Difficult Emotions and Emotional Intelligence By: Christine Behlmann East

“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

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

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

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

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

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”

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.

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

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