Skip to main content

Emotional agility and why it matters

 



Do you ever get the feeling that we live in a “fix it” world? I do.  If someone is sad, we try to make them happy, if someone is angry, we try and calm them down.  In a world that values relentless positivity we want to fix everything, especially when it comes to emotions that make us feel uncomfortable.  But sometimes it’s important to recognise that worried and uncomfortable is precisely where we need to be.

A psychologist called Susan David talks about a concept called emotional agility.  When we are emotionally agile, we are able to experience our thoughts and emotions in a way that doesn’t allow them to hijack our plans.  What this means is that we can experience big feelings like sadness, anger or frustration and we are still able to do the things that are important to us. 

There are four key parts to developing emotional agility

1.       Showing up

This is about being curious when emotions show up.  It’s pausing and asking ourselves the question “why do I feel so frustrated (sad/anger/anxious) right now?”. This is important because our emotions signpost us to what we value.  For example, when a young child comes home from school feeling really frustrated because their friends left them out of the game, one reason they may feel so frustrated is because being connected to their friends is important to them.  Our default response is often to move our children away from the tricky emotions.  This often looks something like “don’t worry you have lots of other friends”.  By doing this we are failing to support them to see their emotions as valuable, normal and natural.   It is so much more helpful to allow them to sit with the emotion and support them to understand why they are feeling so frustrated.

 

2.        Stepping Out

This is about how we unhook from the thoughts or emotions.  Have you ever had the experience of your young person saying “I just want this feeling to go away”?  I have.  Susan David calls this a dead person’s goal. Only dead people never feel sad or stressed, these emotions are part of life and unhooking from these emotions is NOT about getting rid of them.  It is about taking a step back and recognising our emotions are just one small part of us, and what’s more we actually have some choice about what we do with them.  One super simple way to do this is to move away from I am statements and instead preface the thought or emotion with I am having the thought that …. or I am having the feeling that …  What this simple exercise does is take some of the power out of the thought or feeling

 

·       Take a moment to think about the most common unhelpful thought your mind shows up with (I am useless, I am stupid, nobody likes me….) and just sit with it for a moment

·       Now change this into I notice I am having the thought that…. I am stupid and just notice how different this feels

 

3.       Walking Your Way

This is about who is in the driving seat - your emotions or your values.  For most of us our emotions are pretty good at hogging the driving seat! This is exhausting because our emotions are constantly changing, sometimes without any notice at all.  One minute we can feel happy and relaxed and the next minute we just want to get away from everyone.  This makes for a very erratic driver!  If we can allow the things that are important to us (our values) to be in the driving seat (even some of the time) our journey will feel much less bumpy. The reason for this is when we are living our life in a way that is aligned to our values – being fair, connecting with our friends, working hard – we all feel so much more comfortable with who we are and how we are living our lives.

 

4.       Tweaking

Once we know what our (or our young people’s) core values are, we can start to make small changes that allow us to do more of the things that grow these values.  For example, if we value connection with others, we can start to spend more time with our friends even when our emotions are telling us not to bother.   Over time these changes will become more automatic and we will find ourselves less driven by emotions and more driven by our values.  This doesn’t mean that we are now free of difficult emotions, remember we need these emotions to bring our attention to the important things, but it does mean that we can start replacing BUT with AND.  So instead of saying I really want to go to the party BUT I am too anxious we can say I really want to go to the party AND I am anxious about going. 

Finally...

Emotional agility is the ability to be with our emotions, to learn from them and to move forward to do the things that are important to us anyway. This is the cornerstone of resilience and it is hard.  Sometimes we will manage it and sometimes we wouldn’t and that’s OK.  The direction we are traveling in is so much more important than the speed we are going.   


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being on our own team : Self-talk matters

          Imagine this scenario: You are walking along the corridor at work and you accidentally drop your bag and everything spills out all over the floor.   Some people laugh, some people ignore you, some people stop and help you.   We’ve all been there one way or another.   We spill coffee on our white shirt just before an interview, we fail our driving test because we forget to check our mirrors, we try to make a joke and nobody laughs.   This is part of being human. We all get things wrong and we all experience situations that don’t feel great. So, what happens after you drop your bag? How do you show up for yourself?   If you are like the majority of humans, you have probably been pretty unkind to yourself in those moment – “you absolute loser, why can’t you just walk down the corridor without doing something stupid” or “why can everyone else mange to get to their desk without dropping their bag, I’m so clumsy” or any version o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parenting: Why normalising can protect our children from future shame

  Much of what we feel comfortable talking about stems from our home environment.   What was allowed and what wasn’t.    Parts of our bodies smell bad sometimes, it is normal and part of being human.   But what if, when we start to talk about the weird smell, we immediately get shut down “no more of that talk please” or “that’s private and not something you share.”   Many of these comments are made from a place of good intention, we want our children to follow the social norms of whatever culture we live in.   But when our children voice valid experiences and these valid experiences are hushed up or ignored this creates feelings of shame and isolation.   If our body smells bad and we can’t talk about it we have no way of knowing that everyone’s body smells bad from time to time.   If on the other hand we take a normalisation approach and say something like “tell me a bit more about it, my body sometimes smells bad too” …. This normalisation m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parenting: Our teenagers are supposed to have intense emotions

  I was speaking to a friend this week and she was talking about the focus on mental health and wellbeing in her daughter’s new school.   Like most parents she was pleased to see the school shift in this direction but she had also observed a change in her daughter’s choice of words.   Words like worry and sad were being replaced with words like stressed, anxious or depressed.    And while more sophisticated use of language is part of the normal developmental trajectory it got me wondering about how our young people are making sense of their feelings within this new world of embracing mental health.     Mood swings are a defining feature of adolescence.   During this period of development our kids will experience their emotions more intensely than any other time in their lives.   This happens because their brains are under construction – they are getting faster and more specialised, ultimately supporting our kids move into adulthood.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more