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 Sentiments and Emotional Intelligence (III)
(New Woman, 2004-03-24)
Controlling
one’s own feelings
When a man is irritated, he loses
his reason.
Proverb
The spiral of preoccupation
”I was so upset. For
some reason or other—same old story— that stupid comment was
too much for me to handle.
”I went over the
incident in my mind a thousand and one times, like
a three-act play. I analyzed it, dissected it, quartered
it, and put it back together again. My emotions
sprang up and I felt anger and tremendous pain over
what was said to me.
”I felt very hurt,
but I saw that my memory and imagination were multiplying
the pain, repeating it over and over again, making me
wish I had said or done this or that.
It’s horrible. You can become obsessed over something that
happens and just lose all sense of the true proportion
of things.”
The preoccupation so vividly narrated by that woman
certainly does not keep itself within reasonable limits. It
can develop to a point that is clearly damaging to
the person.
The preoccupation spiral is the fundamental nucleus
of anxiety.
It’s not that the worry or preoccupation
is negative in itself. As Lizabeth Roemer and Thomas Borkovec
have noted, preoccupation is important for man’s survival and dignity,
because it is essential for constructive reflection, and serves as
a warning sign before a potential danger. It can
help impel us to seek solutions.
Nevertheless, when the preoccupation continually
repeats itself without contributing any positive solution, it produces a
constant emotional background noise that generates an overwhelming sense of
anxiety. That spiral often begins with an internal event,
which then jumps from one topic to another with a
speed that can become dizzying. If it becomes chronic
and habitual, those people cannot make themselves stop worrying, and
can’t seem to relax. And, instead of looking for
a possible way out, they limit themselves to going over
and over those same ideas, going deeper into the same
rut of the thought that worries them.
If that vicious circle
intensifies and persists, it can darken the argumentative thread of
the mind, and can lead, in the most serious cases,
to nervous disorders of various kinds: phobias (when the anxiety
becomes fixed on an intense aversion towards situations or people),
obsessions (over health, order, cleanliness, one’s own image, weight, physical
fitness, etc.), a panic sensation (before a physical risk, or
before having to appear in public), insomnia (as a consequence
of intrusive thoughts or worries that are not kept within
bounds), etc.
—And why can worry end up in that
kind of mental addiction?
It is difficult to know. Perhaps
because while the person is immersed in those recurring thoughts,
she escapes from her subjective feeling of anxiety. She
gives in to the temptation of losing herself in an
endless sequence of preoccupations. She takes refuge in them,
and they surround her in a kind of drugging cloud.
—
And what does one have to do to get out
of that spiral of preoccupation? Because it’s not at
all easy to follow advice like “don’t worry; take a
walk; distract yourself a little” or the like.
The
best way is to know oneself well so as to
detect the phenomenon and cut that tendency from the beginning.
We have to adopt a critical attitude towards the
elements that constitute the origin of the preoccupation, and ask
oneself three basic questions:
What are the real chances that that’s
going to happen?
What would be a reasonable action that
I could take to keep it from happening?
What use
is it for me to keep going over it in
this way?
In this way, with a mixture of attention
and healthy skepticism, a person can stop the anxiety and
little by little, leave the vicious circle that tends to
imprison her.
Controlling feelings of sadness
There are certainly moments
when sadness is the most natural and fitting reaction to
events, such as, example, the death of a loved one,
or an important loss that is irreparable. In these
cases, sadness provides a kind of reflexive refuge, of necessary
pain in order to take on the loss and understand
its meaning.
Nevertheless, common sadness, that melancholy that leads
people to be beaten down, to isolate themselves from others,
and to sink under the weight of loneliness and desolation,
is a cruel and lacerating sentiment that we have to
learn how to overcome.
One of the main reasons for the
duration and intensity of a state of sadness is the
person’s degree of obsession for whatever caused the sadness.
Excessive worrying over that cause only makes the sadness become
keener and more prolonged. To isolate oneself, to think
constantly about how bad we feel, or about the new
evils that could come upon us, are excellent ways of
prolonging that state.
—And what can be done to overcome it?
Similar
to what we said about the spiral of preoccupation, the
best therapy against sadness is to reflect about its causes
so as to seek a remedy in the measure that
we can.
To learn to tackle the thoughts that are hidden
within the nucleus of whatever is making us sad, in
order to question their validity and consider more positive alternatives.
