emotional regulation ≠ emotional repression
the buzz about emotional regulation is everywhere…
As a parent I see so much in the media about regulating emotions and co-regulating with your child. This makes good sense and is such a beautiful way to help parents and children feel connected, but with the wave of gentle parenting and positive parenting, I think this is relatively misleading and frankly problematic to the reader. Beyond parenting, I’ve noticed how increasingly society is conditioning and celebrating those who can remain the most calm, even keeled, and regulated as a sign of emotional intelligence, leadership, and overall just good character. While these are all wonderful traits to embody, I have to wonder how many people are by-passing the personal inquiry and the deep growth it truly takes to regularly practice emotional regulation and instead, are habitually conditioning themselves to practice emotional repression?
disassociating is a disservice
Even in helping professions like coaching and therapy, where practitioners are trained to hold space, I often see practitioners experiencing burnout. There is this pressure to be good what we do at high productivity. Our society sees such productivity as a cornerstone of success, and with that comes the martyr syndrome. Where instead, the coach for instance, is actively compartmentalizing and in fact, disassociating to be in service to their clients – this is actually a major disservice.
So what exactly is emotional regulation? To be clear, it’s not about holding composure, so much as it is about practicing mindfulness and being attuned with one’s own emotional experience. It is far easier to be stoic, exude the facade of a calming presence, while simultaneously neglecting what might be taking place internally. The harder choice is to befriend the uncomfortable emotions moment to moment as they arise. We need to give ourselves the permission to be fully human, and with that, the permission to take up more space to feel deeply.
e-motion is energy in motion
Feelings need to flow through us, to be processed and let go of before we can be a clear vessel of equanimity. This takes incredible skill firstly to notice, and then to be compassionate enough with ourselves to allow ourselves to feel and express emotion in a healthy way.
We need more spaciousness in our expectations in parenthood, in our professions, and in society to be able to take a step back, to allow ourselves to do less, and to practice true self-care. As a parent, to first be the nurturing presence we need to ourselves, before we can be that nurturing presence to our children. Emotional regulation is attuning to those moments of unpleasant feelings and to know when we need to step out of the room, go for a walk, to pause, to cry, to dance, to scream, to journal, and really express what is arising as an avenue for clearing out before we can attend to the needs of others.
