WHEN EMOTIONS TAKE OVER

A week ago in Mexico city I conducted one of the basic trainings that we have in Neuro- Semantics, Emotional Mastery. It had been before the Pandemic that I last led that training, now some five years ago. The good news is that having delivered it and updated the manual, there are several Neuro-Semantic trainers in Latin America who will now be delivering that training. That’s important. Given the way the world is these days, there’s just not enough emotional intelligence and emotional mastery. We need more of that.

If a person doesn’t have a robust sense of emotional mastery, it is far, far too easy for emotions to take over. And when they take over, quality thinking can suffer, good decision making can go on the fritz, one’s well-being and health can take a turn for the worse, the quality of relationships can go south—all sorts of unpleasant and harmful things can happen. That’s because emotions are wonderful servants and terrible masters.

As servants your emotions, and mine, provide us energy and motivation for getting things done and for being effective and productive. As servants, emotions can inspire our best work, our most creative ideas, and move us to stretch out of our comfort zones to become all we can become. Emotions help us connect to each other, support each other, and create a loving context for each other.

But when emotions take over and dominate, when they become your master rather than your servant, then things get turned up-side-down.

How is it that sometimes emotions can have you, rather than you having them? Under what conditions or in what situations do our emotions become dominant so you have less emotional mastery?

I was reminded of the answer to these questions in the Emotional Mastery manual when we hit the section on the ten myths about emotions. Actually, because I had forgotten about that section of the manual, it was a good reminder about many of the common mis-understandings, mis- beliefs, and myths that are commonly held about emotions. To the extent that you believe any of these, your emotions are more likely to take control over you.

1) You are your emotions; what you feel defines who you are.

2) You can trust your emotions to tell you the truth and what is real.

3) Because emotions are danger, avoid them and repress them (Freud).

4) Emotions are primary, to be obeyed; they are commands about what to do.

5) If you don’t express your emotions, they build up inside and you’ll explode.

6) You can’t control or manage emotions; they work spontaneously.

7) If you control your emotions, you’ll be a hypocrite and not authentic.

8) By reversing the clockwise or counter-clockwise motion, you gain control.

9) Aim for emotional comfort, any and all stress is always bad.

10) If you cry or feel vulnerable, you’re having an emotional breakdown.

Now for the truth about emotions to counter-act those myths:

1) You create all of your emotions by how you think and construct meaning; emotions therefore can be distorted in many ways. Every cognitive distortion distorts them.

2) Emotions give you information about the relationship of your thinking (map) and experiencing (territory). They are relative to your expectations and contexts.

3) Emotions are just emotions; to be welcomed, accepted, and understood.

4) Emotions are secondary; to be evaluated by your values.

5) Emotions are functions of thinking: representing, believing, understanding, deciding, etc.; they do not operate like steam in a steam engine (Freud).

6) As lower level brain functions, emotions can be managed using the higher executive functions of the brain—intentionality, decisions, reflection, reflexivity, etc.

7) To act on any and every emotion is “caveman” authenticity, not the authenticity of a person who lives by his or her integrity.

8) The motion of emotions moves out (hence, Latin, ex-motion), not clockwise, that’s an unuseful hallucination invented by some in NLP.

9) Stress lies on a continuum from death to stress threshold where the fight/flight syndrome kicks-in, in-between is eu-stress (good stress) or excitement (Hans Selye).

10) Tears and vulnerability are indications of being human, it is not breaking down, it is owning our heritage as fallible and mortal beings.

In thinking about how emotions can take over, I am reminded of the very first book that I wrote. I had entered into the field of Christian Counseling and using biblical stories and reference, I wrote, EMOTIONS: Sometimes I Have Them/ Sometimes They Have Me (1985). (It is now on The Shop and is free.)

May your emotions be excellent servants to your highest dreams and inside of your best performances.