Sometimes, sadness has its origin in causes that are surprisingly
small. It begins, perhaps, with a mood that is
a bit grumpy, or maybe with complaining, susceptibility, or envy,
more or less light, that in that moment seems controllable
and inoffensive. But if we let ourselves be dominated by
those sentiments, it will be inevitable that they will come
back to haunt us later at a time when we
are feeling more down, and it could also happen that
if a person doesn’t take care of herself, they will
begin to govern her ways of thinking and feeling.
And
the worst part of this phenomenon isn’t just the bad
time we go through—and make others go through—on each occasion.
The worst part is that if we do not act
decisively to overcome it, there can come a time when
those sentiments establish themselves in a permanent way within us,
and each wave of a new “attack” can invade deeper
and deeper places in our emotional life.
Another way to change
a mood is to act on the associations of ideas
that are produced in our minds. As Richard Wenzlaff
has said, we all have a wide repertoire of negative
ideas and reasoning that come easily to our minds when
we are in a bad mood. People more prone
to sadness have often established strong associations between those ideas
and whatever happens to them in ordinary life. They
tend to distract themselves by associating those ideas, jumping from
one to another, which only deepens the negative rut.
They end up dominated by a strong tendency to turn
any reflection into a lamentation. To cut these chains
of black thoughts is the best way to come out
of the vicious circle of sadness.
Life is more than a
book of complaints.
And although some people seem to think
that it shows sharpness and maturity to show an attitude
of constant criticism of the evils that they suffer, or
that society in general suffers, it is much more practical
to dedicate those energies—or at least, a good part of
them—to find good examples in the people around us, and
to try to follow them. It’s not that we
have to ignore or hide what is bad, but it’s
important to learn to center ourselves on constructive tasks.
Distraction
is also a good way of keeping away those recurring
ideas, above all when those more or less depressing thoughts
have an almost automatic character, and barge into one’s mind
unexpectedly, without a clear direct cause. In any event,
this has to be done in a proportionate way, because
an immoderate use of distraction can be dangerous: for example,
heavy television watchers often end their marathon sessions with a
greater sense of sadness and frustration than they began with.
There are many other ways of tackling sadness. For
example, making an effort to see things from a different
angle, a more positive angle; avoiding self-pitying thoughts or a
victim mentality, shining a light on the positive that—little or
a lot— may be hidden behind that moment that seems
so negative to us; thinking that many other people have
known how to overcome situations that are objectively much worse
than mine; seeking relief in someone else who is not
trapped in that spiral of sadness and who can listen
to us and offer alternatives or remedies, etc.
There will be
occasions in which the main cause will simply be tiredness.
For example, a person who habitually sleeps very little
can show a pessimistic or irritable character, and be convinced
that her reactions are logical in the face of the
things that happen to her. Perhaps she doesn’t realize
what is really happening: that she suffers from a plain
and simple state of tiredness, the natural result of having
slept little. It is an example of the influence
that a bodily situation can have on our mood, but
in some cases we can experience it without realizing its
cause.
Sometimes, the solution will be to sleep. Other times,
it will be to immerse ourselves in some occupation, even
if it is not rest: for example, taking care of
some small pending jobs (housecleaning, repair work, etc.) that make
us center our attention on something else, and also makes
us enjoy the gratifying sensation of having finished something.
It should
be emphasized, lastly, that thinking about others is an excellent
therapy against sadness, because sadness often feeds itself on worries
that revolve around oneself, and the fact of helping others—always
something to be recommended for anyone, whether sad or happy—has
the beneficial effect of getting rid of a little of
our selfishness (among many other good effects).
The process of
anger
Let’s suppose—the example is from Daniel Goleman—that another driver
comes dangerously close to us in the middle of thick
traffic in the city, and his bad driving obliges us
to veer to the side and slam on the brakes
in order to avoid hitting him. What is our
reaction?
It’s possible that our first thought will be:
“That idiot! He almost crashed into me! He
doesn’t know where he’s going!” And perhaps other thoughts
even more harsh and hostile will come, and these can
become words, gestures, and even screams. And as a
result of that small incident, we suffer a strong rush
of adrenaline, a tension, and a bad mood that can
last some seconds, or some minutes… unless our bad spirit
dissipates and we do something with more serious and lasting
consequences.
