Managing Emotions as An Overthinker
“So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not know yet what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us fears the most. ”
A boggart is the corporeal form of your worst fear in the Harry Potter book series.
Overthinkers and overachievers have very predictable boggarts – someone rolling their eyes in response to your hard work, or a dancing assignment with an F on it. Judgement or failure personified. And the anxiety that this causes them - well, it makes us want to permanently seal the door on Professor Lupin’s cupboard. No thank you!
Happiness, joy, contentedness – bring them on! Anxiety, sadness, shame – they can stay as our enemies, am I right? Just like we pull our hand away from a hot burner, we pull away from negative-feeling emotions. Makes perfect sense.
Sloooow down. What if I told you that it is the pulling away that causes the real suffering, not the negative-feeling emotions? Imagine the last time you felt sadness. You wanted to cry, and felt the tears welling up. But you stopped yourself, distracted yourself, told yourself to stop being so weak, get on with it. And for the next while, you’ve got an internal struggle going on to hold back the emotional expression of sadness.
It's like holding a beach ball underwater. You expend a whole lot of energy to push the ball under the water, and then to keep it there. If your attention shifts elsewhere, or you try to do something with one arm, the ball may pop back up, and you have to re-adjust to keep it down. After a while, your arms start to tire and ache and you want to let go. But you want to keep that ball underwater.
The struggle to hold them back, to pull away, to not experience them, is what causes suffering. Emotions can be painful, yes, but the struggle to control them causes suffering. What if you just took 5 minutes to let yourself be human, to soothe yourself, to sit with your emotion? Let the ball come up, and notice that it eventually drifts to the other side of the pool?
I still haven’t convinced you yet, have I? Why, why, why would I want to feel negative-feeling emotions?
Emotions as Our Ally
Good-feeling emotions and bad-feeling emotions are both useful to us. Emotions do three things for us:
1. Communicate – Emotions communicate to ourselves and others what we need.
a. To others: When we allow our emotional expressions (tears, smiles, shocked look), we communicate to others what is happening inside of us, and what, as social beings, we may need from them.
b. To ourselves: Our physiological responses to situations (the tight throat, the dropping feeling in your belly, the pounding heart) are signals from our body. And with anxiety, it’s saying, “hello, I feel threatened here.”
2. Motivate – Emotions rev up our body for what we need to do. Something scary? Our body preps us to run away or battle the threat (send blood and oxygen to our muscles, pull it away from our digestive system). Something sad? Our body slows us down to rest.
3. Illuminate – Emotions tell us what is really important to us. Feeling gutted about a perceived failure? It’s highlighting how much you value something about it. Perhaps it’s being viewed as competent/smart/creative/etc. Or maybe you value achievement/performing your best/pushing your field forward. Your negative-feeling emotion is shining a light on this for you.
As ugh as they feel, negative-feeling emotions are just as much messengers to us as positive-feeling emotions. Maybe not our enemies?
What do Overthinkers and Overachievers do with Emotion?
People who are overthinkers and overachievers tend to have what we call “maladaptive emotional regulation.” They tend to suppress emotional expression (holding the ball underwater), and ruminate on their perceived mistakes and failures. They also tend to magnify their perceived failures (this is so awful, I’m going to fail/get fired/be viewed as stupid/gain weight), and engage in high self-criticism and self-blame. Unfortunately, this style of emotional regulation:
1) Increases emotional distress;
2) Maintains negative-feeling emotions and mood;
3) Negatively impacts feelings of self-worth;
4) Is associated with worse mental health.
Overachievers who aren’t overthinkers also hold high standards for themselves, but, in contrast, they regulate their emotions in a way that is helpful to their mood and self-worth. They tend to use emotion regulation strategies like acceptance, problem solving, and positive reappraisal (links?). These overachievers get a feeling of satisfaction from striving toward their goals, tolerate imperfection, and tend to have low self-criticism. As a result, they also tend to have good self-worth (I am enough).
Letting the Ball Go…
So how do we get a little of that overachieve-but-not-overthink magic going on for ourselves? How do we manage our emotions in a way that’s helpful? It’s time to let the ball go…and here’s how you do it (hint, don’t aim the ball towards your face).
“The 4As”
Acknowledge
The first step is recognizing the emotion is even happening. Notice it, name it. “Ah, here’s fear.”
Allow
The second step is allowing the emotion to be present. Usually, overthinkers and overachievers notice the fear and quickly shove it aside (hold that ball below the water). Nope! Not doing that feeling! Allowing is a willingness. “Fear is here in me right now. Of course I am feeling fear, I’m afraid I’ll fail and this is important to me.”
Accommodate
The third step is where we let the ball go and drift around the pool. Hop up on the side of the pool and watch it float. Make room for it. “I’m going to give you the space you need.”
Appreciate
Yes. I said it. Appreciate! The final step is appreciating the emotion for its message. “You’re my ally; you’re trying to communicate, motivate, and illuminate something.” If anything, appreciate that you can feel. J. K. Rowling created the dementors out of her experience with depression after her mother’s death. She said:
Sadness is not a bad thing, you know, to cry and to feel.
But it’s the cold absence of feeling, that really hallowed
out feeling. That’s where the dementors are.
Suffering is when you feel “the cold absence of feeling” or struggle to push the emotions away. If we acknowledge, allow, accommodate, and appreciate all of our emotions, even the negative-feeling ones, the suffering drops. Yes, we will feel pain. The pain is there because we care about something deeply. What do your emotions tell you about what you care about?
Kira
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