Difficult Emotions and Emotional Intelligence

1. Difficult Emotions and Emotional Intelligence By: Christine Behlmann East

2. “Never let the sun go down upon your anger” • Beware of the four most challenging emotions • Fear, anger, jealousy, and despair • Don’t let these emotions rule your life because they can sometimes come in handy • hard-wired responses that draw attention to vital issues and galvanize reactions in threatening situations

3. Unskillful Responses • If these emotions should be dealt with unskillfully, than someone will most likely get hurt • Displacing anger • We suffer from three major errors: • Judging or condemning difficult emotions as bad or evil • Ignoring or defensively pushing painful emotions out of awareness • Indulging or inflaming them, for example, by nursing feelings of resentment toward someone who hurt us and gleefully plotting revenge

4. Error #1 • Judging difficult emotions as bad or evil could end up driving a person crazy! • The emotions will continue to arise as life throws up its inevitable challenges, but now we add an unnecessary and painful burden • Whether we want to feel angry and scared or not, it doesn’t matter because life will throw whatever it wants at us • However, these feelings can be stooped by declaring a truce and by learning to accept painful emotions as a natural and normal part of life

5. Error #2 • Ignoring or defensively pushing painful emotions out of awareness can be detrimental to one’s health and those around us • If we repress anger we may be unaware of it in ourselves but defensively project it onto others • Your mad at your boyfriend but you repress that anger and instead lash out at your mom for something silly • In this case, psychologists call it dyslexathymia • Basically meaning that we are out of touch with our emotions due to burying so many of them

6. Error #3 • Indulging or inflaming these emotions does not end up helping in the long run • Instead we should try to find appropriateness, balance, and equanimity of this emotion • Equanimity means the capacity to experience the inevitable ups and downs of life without being thrown into wild emotional swings. • Every feeling has its value and significance no matter how hurtful or painful… there’s always a reason • Unfortunately, the emotions we deal with most in this case would be fear and anger • Possibly the most difficult among all emotions

7. The Fantasy of Fear • This is a natural and valuable emotion that plays a vital role in warning us of danger • However, most people misuse fear and allow it to constrict us in life • “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” • We do not usually fear reality, what is actually happening, but rather our own thoughts and fantasies about what may happen • FEAR spells it out for us • “False Experience Appearing Real”

8. The Agony of Anger • Unfortunately, spiritual traditions regard uncontrolled rage as one of the greatest causes of suffering and barriers to awakening. • “cognitive incapacitation” means that rage has fogged our thinking and actual emotions • Research suggests that anger plays a lethal role in two of the deadliest medical disorders: heart disease and cancer • Therefore, reducing anger can literally save your life • However, in rare cases it may be essential to express anger • Right a wrong, stop someone from doing harm, or to get someone to finally hear you out • Study after study has found that ventilation and vengeance leave people feeling more enraged, not less.

9. How to help with the Aggression • Think of Zen story • His own rage brought hell to him and those he attacked • Being humble and listening was his key to heaven • The great religions offer three approaches: • Mastering and reducing difficult emotions, especially fear and anger • Cultivating attitudes such as gratitude and generosity that foster love • Cultivating love itself

10. Helping you with the LLG 3 • www.christinebehlmann.weebly.com