In 1995, the book “Emotional Intelligence” (by Daniel Goleman, Ph.D.)came out and officially debunked the idea that high IQ is what’s necessary to succeed in life. Of course defining success is relative. Some people define success in terms of financial status (or career satisfaction without necessarily the financial status), while others would rather have at least a good marriage or life partner. And plenty of women consider just being able to bear children as success stories – after all it is quite a feat to push out even just one of those. Ideally, we would like to have it all. Either way, it is now established that how we handle our moment-to-moment emotions in situations determines how our life is going to be. A passionate temperamental leader may move mountains, but how many of us would want to be married to such an explosive personality
Men, who have evolved from the role of hunter-gatherers, have been socialized to contain their emotions (unless you are the likes of Roberto Benigni! J)in order to conquer the beastly world and bring home food to their families. Imagine how much food an emotionally-collapsing stone-age man could have brought home! Women feel more freedom to be expressive, especially the positive emotions, since we are expected to be the nurturers to our young. But times have changed, at least in suburban America. Men don’t have to be hunter-gatherers by themselves anymore (There's Ralph's or VONS at every corner). Feminism has sort of equalized the sex roles. Yet our responses to our emotions have not really caught up to these realities. Most women still complain about their men who don’t share feelings and some men still cannot understand the drama queens they found themselves committed to. O balanced man (/woman) - where art thou?!
In the movie “Pleasantville”, whose theme I think was taken from Lois Lowry’s “The Giver”, they lived in a society where there were no strong emotions. Life was very predictable and calm – utopia – and BORING!
Accepting our emotions, the whole gamut of them, as natural parts of our humanity is a fairly new value. Most people still put a judgment on feelings as either good or bad. Feelings are just feelings. They are neither good nor bad. It is how we behave or act on these feelings that may or may not be appropriate. Especially with negative emotions (Negative does not mean bad. It just refers to feelings such as anger, frustration, etc.). Some of the children we deal with are pretty bankrupt of emotional ideas, meaning thoughts that go with the emotions. They move from feeling to action in an instant, without the interfering and rationalizing thought process (We do too as civilized adults – How many children were conceived in thought-less moments?). There is no one to process the emotional experience during or after the incident. This is especially true for children who don’t get mentoring or guidance from adults. One practical thing we can do to facilitate this thought process is through narration. Narrating the emotional experience to the child so he can start to mentalize the relationship between the emotion and his response. (But you can’t do this with a child who is raging or irrational. Wait until they are calmed down and able to take in what you are to say – at times you may have to wait a day).
For example, after a fight, you can say: “I wonder if you felt hurt (angry, frustrated, disappointed, etc.) when he was teasing you? And that’s what made you hit him. You really love your mother and so when children make fun of her, you get very sensitive about that.”(Wonder aloud and use feeling words – It’s ok if you are not on target with the emotion. It still plants a thought in their heads and in the future, maybe they could start thinking in these terms before acting.
Follow up with: “When we are angry, it’s very easy for us to stop thinking straight and we just want to hurt the person who got us angry. But then we end up getting into a fight and then getting suspended…. What else could you have done instead at that moment when you were feeling angry?…. How about walking away … Or ignoring … Or telling an adult…………
Others: “Did you notice his face when you were teasing? Did his face look like he was enjoying your teasing or not?”…”Do you remember how your body was feeling when you were starting to feel angry? Did you feel tight inside?…….” (This encourages reflective thinking and also builds empathy and conscience).
The idea is to stimulate the thought process and that a feeling, which actually starts as a body sensation in the first place, need not be acted on right away. Hope this helps.