Contents
Myth 2. Holding back your feelings is wrong and harmful. Driven into the depths of the soul, they lead to emotional overstrain, fraught with a breakdown. Therefore, any feelings, both positive and negative, must be openly expressed. If expressing one’s annoyance or anger is unacceptable for moral reasons, they must be poured out on an inanimate object — for example, to beat a pillow.
Twenty years ago, the exotic experience of Japanese managers became widely known. In the locker rooms of some industrial enterprises, rubber dolls of bosses like punching bags were installed, which workers were allowed to beat with bamboo sticks, supposedly to defuse emotional tension and release accumulated hostility towards bosses. Since then, a lot of time has passed, but nothing has been reported about the psychological effectiveness of this innovation. It seems that it has remained a curious episode without serious consequences. Nevertheless, numerous manuals on emotional self-regulation still refer to it today, urging readers not so much to “keep themselves in hand”, but, on the contrary, not to restrain their emotions.
Reality
According to Brad Bushman, a professor at the University of Iowa, discharging anger at an inanimate object does not result in stress relief, but quite the opposite. In his experiment, Bushman deliberately teased his students with insulting remarks as they completed a learning task. Some of them were then asked to take out their anger on a punching bag. It turned out that the “calming” procedure did not at all bring the students into peace of mind — according to the psychophysiological examination, they turned out to be much more irritated and aggressive than those who did not receive the “relaxation”.
The professor concludes: “Any reasonable person, venting his anger in this way, is aware that the real source of irritation has remained invulnerable, and this irritates even more. In addition, if a person expects calm from the procedure, but it does not come, this only increases the annoyance.
And psychologist George Bonanno at Columbia University decided to compare 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.
Objective Recommendations
Any physical activity contributes to the discharge of emotional stress, but only if it is not associated with aggressive actions, even games. In a state of psychological stress, switching to athletic exercises, running, walking, etc. is useful. In addition, it is useful to distract yourself from the source of stress and focus on something unrelated to it — listen to music, read a book, etc. ↑
Besides, there is nothing wrong with holding back your emotions. On the contrary, the ability to control oneself and express one’s feelings in accordance with the situation should be consciously cultivated in oneself. The result of this is both peace of mind and full communication — more successful and effective than spontaneous expression of any feelings↑.