Emotion control: good or bad?

â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹

You can often hear from Gestalt therapists that the constant control of their emotions not only does not help to cope with emerging problems, but even aggravates them, and developing the ability to more boldly and spontaneously express their feelings and emotions is a thing that is useful for many.

What about you, dear readers? Are the recommendations “learn to openly splash out emerging emotions, do not keep them in yourself”, so popular in women’s magazines, relevant for you too? Or is another task more important for you — to be able to control yourself, to be able to restrain and control your emotions?

Indeed, what is necessary for a sick person is no longer appropriate for a healthy person, and where the sick person needs to reduce the load and lie down in bed, it is high time for a healthy person to get up, do exercises, take a shower, have breakfast — and go to work! The recommendations of psychotherapists are addressed to those who need psychotherapeutic help, and beyond this situation, their appropriateness needs to be considered. It looks like a lot is mixed up here.

The attitude “You need to control your emotions” is not a ban on emotions in general, but the upbringing of an emotional culture and just a habit of a decent person. Fears “The control of emotions leads to the suppression of emotions, from this children grow up unemotional” — empty. If parents explain to the child that it is impossible to fight with iron sticks, this is not a ban on movements in general and this will not lead to the child’s physical underdevelopment. Our children can and should be alive and emotional, but feelings of rage, helplessness and self-pity should hardly be the main notes in the scale of emotional experiences of our children. The ability to freely express your spontaneous emotions is a great ability, but it does not at all contradict the ability to control your emotions in other situations. Everything has its time and place.

What is emotion control? Emotion control is a strict control of involuntary emotions, primarily with the aim of restraining them, one of the important components of a person’s control over himself and his emotions.

Important: control is not necessarily a ban. Control does not necessarily prohibit, control also prescribes. A high-level manager (and just a developed person) has all emotions under control, and this is not just normal, but necessary and good. Qualitative control of emotions helps not to be lazy and turn on the necessary emotions, to always be emotional, but emotional as it should be.

Who complains about the lack of emotional self-control? is an interesting question. Truly adult people do not complain about the lack of self-control, they develop it. Complaining is childish behavior, and more often children and adult children complain about the lack of self-control, covering up their unwillingness to grow up.

“I can fill up a loved one with sms (stupid), infuriating both him and myself. I can be aggressive. Show your anger. At what it is shown only on people close to me. Mom, beloved man, grandfather, even on friends. I quickly cool down and they forgive me … »

The girl complains about the lack of emotional self-control, but this is more likely to attract attention and self-justification than a real desire to develop self-control. What could be the solution here? Either the girl will be restrained (life will force her), or she will be successfully involved in a new, adult life.

With a light hand of illiterate specialists, they write that it is harmful to control emotions. This is not entirely true, or rather, not at all.

Psychologist George Bonanno at Columbia University set out to correlate students’ stress levels with their ability to control their emotions. He measured the stress levels of first-year students and asked them to take an experiment in which they had to demonstrate different levels of emotional expression — exaggerated, understated and normal. A year and a half later, Bonanno called the subjects back together and measured their stress levels. It turned out that the students who experienced the least stress were the same students who, during the experiment, successfully increased and suppressed emotions on command. In addition, as the scientist found out, these students were more adapted to attuning to the state of the interlocutor.

For more information, see the very important article How to deal with curbing your anger, anger, irritation and other aggressive emotions.

Emotion control is like a sport: healthy is good, but bad for the sick. The control of emotions is socially necessary, but for a neurotic or emotional person it is too difficult a task, giving more problems than gains. Where an active person will do business, an emotional person will unleash emotions out of the blue, after which the task of controlling them will arise. Later, perhaps — and the task of suppressing unacceptable emotions. When emotions are heated, controlling emotions is already the task of suppressing them. The main thing, dear colleagues psychologists, is not to confuse the suppression of emotions and their control: the first is difficult and rather harmful, and the second, at least for a healthy and active person, is useful, reasonable and necessary.

And what’s more, it’s not very difficult. The more emotions become voluntary, the less is the task of controlling them. Controlling them becomes as natural as controlling one’s own arms and legs. Raising one’s mood for a person with a developed psychological culture is as easy as raising one’s hand for a healthy person. Develop your emotions, learn to manage your emotions, and you will not have to control them!