What are emotion management skills?

Judging from the common experience of clinical practice in psychology and the daily practice of the public, the core skills of emotion management are essentially a set of operating logic of "living with emotions". It never forces oneself to suppress emotions and maintain "false calmness". The current mainstream practical methods mainly focus on the three directions of awareness, guidance and adjustment. The preferences of different schools and practitioners are also very different, and there is no unified standard answer.

Supporters of the cognitive-behavioral school prefer to start by adjusting cognition. They believe that the root cause of emotional fluctuations is unreasonable interpretations of events. For example, when being criticized by a leader, the first reaction is "He targeted me", and the more you think about it, the more you will get more and more angry. If you change it to "The question he asked happened to be something I didn't consider, after correcting it, I will avoid making mistakes next time", and the mood will naturally calm down.； However, practitioners of the mindfulness school do not agree with this statement. They believe that forcibly changing the nature of thoughts is another form of suppression. Instead, you should first stop and perceive the physiological reactions of emotions, such as tightness in the chest and clenched fists, and then focus on breathing for 5 minutes. Wait until the emotional peak has passed before dealing with the problem. There is no need to force yourself to "think about it immediately." Both statements have been verified to be effective by a large number of practitioners, but they are suitable for different groups of people.

When I was working on a project at an Internet company, I saw a young girl who had just joined the job have her plan rejected three times. She was sitting at her workstation holding back tears. If she had followed the popular saying in the past two years that "you are not allowed to cry in the workplace", she would have had to go back and make changes. But that day, she went directly to the convenience store downstairs to buy a popsicle and squatted down. After chewing on the roadside for ten minutes, her eyes were still red when she came back, but she didn't bring any negative emotions when she changed the plan. Later, she told me that she had tried to hold it in, but either the revised plan was full of flaws or she would quarrel with her boyfriend when she got home from get off work. It would be better to spend ten minutes letting out her emotions, which would be more efficient.

Speaking of this, some people will definitely ask, are the methods of writing emotional diaries, meditation, exercise and so on posted online actually useful? In fact, it really depends on the person. I have a friend who is a lawyer and has a very strong logical thinking. Every time he gets emotional, he will write in a small notebook, what is the triggering event, how I feel, and whether there is any part of my over-braining. After writing it three or five times, I find that every time I have an emotional outburst, it is because someone else disrupted his plan. After that, I have a plan in advance and rarely collapses again. ； But another friend of mine who is an illustrator doesn’t like this at all. When she is irritable, if you ask her to sit down and write, it will kill her. She will just go to the street with her skateboard for half an hour, and when the wind blows, all her worries are gone.

There are still a lot of controversies on the Internet. Some people say that "emotional stability is the highest level of self-discipline for adults", while others accuse this sentence of being PUA in the workplace. In fact, the two sides are not talking about the same thing at all. The former is talking about "really flexible" people who can control their emotional reactions independently and will not make decisions that they regret at once. The latter is criticizing the "fake stability" of suppressing emotions and pretending to be generous when they are clearly wronged. This is not a concept in the first place.

In fact, emotions are just like your domestic cat. The harder you force it to obey, the more it will scratch you. If you know its temper accurately and know that when it gets angry, you can either give it some snacks or let it alone for a while. If it comes along, it will nuzzle you. There is no need to fight against it. I have been trying for five or six years, but I haven't found any tricks that work well. Sometimes I hide and cry for ten minutes when I'm stressed out. Sometimes I complain to my friends for half an hour when I'm upset. As long as you don't let your emotions get carried away and do things that hurt yourself or others, you have actually managed your emotions well. There is no unified standard.