When we make sense of complex emotional experiences, we often search for the single emotion that captures how we’re feeling. Sometimes we find common words, like angry, happy, anxious, or excited. Sometimes we dig deep into our emotional thesaurus and find the precise word that seems to capture our current emotional state. “I’m in love!”
The single word we find is not wrong. But it is usually incomplete.
In Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, Jennifer Garvey Berger imagines strong emotions as several different emotions braided together. In an example she provides, “anger over negative feedback might unbraid into shame, indignation, gratitude, and the seeds of connection and change.” Heartbreak over a lost relationship might unbraid into loneliness, grief, denial, uncertainty, confusion, nostalgia, hopefulness, and anticipation about the future. Similarly, the “high-intensity parenting” many of us are engaged in right now (while working full-time jobs with kids at home) might unbraid into exhaustion, gratitude, worry, joy, boredom, and, well, you get the idea.
Doing this exercise helps us in a few important ways.
First, it acknowledges that we can (and often do) hold multiple conflicting emotions all at the same time. We can feel gratitude and simultaneously feel exhausted and anxious. This is the complexity of the human experience.
Second, it reveals the silver linings in difficult experiences. Yes, your emotional experience around losing your job may lean heavily toward anxiety, uncertainty, and other more negative emotions. But there may be threads of hopefulness and excitement about what the future might bring.
Third, identifying each individual strand of emotion helps you to resolve each in turn. It may be hard to know where to start if you (or someone you are helping) is feeling one of the big blanket emotions, like anger. But indignation as a part of that anger? We can work with that.
Together, this helps us become more resilient to setbacks and better equipped to manage anxiety, stress, and the uncertainties of life. So, the next time you find yourself feeling strong emotions, take a moment and try to identify all of the different emotions you’re feeling. Or if you’re supporting someone, ask them to label their experience, strand by strand. After acknowledging each one, ask them, “and what else?”
Curious to learn more? Check out my comprehensive summary of Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps.