Emotional control: responding vs reacting through stoicism

This post discusses how you can respond with equanimity to life's challenges. Emotional control is invaluable for dealing with challenging situations, whether with toxic people or circumstances that are outside of your control. For instance, toxic people go out of their way to 'push your buttons', ie to trigger some known pain point that you have as a means to feed their distorted sense of power, even without provocation. They want to have you emotionally charged in an unhealthy way, and, if possible; to the point of socially unacceptable and embarrassing behavior, impulsive mistakes, or the like. Example(s) of triggers that may force you into emotional dysregulation.

  • Someone trying to belittle you
  • Someone knows that you have a spider phobia and forces you to walk past spiders.
  • Traffic jam when you are running late
  • Malfunctioning technology

Emotional control involves self-awareness in the moment; specifically, your ability to recognize that you are being triggered in the moment, to recognize & heal your wounds that have been opened, to identify your triggers, and, ultimately, to prevent yourself from being reactive to those triggers. In other words, you want to avoid being very reactive that every predatory person exploits your pain point to make you mindlessly reactive, whenever their whims inspire them that way. Both parties, the toxic person and you are acting from within some type of ego, perhaps as an ex with unresolved feelings of abandonment, as a boss feeling insecure by your competence, as someone envious of your competence that makes them feel relatively incompetent and so on.

Professionally, emotional mastery can also make you a better candidate for leadership. 

Stella Petrou Concha explains that emotional mastery involves managing conflict and pressure without resorting to violence, aggression, or silence. You are truly calm, ie both internally and externally. You seek deeper understanding, not only of your own perspective but also that of counterparties.


1. Pausing
Just to be clear, this is not a suggestion to embrace unhealthy practices like suppressing or ignoring your emotions, because triggers can cause you harm regardless. However, this suggestion is to disengage from the toxic situation and or conduct your interactions with pauses so you can manage the trigger all alone, in private, ie rather than reacting and therefore entangling yourself in the toxicity, as per the ill will of someone else. In private, you give yourself the space and love to vent, be vulnerable as you cry and so on.  

A pause is a 'space' between the trigger and your response. It allows you to process and plan before responding in a non-impulsive way. Rest assured, while pausing is difficult, it is possible. Furthermore, while the luxury of long pauses is not always possible, with practice, a pause of as little as a few seconds may suffice. 
  • Do not react (ie with 2 P's: panic and proceed). Instead respond (ie with 4 P's: pause, process, plan, then proceed). 
  • You often regret reactions but rarely regret responses!

Example(s)
  • Every time you feel angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, remove yourself from the situation so that those negative feelings do not get the chance to fester to the point that you react in other than your best self. 

When dealing with toxic people, the first thing to realize is that, when they are being hurtful, it is unlikely that you can convince them to change their trajectory, for your benefit, especially when their antics are intentional. While some people try to make amends, most never do. Begging them is not only futile but fueling their enjoyment of and desire to continue the toxic situation. In other words, accept that you can not rely on the next person for your well-being. You can not change the complex issues in their ego. They might have been triggered by some insecurities of which you or even they are unaware. Maybe you have triggered them. This might simply involve the fact that you succeeded at something they did not, you received good news that is unrelated to them, and so on. In other words, you owe it to yourself to do alone what you can to secure your feelings of comfort and competence. 

What hurtful people do to you has nothing to do with you

If you need help with that from mental health providers, your tribe, or YouTube videos, seek it. However, keep such external reliance to a minimum because even these usually good sources can fail. Frenemies prove this last point. Ultimately, you are responsible for your well-being.

Overall and in short, emotional control relates to stoicism. A stoic is described as being calm and appearing almost emotionless or blank. Such a person does not show what they feel. At least during the pause, they accept whatever is happening, by simply observing.

Serenity prayer: "Father, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Sometimes, the pause is not just seconds, minutes or weeks and so on. The pause is permanent. See YouTube short form video by DailyInspire_67 'A woman with no friends or a very small circle is a very, very secure woman'. If you have the wherewithal to walk away permanently, it is the way to find calmness as a default situation. 

Pausing can occur in different ways.
The 'Let Them' theory is an example.
YouTube video by Mel Gibbons 'The one trick you need to master to live a more peaceful and fulfilled life' ('Let Them Theory') 



2. Reflection (not rumination)
The second key step is to use the pause for dispassionate, analytical reflection on 1) the external event (like triggers of others and likely reasons) and 2) your internal response to that event and why. This step recognizes the fact that many reactions of others and ourselves mask other issues that are often not apparent. We are certainly not suppressing emotion, just working through them in privacy.

Stoics stress the importance of recognizing aspects of your situation that you can and can not control. Once you recognize those aspects over which you can control, focus your thoughts on formulating a response in that area.

Understanding and mastering your triggers is critical because they recur in life, according to Stella Petrou Concha, 'as certain as waves crashing against the sea shore, which you must figure how to ride.' 

