Emotion management concept

Emotion management has never been about "quitting emotions" or "suppressing emotions." It is essentially a set of cognitive behavioral tools for identifying, accepting, regulating emotions, and ultimately making emotions serve one's own goals. This is the current general consensus on this concept in the field of psychology and public growth.

Last week, the post-2000 interns I led had their project plan revised to three versions and were rejected by the client in public. They sat at their workstations and shed tears. The reaction of my colleagues in the team was particularly interesting: a big brother came over and patted the shoulder and said, "Young people need to learn to control their emotions. Why cry about this?" There was also a little girl of the same age who handed over a tissue and said, "I'm sorry for crying. Any kind of emotional management is PUA. If you are unhappy, you have to vent it out." In fact, the two statements just eliminate the two extreme misunderstandings of this concept by the public, and also indirectly poke at the core of the continuous controversy of this word: everyone always thinks of "management" as "control" or "indulgence", forgetting that its original meaning is "making it do what you want."

When it comes to this, I have to mention the different perspectives on this concept in the academic world. This is not to say who is right or wrong, but it is just that the applicable scenarios are different. The school of psychoanalysis that first talked about emotional intervention believed that emotions are telegrams sent from the subconscious. If you suppress it, it will only come back in a more intense way - for example, if you always keep your grievances at work in your heart, and you don't seem to lose your temper, you may turn around because of When your partner forgets to take out the trash and gets into a big quarrel, this is the repressed emotion that comes out in a twist. Therefore, the core idea of ​​this school is "see it first and then deal with it." It is much more important to understand whether your current emotion is grievance, anger, or guilt than to rush to force yourself to "calm down." Later, the behaviorist school felt that this was too mysterious. Emotions are simply conditioned reflexes to external stimuli. They can be adjusted through deliberate training. For example, count 10 seconds before getting angry, and do 3 sets of abdominal breathing when you are anxious. Over time, overreaction will naturally be reduced. Most of the emotional control techniques popular in the workplace today are basically derived from this school. Positive psychology, which has become popular in the past few years, has changed its thinking. Instead of focusing on how to eliminate negative emotions every day, it is better to spend more energy to increase the proportion of positive emotions. For example, take 30 seconds a day to remember a happy event of the day, and take the initiative to do things that can make you feel happy. The living space of negative emotions will naturally be squeezed out, and there is no need to compete with yourself every day.

I have been working on enterprise EAP for nearly five years, and I have seen too many examples of emotional management going astray. A sales director I worked with before believed that "emotional stability is the top professional quality". He was scolded by customers and poked by subordinates without changing his expression. Even when the elderly at home were hospitalized, he suppressed his emotions and attended meetings normally. When his six-monthly physical examination revealed type 3 breast nodules, the doctor's first sentence was "hold your breath less." There is also a young girl who has just graduated. She talks about "emotional freedom" every day. She gets scornful when suggestions are made on the plan. Even her colleagues in the same group will quarrel with her for a long time if they accidentally touch her things. At the end of the year, she was not even nominated for the award. She still thinks that everyone is biased against her.

Speaking of which, I have been in a trap myself. When I first entered the industry, I always memorized the ABC Theory of Emotions, forcing myself to "think from a different angle and think positively" about everything I encountered. Once I stayed up all night to revise a plan and was wrongly accused by my boss of copying a competing product. I gritted my teeth and told myself, "Be calm, communicate, and don't lose your temper." , I was distracted while riding a shared bicycle after get off work and fell into a roadside drainage ditch. After sitting on the ground for a long time, my mood suddenly collapsed. I cried in front of passers-by for 20 minutes. After crying, I got up and patted the dust. Instead, I felt that the air in my chest that had been blocked for a long time was relieved. When I went back to communicate with the leader, my thinking became clearer.

I came across a very interesting point of view a while ago, saying that nowadays everyone is tired of emotional management. In essence, PUA is a tool used by capitalists to beat workers. I half agree and half disagree with this statement. Don't tell me, many companies now regard "emotional stability" as an invisible threshold for recruitment. You can't retaliate when customers scold you, you can't refute when you are wronged by leaders, and you have to cry secretly even when you work overtime until you collapse. This is not emotional management, it is emotional slavery. The core of the controversy is actually never the concept itself, but the starting point for regulating your emotions: If you are preparing for a promotion defense for half a year to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed by anger and screwing up, or to prevent yourself from taking the negative emotions from work home and spreading them on your family, then this set of tools will be useful ； If it is to satisfy the boss's unreasonable demands or to portray a "good temper" in other people's mouths, then there is absolutely no need to be spoiled. Just argue when you need to, and fish when you need to.

After all, there is no unified standard answer to emotion management. Just like the volume button on your mobile phone, it does not require you to always turn it on mute, nor does it require you to always turn it on as loud as possible. When you hear a song you like, you can turn up the volume and listen to it. When you are in a meeting, you can turn up the vibration. Occasionally, if you don't want to be disturbed, you can just turn on airplane mode and no one will say you are wrong. I have been exposed to so many cases. People who can really understand emotional management will never force themselves to be "emotionally stable" forever. They will cry when they are wronged, scold when they meet idiots, and jump with joy when they eat delicious food. As long as they don't let their emotions lead them and delay what they really want to do, that's enough.