understanding of our mood and personality traits. This harkens back to our definition of facilitative emotions being ones that allow us to progress forward in a positive way (Gasper, et al., 2019). When looking at facilitative emotions and ideas for how we can better foster facilitative emotions, it is important to be mindful and realistic in what facilitative emotions we can achieve. Not every facilitative emotion is going to be high on the “positivity scale” ; being able to acknowledge when we are able to reach a level of neutrality in our facilitative emotion building is an important skill.

Culture Impacts how Facilitative Emotions Are Constructed

Research demonstrates that emotions are social interactions that are created within our interpersonal interactions and our social environments. As you have learned in this book, culture has an important impact on our interpersonal interactions because our social environments are culturally constructed. Emotions also impact and are impacted by our culture as well (Cho et. al, 2019). Geert Hofstede’s foundational research in cultural dimensions showcases six prominent ways in which a culture's values, needs, and social behaviors can be analyzed. The six value dimensions include collectivistic and individualistic cultures, where values of individual versus group needs are heightened. Research on emotions has traditionally emphasized intrapersonal and individualized aspects, such as personal self-esteem and our internal dialogue as separate from our interpersonal, communal, communication (Cho et. al, 2019). These ideas showcase the individualistic understanding of emotion as a cultural value, but do not showcase collectivistic understanding. Within collectivistic cultures—such as East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian cultures—emotional values gravitate towards prioritizing group needs as well as emotional well-being (Tsai, 2021). There are many ways in which emotions are similar across cultures (including our physiological responses to emotions) but there are also important ways in which emotional behaviors differentiate, and these differentiations are important to understand in making sure we are creating effective and appropriate interpretations on our emotional response within communication interactions.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Friendship by Chona Kasinger on Disabled and Here

Facilitative emotions are imperative to our mental well-being as individuals as well as our well-being within relationships (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). Creating and fostering positive emotions takes time and effort, and while there is no “one size fits all” method to maximizing facilitative emotions, research does show there to be some strategies that are likely to work given commitment and longevity of practice (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006):

• Spend time socializing or doing activities that bring joy.
• Become present-oriented to help enjoy and savor positive emotional experiences.
• Regard challenging situations as opportunities for growth.
• Express gratitude in order to savor positive experiences with others.
• Commit to acts of kindness.
• Identify and use your unique strengths.
• Visualizing ones’ best possible self in all aspects.
• Working on personal goals.
• Choose compassion for others, understanding that we all have different experiences that make up who we are, instead of contempt in viewing others as below or beneath us.

Consider This: Encanto Connections

Encanto (2021) is a film showcasing the Madrigal family, who live in Columbia. They have been gifted with an enchanted candle and casita (house), which they have used to support an enchanted village community. The lineage of Madrigal family members each have a special gift, except Mirabel. Throughout the story, viewers can see facilitative and debilitative emotions at work. To illustrate how we could maximize our facilitative emotions and minimize our debilitative emotions, we will use these characters as an example.

There are many facilitative emotions where the emotions the characters experience are positive and connect to our identities and interests. For instance, the sister relationship between Mirabel and Luisa is one of support and love. The interaction where Mirabel is scared and is asking Luisa about what could be causing the enchanted house to crack, we see that Mirabel’s attitude goes from worrying about the house, to focusing on supporting her sister. Through this change in emotions, Maribel is showcasing how to support her sister’s development of facilitative emotions through her active listening. By the end of this scene, Luisa relaxes into Maribel and cries, allowing her to break down the emotional walls she had built up.

We see a few instances of debilitative emotions and how they hurt the characters as well. Let's talk about Bruno. Why is Bruno a taboo topic? The Bruno character is vilified because his gift of premonition is seen as creating negative outcomes, although the future is not dictated or guided by Bruno in any way. Bruno is able to experience very big and powerful emotions and experiences a high amount of emotional contagion from the other family members. While many of the family members perceive Bruno’s gift as negative, we know that debilitative emotions are fostered through irrational thinking. Had the family members been aware of the blaming language they used, they could have changed this language and reframed their perceptions of his gift to promote their relationship with Bruno as well as to understand the true meaning of his power. Conversely, Bruno could have stood up for himself and explained how their language and actions were negatively affecting him so that he did not feel that leaving the family was necessary.

The Madrigal family, like many Colombian families, is collectivistic and works together to achieve their goals. Their collectivism and unity is the family’s true gift and strength, but without proper communication channels and facilitating emotional growth of each member, this strength can also become their downfall, creating cracks in the foundation of their identity. Through promoting positive communication tools and skills, the family members learn how to overcome these cracks and rebuild a stronger foundation. Luisa should work on communicating the feelings of being burdened by her daily responsibilities and Bruno should find ways to soften harsh realities that will occur. The family could then reframe their beliefs about his powers and it could change the consequences. Both of these two characters could record their self-talk. Luisa and Bruno perpetuated debilitative emotions through the language they used when describing themselves. Finally, they could dispute irrational beliefs. Strength is not always physical, and Luisa’s character was strong even when she was physically weak. Bruno was helping the family even when hiding in the house's walls. Bruno was simply using the gift he was given, and this was not a reflection of his identity. By identifying and using their unique strengths, they made the family stronger. We can follow these steps to help us minimize the debilitative and maximize the facilitative emotions we experience.

Discussion Questions

1. What are some constructive ways you can work towards maximizing facilitative emotions in your own life? Think of three to five specific strategies that you can draw from when debilitative emotions start to form. Spend a week being mindful of your emotions, both facilitative and debilitative, and take notes on what helped you the most during these emotionally charged events.
2. We know that emotions are contagious (emotional contagion). Is there an example you have that shows when you have experienced a positive or negative emotional contagion? Are there ways for us to promote positive emotional contagion? How does this relate to facilitative versus debilitative emotions?