Mental Health Emotional Control

The essence of emotional control at the mental health level is never to "suppress" or "eliminate" negative emotions, but to establish awareness, acceptance, and regulatory flexibility of emotions - neither being coerced by emotions to make impulsive decisions, nor forcibly suppressing emotions leading to internal friction or somatic reactions. This is the most universal answer that I have come up with during my 1,200+ hours of case consultations and visits.

When many people first come to me, they have ridiculous misunderstandings about emotional control. Last week I met a girl who works as an e-commerce operator. During the Double Eleven promotion, she was scolded by the director in public for half an hour because of a problem with the pre-sale link. She gritted her teeth and said nothing. She turned around and returned to her work station without even daring to take a sip of water for fear of crying. As a result, when she got home from get off work and just opened the door, she saw a cat picking off the new eyeshadow palette she had placed in the entrance hall. The ground was shattered to pieces, and she collapsed in an instant. She picked up her slippers and smashed them over. The cat was so frightened that she hid under the bed and trembled for two hours. She squatted on the ground and cried until early in the morning. When she woke up the next day, she had a stomachache and broke into a cold sweat. She went to the hospital for a checkup and found no organic problems. The doctor only gave her some oryzanol, saying it would make her less angry.

Don't tell me, I've seen this happen too many times. Many people think that "if you can hold back your emotions, you win." From the perspective of psychoanalysis, this kind of "holding back" essentially suppresses emotions from the conscious level to the subconscious. It will not disappear out of thin air, but will only accumulate like methane in a methane pond. If there is a small opening one day, it will burst out - smashing a cat is a trivial matter. Some people suppress their emotions for many years and eventually develop into diarrhea when they are nervous, migraines when they are anxious, or even more serious somatization symptoms. The gain outweighs the gain.

Does that mean it's the other way around? Nowadays, many people on the Internet advocate "emotional freedom" and say that if you have emotions, you should express them on the spot, otherwise you will be wronging yourself? I met a young man who was doing design before, and he believed this. When the product manager changed his requirements for the third version, he slammed the table on the spot, smashed the keyboard, and said, "I'm not going to do this anymore." The cognitive behavioral school (CBT)’s view on this issue is actually very practical: emotions themselves are not right or wrong, but emotion-driven behaviors have consequences. Many times you think you are "following your heart" to vent your emotions, but you are essentially tied up by automated negative thoughts - you feel that the product manager's change of requirements is "deliberately targeting you", and you become instantly angry. If you can dissociate yourself from your thoughts (that is, the "cognitive dissociation" mentioned in CBT), stop and think about "Is there something wrong with the customer he is dealing with?", your emotions will naturally relax half a minute.

Oh, by the way, there are also humanistic counselors who will emphasize the priority of "acceptance". When I was studying with a humanistic supervisor who has been in the industry for 30 years, she always said, "Emotions are like guests delivering messages. If you don't open the door, they will come knocking with a bigger gift package next time." What I mean is, don’t rush to judge whether your emotions are right or not. For example, you are jealous of your colleague’s promotion, or you hate relatives urging you to get married. Allow yourself to have this feeling first. Don’t scold yourself “Why are you so petty?”

There is a particularly hotly debated topic on the Internet right now: “Is emotional stability a standard requirement for adults? ”Both sides are arguing head-on. Workplace bloggers say that if you can’t even control your emotions, what else can you do? Psychology bloggers say that deliberately pursuing emotional stability is the biggest internal friction. In fact, is there any absolute standard answer? Some time ago, I accompanied a visitor to do career planning. She works in an investment bank and needs to deal with clients and supervise every day. She asked me, "When I meet clients, I have to smile even if I am greatly wronged. Is this considered depressing?" ”I told her that as long as you know that this is your "current career choice" and not "I should hold it in", you can go boxing after get off work, go to KTV to cry like a ghost, or find friends to scold you for two hours. As long as you have your own outlet, there will be no problem at all. What you are most afraid of is that you regard "emotional stability" as a self-requirement. Even when a family member dies, you insist on going to work without shedding a tear, thinking "I can't lose my composure." This is really a drain on yourself.

There are times when I can’t stand it anymore. Last month I was rushing to make an industry report and stayed up for three consecutive nights. When I went downstairs to get the takeout, the delivery boy spilled half a cup of soup on the document bag. I stared at the oil mark, and the fire instantly went to my throat. Just as I was about to speak, I suddenly took out the mint candy in my pocket and peeled off one and stuffed it into my mouth. The cool taste left my tongue. Three seconds after the tip reached Tianling Gai, I suddenly realized that most of my anger had been boiled over for three days, and it had nothing to do with the delivery boy. He kept bowing and apologizing. I smiled and said it was okay. My document was typed electronically, so it didn't affect me. Instead, he forced me to give me a bottle of iced black tea he bought himself, and said, girl, don't take it to heart. You see, with just a three-second pause, what could have been a quarrel was replaced by a bottle of iced black tea. What a bargain.

Don't believe the nonsense on the Internet about "training perfect emotional control in 7 days." I have been doing counseling for almost five years, and I still sometimes quarrel with my family, and I still cry until my nose is red while watching literary movies. There is no perfect standard for emotional control. To put it bluntly, it's like raising a cat with a bit of an out-of-touch personality. Don't always think about locking it in a cage and not allowed to bark or make trouble. Don't always let it scratch people and throw things. Spend more time to feel its temper and know that it is either hungry or frightened when it becomes angry. As you get used to it, it will know when it can come to nuzzle you and when it needs to stay alone by just looking at you.

There is no such thing as perfect "emotional control". It's just that you and your own emotions need to give each other more steps to step down.