Now let’s compare that reaction with another more serene one,
or with a little bit of a sense of humor.
“Well, looks like he didn’t see me. He’s obviously
in a hurry; looks like he’s going to put out
a fire.” This type of reaction tempers our first
thought of anger through understanding or a sense of humor,
and it stops the rise of anger.
—But anger doesn’t
always have to be bad.
Of course. It’s about reaching
that balance that Aristotle proposed when he said: Anyone can
get angry; that’s very easy. But to get angry
with the right person, to the right degree, in the
right moment, with a just cause and in the correct
way, that, certainly, is no longer such an easy thing.
Sometimes
it helps to externalize our indignation to underline an attitude
of reproach that we consider it appropriate to show, but
at other times—perhaps most often—the problem is that anger can
escape our control. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, we will
always have reasons to be angry, but those reasons will
rarely be good ones.
—Anyway, sometimes it’s better to express anger
than to keep it all inside.
Sometimes yes, but it’s doubtful
that such a therapy will be effective in a general
way. It’s not at all clear that expressing anger
has liberating effects.
The normal thing is that the fact of
giving free rein to our anger, although at the beginning
it may appear to give us a certain relief or
satisfaction, does little or nothing to mitigate its effects.
It’s true that there are exceptions, and sometimes it is
necessary to express our indignation quite clearly, and it can
even be quite wise, pedagogically speaking (for example, to restore
authority, or to show the seriousness of a situation). However,
given the highly inflammatory nature of anger, that’s much easier
said than done. Keeping oneself within the reasonable limits
of anger is something that few people are capable of
doing.
Most of the time—almost always—unloading our anger leads us to
say and do things that—if we are sincere with ourselves—we
come to regret pretty quickly. In moments of anger,
we think, say, and do things that cause wounds and
breaks that sometimes cannot be fixed, or at least, are
very difficult to heal.
A coup d’état on the government
of our own person
It was a hot August afternoon
in 1963 when Richard R. decided to commit a robbery
for the last time in his life. It had
been a while since he’d done it, after a good
amount of small thefts that had landed him in prison.
But he desperately needed money, and he thought that
this occasion truly would be the last one.
He chose a
luxury apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that
two university students were occupying. Richard thought that no
one would be home at that hour, but he was
mistaken. Once inside, he found himself with one of
the young women. He was obliged to threaten her
with a knife and attack her, and he had to
do the same thing when, just as he was leaving,
he bumped into the other occupant of the apartment, who
was just coming in at that moment off the street.
While
he was busy with the second young woman, her companion
got more and more angry seeing what was happening, and
in a few minutes she had an attack of nerves,
in the middle of which she assured Richard that she
would always remember his face and would not stop until
the police caught him and put him in jail.
Richard, who
had sworn that this would be his last robbery, started
to become infuriated, until he too lost complete control of
himself. And, in the middle of a full attack
of rage and fear, he beat the two girls so
hard that they died.
Thirty years later, that man is
still in prison, known for the “crime against the university
students”. Remembering that shameful afternoon, that man lamented in
his jail cell in an interview published in a magazine,
“I was like a crazy man. I lost my head,
I didn’t know what I was doing.”
That fateful afternoon in
August 1963, two people lost control of themselves, and the
result was the end of two peoples’ lives and the
ruin of a third who at that time seemed to
be on the verge of straightening himself out.
This tragic episode, sadly true, is an extreme example of
how unloading anger can lead to a real coup d’état
of the government of our own person. In less
drastic forms, although perhaps not always less intense, it can
happen to everyone with greater or lesser frequency. It
suffices to think of the times when one lost control
of oneself in an argument with a spouse, a son
or daughter, parents, a colleague at work, the driver of
another vehicle, or whoever. In those moments, one can
say and do things that, when we look back, we
see were completely disproportionate and counterproductive.
That is why expressing
anger openly is usually one of the worst ways of
dealing with it, since the attacks of anger increase emotional
excitement and make it last even longer.
It is much
more effective to try to calm down.
—Or to repress
oneself?
More than repressing anger, I would say that it’s a
matter of seeking an outlet. It’s not a matter
of trying to bury anger inside, nor of letting oneself
be dragged along by it, but of trying to calm
down and find a solution in the most positive way
possible.
—But it’s not so easy to calm down
when someone has gotten you angry.
