Understanding and Managing Emotions for a Better Life

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Hi everyone,
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Malu speaking.
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I'm the author of Life's Notebook.
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Welcome to the Elevation Bridge.
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I speak about career,
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science and well-being.
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Okay,
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enough.
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Let's stop.
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Emodiversity is a capacity to experience a wide range of emotions,
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whether they're good or bad.
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positive or negative,
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you are able to be open to both of them.
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I think that today in the current culture,
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the Western culture,
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there is an emphasis on happiness.
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So you need to avoid negative emotions.
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That's the message,
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actually.
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Avoid negative emotions,
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only be in a non-interrupted bliss of happiness.
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and then everything will be fine.
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But I think that well-adjusted people are emotiverse in the sense that they can experience all the emotions,
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whether they're good or bad,
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anger and anxiety and boredom and tiredness,
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everything.
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And they try to figure out what they are experiencing so that they can be...
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reacting to it in a better way.
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I mean,
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if you're telling me I'm feeling generally,
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well,
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it's a bad day,
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I'm generally unhappy.
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So what?
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What does it mean,
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I'm generally unhappy?
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Am I angry?
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Am I obsessed?
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Am I feeling bored?
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Am I tired?
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This all has an effect on...
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on me getting straight again.
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I mean,
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in the sense of finding a solution to my feeling,
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my unease,
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my uneasy feeling.
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I know that if I'm angry,
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I have to pick up the phone,
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tell my husband,
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you know what,
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you pissed me off,
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and that's it.
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I'm not...
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going to let you get me down like this.
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So that's it.
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And I'm feeling much better.
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I'm definitely not an expert in emo diversity.
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That's why
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I started reading about it.
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Because until my
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50s, I was really only driven by willpower.
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Willpower,
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why?
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Because I didn't want emotions.
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Emotions spell danger.
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They interfere with your life.
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They come,
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they go,
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they are transient.
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It's a real nightmare.
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Emotions,
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you never know.
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I ignored them.
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I always ignored them and put them under the rug and didn't look at them at all.
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And then when I was 50,
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the emotions popped up.
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all at the same time,
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unexpectedly,
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and I didn't know what to do with it.
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So I was really interested at the age of 50 to figure out what emotions are because
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I can't control them.
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And that's the problem.
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You can't control them.
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Emotions actually are the result of three factors.
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Number one,
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your body state.
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Your past experiences.
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and the current circumstances.
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According to Lisa Feldman Barrett,
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who is a neuroscientist,
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a renowned neuroscientist,
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that's the case.
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Three factors intervene.
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So obviously,
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and we will see that in a later post,
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that the traumatic experiences you have eventually had in the past.
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will also influence your emotions and can be a problem.
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So anyway,
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one bottom line is that take care of your emotions because if you don't,
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they will take care of you.
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That's what I had to find out that way,
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actually.
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I think when you can name,
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when you recognize the emotion and name the emotion,
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I think I said it earlier,
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you are much more able to manage them,
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actually,
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to get rid of them or find a way to get rid of a harmful emotion eventually.
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If you can say it's anger,
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it's,
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and I need to...
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You know,
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actually fear makes you change.
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Anger makes you act and sadness makes you accept.
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And if you know that,
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you have an action which you can take.
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So that's very helpful.
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And so
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I encourage you.
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It's a very difficult experience.
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It takes time and patience to be able to name.
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the emotions and recognize them to be able to act against them.
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It takes a long time,
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but it's really worth the time.
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Well,
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would I recommend readers to dissect their emotions in more depth?
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I definitely would because...
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It helps you to manage your life better.
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Had I known earlier that I have to manage my emotions and negotiate with them,
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I think I would have had a more peaceful life.
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And that's the reason also why I wrote about it early on,
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because I want to share with the world that it's important.
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It's not only willpower which will get you anywhere.
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It's also the fact that you need to let yourself to be a little bit compassionate with yourself,
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not to be very,
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very strict like my mother would tell me,
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which is strong.
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You have to...
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Your life is nice,
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your journey,
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which you can only live it once,
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why not live it well and in a peaceful way,
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rather than always being on the chase of something and finally...
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The importance is to be happy in life.
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You can achieve things,
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but at the same time,
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you also need to be happy.
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So emotions are important.
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So the physical consequences of trauma,
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it leaves a lasting impression on your mind and your body.
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Actually,
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your...
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autonomous system is really disturbed,
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is dysregulated chronically.
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So your stress response system,
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in other words,
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what I meant to say,
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is dysregulated chronically.
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You are in a hyper-alert state.
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All the time you are hyper-vigilant.
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All the time thinking something will happen,
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and that's the experience you have experienced in the past.
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The past will repeat itself.
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For example,
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I lost my mother very early in life at the age of 14 and then subsequently I lost my brother.
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And so for me it's kind of a routine now that these traumatic experiences of losing people in a row,
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I'm expecting the next one to happen.
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And this...
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has an impact on your physical ability,
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you're having recurrent pain and digestive troubles and you are having also problems to experience joy and intimacy because you know that you might lose a person again
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through a trauma event,
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through war,
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natural disaster.
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So...
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you know,
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losing a loved one.
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And so the brain has memorizes all these traumatic events and organize information in a way which makes mental association between your past trauma and your current life.
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So you are always expecting the worst.
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I think that the way to manage trauma,
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first of all,
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you have to know that you will not be able to manage it completely.
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It will always be in the background.
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It will be a background noise all the time.
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The way to manage it,
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the best way I found,
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is to find likewise like-minded people.
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who would be able to talk to me about my trauma and either my husband or my psychiatrist or my therapist and our
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friend and then you have kind of therapeutic moments which help you overcome a little at the time
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really a little at a time.
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And next time,
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it takes on average,
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for me,
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it took always five years to be able to experience again a little bit of joy,
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even if I had the opportunity to talk to people.
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But it's really difficult.
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So it takes time and you will never overcome it.
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I read in the New York Times,
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times the other day that Anderson Cooper who is a very famous journalist most people know he explained that it took him more than 50 years and he's still not over the death of his brother and his father and
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his mother died recently but
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50 years it took it it took him and he's still not over it and
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I think I would
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share this observation that it's very difficult to overcome and it's not impossible but it's a background noise which always been there.