Intense Emotions
A friend said to me recently, “What these experts and books don’t understand is that sometimes your emotions are so strong that you can’t think of anything else. So the advice they give you is no help.”
We all know what strong emotions feel like. When you’re in their grip, you can indeed be blind to anything else. Yet when you let your emotions take over, you can do things you later regret. So what are you to do?
The following quote has been attributed to Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”[1] The question then becomes, “How do you recognize the space between stimulus and response and then make a choice about how to proceed?”
This is an age-old question, one that has been addressed in many different ways. Anger management training helps people to do this. So does mindfulness practice. And so does training in communication skills.
Early in my conflict-resolution training, I learned the skill of repeating back what people told me. When I first started using this skill in ordinary conversations, I felt uncomfortable. I persevered, though, and eventually it came naturally to me.
But the skill was not just for ordinary conversations. By training myself to use it when I wasn’t under stress, I was building the capacity to do it when I was under stress. Applying this skill in stressful situations didn’t happen quickly. Even now I don’t always remember to use it. But I do remember it most of the time, even when I’m under stress, and I keep working at it.
Our well-established ways of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting are not written in stone. They are written in code. And the coding we carry inside can be changed. Does it take effort? Yes. Does it feel uncomfortable? Yes. Can it sometimes be terrifying? Yes.
I have learned this lesson over and over in my life. Even now, though, I have to remind myself that I can change, that an inner sense of limitation can be released, and that anything is possible.
My answer to my friend is: “If you believe that you have no choice when your emotions are raging, then you don’t. But if you believe that you can do things differently even at those times, then you will find a way.”
[1] This quote cannot be found in the writing of Viktor Frankl. Stephen Covey found it in a library book and thought it expressed Frankl’s philosophy.