That’s true, it isn’t—but there
are many ways of trying it, some more or less
effective. For example, look at the chain of hostile
thoughts that feeds anger. This can give us a
key to see how we can calm it.
We should try
to undermine the thoughts that feed anger..
On the contrary,
the more we go over the motives that
The origin
and rise of anger
According to some studies done by
Dolf Zillman, anger usually has its origin in the sensation
of being threatened. It’s a threat that can be
physical or psychological—for example, feeling scorned, frustrated, etc.—and it produces
a bodily discharge of hormones which are more or less
intense according to the magnitude of the anger. These
discharges generate a quick and ready source of the energy
necessary to fight or flee.
In a parallel manner, there is
a discharge of adrenaline produced in our nervous system that
provokes a generalized excitation that can last minutes, hours, or
even days, keeping us in a state of diffused hypersensitivity
that predisposes us to new outbreaks. The result is
that people tend to be more predisposed to anger once
they have already been provoked, and they remain lightly excited
or they end up more tired.
For that reason, after
a long day of work, a person will feel especially
predisposed to get angry at home for the most insignificant
reasons (noise or the children’s disorder, or some other small
provocation), even for reasons that in other circumstances wouldn’t be
sufficient to provoke such reactions.
Anger sparks an emotional turmoil that
tends to dissipate slowly. If, during that stage of
the gradual dissipation of anger, a new provocation comes up
(which can happen easily, given the hypersensitivity proper to those
moments), there is then a second discharge before the first
has dissipated. As one would expect, this process can
repeat itself, and each discharge builds on the others, and
any disturbing thought produced during that process will provoke an
irritation much more intense than it would have in other
circumstances.
That’s why, once someone is immersed in that anger dynamic,
if she doesn’t make a serious effort to abandon that
path, her emotional temperature will increase until she falls into
an outbreak of rage.
—But if it is that way, angry
people will tend to get increasingly angry, and for the
smallest reasons.
However, there is another element that is worth emphasizing.
Most people who are irritable, aggressive, or susceptible feel
very bad when they realize how easily they lose their
cool, and that makes them want all the more to
learn how to control themselves.
So, the most effective remedy is
to know ourselves well so that we are very aware
of what types of thoughts we are most sensitive to.
In that way, we can be attentive to the
first symptoms of anger and put a solution.
If, for example,
we were waiting for a person to arrive for an
appointment and they show up late, we have to look
for a positive explanation instead of getting angry at them
as soon as they walk in the door. If
we have to converse with someone who bothers us, and
it can’t be avoided, we have to try to develop
our capacity to see things from that person’s point of
view. And for critical moments, sometimes the most intelligent
thing is to have foreseen ways of controlling ourselves, like
making a great effort to keep silent, not to respond
to one slight with another, to keep on going without
stopping when we are provoked, etc.
These are behavioral habits
that don’t happen automatically; it’s a matter of learning them.
And the main problem is that those skills must
be exercised precisely in the moments when we find ourselves
in the worst conditions to do so; that is, when
we feel our pulse quickening and we are indignant.
That’s exactly when we have to remember all this, listen,
try to calm down and keep it under control—not arguing,
not blaming others, and not taking refuge in silent rancor.
When two people are angry, the more intelligent person is
the one who knows how to keep silence or remove
herself from the situation on time (or if both are
already angry, it is the one who takes the initiative
to be reconciled).
Making it on time
In the midst of
escalating anger, the moment when we intervene is decisive: the
sooner we do it, the better our chances of stopping
it. Anger can be extinguished in its beginnings, before
the flames start climbing higher, if we can take hold
of some effective thoughts before externalizing it.
—What kinds of thoughts
are you referring to?
To some explanation that will help us
to reconsider things, or that satisfies in some way our
initial perplexity. For example, one way is to think
that the person who has bothered us could be tired,
or under some tensions that are changing their behavior.
Or we could think that they are the victim of
a bad temperament and they don’t know how to measure
their words very well; or we could remember that there
have been times when we were in similar situations and
we got angry too, and shortly afterwards felt sorry for
it, etc.
It can also be helpful to distance oneself a
little from the cause of the anger, or at least
to try to center one’s attention on other matters, and
in that way stop the escalation of hostile thoughts.
Although it seems like a very simple remedy, it is
an excellent means to deactivate anger, because it’s difficult to
continue being angry when one is immersed in other things
or if some other tasks are going well.
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