How to Deal with the Emotional Crisis in a Calm and Cool Way?

If people were to choose a planet, where they prefer to live on, they will have two choices. The one planet will be orbiting around facts, details, systems, and laws – “real things”. The second one will be orbiting around abstract dimenions, feelings, and creative ideas- the “intangible things”. If the planets were to exist- there would be never ending devastating crises. Not because one planet is better, than another one, but because people from different planets will display and absorb the emotional response to situations differently. The name for the crisis would be The Emotional Crisis.

So how to deal with the crisis in a calm and cool way?

By Olena Denysyuk

The failure to understand the dimensions of feelings has its own price: loss of friends, husbands, good deals, goodwill – frankly speaking almost everything that involves human interaction. The consequent outcome of this failure might eventually further accelerate the misperception or misjudgment of human behavior/nature/incentives on the longer run. The effect is even worse, when we choose to stay hooked on being right (a topic for separate post) or see things from a limited/subjective standpoint  to the point that it actually turns into emotional stupidity – you would form your own delusional perception of reality.

In general, I think, feelings and emotions are a challenging subject to discuss, as it is more subjective, than anything. Sometimes ourselves and not only surrounding people fail to understand our emotional states. 

Our brain catches the “tangible and intangible information”, selects only the necessary information, process and analyses it, and consequently send signals to react. Due to different personalities, experiences, genes, brain anatomy, status quo, as well as social and family status, the same information will result in different outcomes at different times, as well as the same information will result different actions in different people. So there is no black or white, right or wrong, bad or good in people’s behavior- there are millions of dimensions on how our brain will catch, select, process and analyze this information. Besides, we are all different in our emotional intelligence and experiences; therefore we have different capacities to grasp the emotional side of the game. So her it comes: conflicts, stress, anxiety and emotional distress.

So, we have psychologists to help us to navigate in the field of feelings. But I think it is should be on everyone’s curriculum how  to distinguish between the neurochemical processes, caused by the adrenaline and dopamine (stress, excitement, fear) and when an “intentionally hurting behavior”, can be just a result of light or heavy psychological disorders, such as lack of energy, restlessness, anxiety, stress, depressions.

I noticed that for some emotionally sensitive persons, it can give some weaknesses when trying to comprehend the social game. Here are my own strategies on how to overcome the failures to comprehend the emotional side of the game.

So, personally, I think, sometimes, the best way to avoid this failure of understanding of the emotional side of a game is actually by ignoring it (not to try to understand, but ignore). I mean not to become ignorant to people’s behavior, but to ignore your own emotional response to this behavior.

Here are a few thoughts for you (also for myself) to help your (and others and myself) to improve our emotional and social intelligence.

1. Accept the fact, that people in stress situation are not acting rationally, and the hormones are overtaking their ability to grasp the situation clearly, decently and reasonably. “In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself  in this case from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong. As a result the brain is unable to regulate its emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up) or appease (make peace with your adversary by simply agreeing with him"
2. Accept the rules of the game in business: there is no place for feelings. The most important part of the advice is that both parts of the game should accept it. You would never know how the person will catch, select, process and analyze the information, so it is better not to focus on feelings at all, no matter how difficult it can be. (As long as to actors of a game agree on it). This one goes together with the next one.
3.    Accept, that action speak for itself, not the words. Let me give an example. Once I helped a friend of mine to go through the master thesis. I spend a night reading, understanding and finding the potential areas of improvement. I was tough, though, in my critique and comments- all what I wanted was just to do my best by all means– make the project sharper and better, not for my sake, but for the friend. Unconsciously, I failed to think about the emotional side of it, because we didn’t have time for it: I would rather focus on the content. Later, I found out my “efficient behavior” was the hurting tipping point for my friend. So, my best intentions to help (actions: reading a project at night and desire to help) were killed by the MISUNDERSTANDING (from us both) of the emotional side of the game. To avoid this, you might need:
4.  Make a clear classification between feelings- and fact-based rationality driven way of thinking. I tend to believe, that there is a harsh competition between feelings (point of view 1) and rationality (point of view 2). The most conflicts can also start because we, frankly speaking, take different points of view. So, to be in a WIN-WIN situation, I think, we must have clear classification and understanding which point of view we are taking as a departure in our argumentation.

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For example: 

Feelings	Rationality
Being hurt because of what was being said	Being hurt because of actions
Perceptions (I know the herbal medicine has effect because it helped me, my mom and my grandma)	Facts (I know that herbal medicine doesn’t help because there is no evidence proving it otherwise )
Spontaneous (I need to buy it right now, because I want it)	Reasoning (I will not buy it without a real need for it)
Feelings (I want to go out with you, because I feel good about doing it)	Situational analysis (I will go out with you, rather than staying home and reading a book, because the value of going out with my friend is higher, then staying home on my own)
Warm and caring	Objective, systematical and methodical
Sensitive	Skeptical and over-critical
Offended	Impersonal and distant

If I and my friend had this clear classification in our head, we would have been in a WIN- WIN situation: she would have appreciated my intentions to make her project better in the most efficient way (my rational point of view); I, from another side, would had known better, that she actually asked for help in the form of emotional comfort (the feelings point of view).

When we have this clear classification, we are better able to create an environment in which performance (help) is rewarded, rather than punished.

5.  Accept the fact, that there are feelings, which not only surrounding people fail to understand, but also ourselves. (Look here for the inspiration: Here are ten feelings you mayhave had, but never knew how to explain.)

6. Do not ignore the role of the situation

Unfortunately, many people tend to fail to understand the surrounding context in people’s behavior, and rather focusing only on human qualities as such.

7. Shift focus from negative to positive

Phenomenology philosophers believe that things only exist as a phenomenon of consciousness- you make it to exist in your head (Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space.

Frankly speaking, things exist only when we are looking at them. If we are not looking at it- they disappear. Well, not quite the reality, but sometimes I see the greatest people do find the harmony with this world by simply following the wisdom of philosophy.  

We need feelings and emotional expressions as means for our survival. But we people are better than animals as we do understand the social dynamics, rather than behave instinctively: we identify, assess, navigate, tolerate, learn, control, manage and adjust to different situations, people and times. Therefore we manage to withstand friendships, family lives and build businesses despite the differences in our perception of feelings.  

BUT sometimes, I think, we all occasionally are emotionally stupid (or behave reflexively), or emotionally careless, or over-sensitive, and thus become un-constructive.  I think there are many ways to go, on how to become emotionally smarter. But we need to remember, that in these vulnerable economic times ( e.g. in times of high unemployment), people can get more vulnerable, or emotionally unbalanced, which might create more conflicts, anger, frustrations and riots. Having said that, I also wonder, wasn’t World War 2 triggered by the fragile and distressed emotional state of the people, whose minds and feelings were impaired and misunderstood during the Great Depression of the thirties?

Therefore, I think, there is still a long way to go in learning, improving and accepting our differences in emotional intelligence.

So what is your strategy?