Examples of responses include.
  • Silence! No engagement.
    • No response to snide comments, ad hominem attacks, etc. You choose that you do not even want to engage in the situation because you have resolved your thoughts on the matter and realize that the other person is committed to misunderstanding. This is an example in which the person operates in a reactive way based on some unrelated underlying issue, like feeling rejected by you, jealous of your accomplishments, and so on. In such cases, recognize that you have no control over the matter, and investing energy into trying to explain is futile. As such, you must focus your attention where you do have control. This is an example in which you will need to shift your mind away from ruminating over that person. 
    • Some more reflective people would return with an apology in words or actions because your silence gave them nothing further to distract them or on which to build their attacks.
  • Setting boundaries. 
    • I do not appreciate your tone of voice. I would rather X-Y-Z instead. Otherwise, I can no longer work with you.
    • Someone's distorted search for empowerment through trying to control you. 
      • Strategic pushback: Jefferson Fisher's suggestion for when someone tries to belittle you (short-form video) is to remove the potential enjoyment of your reaction for the toxic person.
        • Ask them to repeat themselves (as that creates a pause that dampens their dopamine rush), like "Come again?!"
        • Ask "Did you say that to hurt me?" [I might word that differently to let them know how much they have failed, like 'that was meant to hurt me?']
      • Gentle back off: "I need space to mow the lawn in circles as I like. I will continue to do it in circles. 
      • Invite a discussion about the heart of the problem. "The way I mow the lawn is not the real issue here. if we did not have to mow a lawn, the garden patio would be the next issue. Something that you are not mentioning is a problem. Maybe we need to resolve that instead." 
      • An explanation: "The gradient of this yard is circular and the lawn mower is custom-designed accordingly for better efficiency." ... BEWARE, after this point, silence is ideal for those people who are committed to misunderstanding or power-playing you.
  • Counteract catastrophizing emotionally triggering situations. YouTube video of podcast by Mel Robbins "6 magic words that stop anxiety and overwhelm" suggests a few things. Observe yourself going into the catastrophizing mode. Recognize that you do not have control over what happens outside of ourselves. We can only control what happens internally. When unable to find out about her daughter's whereabouts while on a solo trip on the other side of the planet, she noticed stress and self-inflicted psychological torture rise in her body as she imagined her daughter's gruesome demise. She suggests 6 words in response to the internal self-inflictions, "What if it all works out?!" For instance, maybe her daughter was enjoying herself, she was fine but unforeseen technology glitches occurred, etc. These words ends the downward psychological spiral and forces you to see that you simply do not know the outcome but chose to focus on only one negative probability, disregarding other positive probabilities. The initial recognition of a difficult situation inflicts injury already. Negative secondary reactions like anticipatory worry would only inflict further injury. In fact, research shows that they even light up pain pathways in the brain. It also triggers the sympathetic nervous system (ie the fight or flight states) which in turn impairs cognitive skills and executive function. In other words, it ultimately hinders your ability to resolve the problem at hand. You need to stop that! It is necessary to observe this tendency to inflict a second injury to yourself and halt it midway with Mel's 6 words. 
  • Purpose, not impulse


3. Daily reflection
In addition to mindful reflection after a triggering event, stoics routinely engage in reflection. This is key because such ongoing reflection helps to train your mind towards a more stoic default. Example(s) of focused attention exercises include the following.
  • Intentional journaling. When you journal, you can analyze the day's stimuli and your emotional responses. Critically analyze those times during which you fell back into old patterns of reactivity. See every moment (heart break, etc) as an opportunity for practicing response over reaction. 
  • when you fall back into old patterns of reactivity (perhaps your over-explaining, anger, fearfulness, etc), critically analyze why it happened and your learning point. Your task is to prepare a better response for the future rather than ruminating over your failure. (Afterall, rumination does not achieve anything, it offers no solutions.)
  • When starting the day, you can set your intentions to commit to stoicism.


4. Focused attention exercises
The purpose of focused attention exercises or mindfulness practices is to train you to control the direction of your mind's attention. Considering that the present moment is the only time that you have the power to act, mindfulness exercises stress on engaging your attention there as fully as possible. These exercises train your mind to the present and more calmness despite life's distractions and challenges. Examples include the following. 
  • Breath meditation. Observe your breath, mindfully noticing each inhale and exhale, then return attention to this exercise if your mind wanders.
  • Mindful observation. Engage very fully in present-moment activities, including very mundane ones. If this is not normal for you, I suggest setting a daily reminder to check in with yourself.
    • Observe the minutiae of an eating experience; the flavor, texture, sight, smell and sound of eating the food.
    • Observe what each of your senses perceive at any moment 
    • body scan exercises
  • Affect labeling. It is counterintuitive that owning your negative emotions in the moment minimizes its control over you. Research shows that it allows you to go into response (versus reactive) mode. For instance, if you recognized, even openly acknowledged your nervousness about public speaking, you are ironically less affected by that nervousness.  
  • Use the heightened suggestibility of the alpha waves to train yourself to be calm. Alpha brain waves occur in states of deep relaxation, like during deep meditation, hypnosis, and the first few minutes after awakening. Imagine yourself responding calmly during states of deep relaxation. Do this first thing in the morning upon awakening (as opposed to scrolling through social media).


CONTENT RELATED TO EMOTIONAL CONTROL THROUGH STOICISM

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