The Art of Empathy (16 page)

When things are going well, all of your emotions (even very intense ones) will respond and resolve when you pay attention to them and perform
whatever corrective actions they require. But sometimes emotions become destabilized, and this action-requiring construct will help you understand what's going on: If you are dealing with an emotion that repeats continually and will not resolve itself, no matter how many times you try to perform the correct action for that emotion, that's
too much.
It's a clear sign that you could use some help. Let's look at two specific emotions (fear and anger) so you'll know what too much emotion actually looks like.

UNDERSTANDING THE PURPOSE OF FEAR

Your fear arises when you need to orient to change, novelty, or possible physical hazards. The actions that fear requires are uncountable, because fear is the emotion of instinct and intuition. When your fear signals you, you might need to hold your breath, freeze, run, laugh, recoil, move forward, orient yourself, strike out quickly to avoid an incoming hazard, leap sideways, be still, lower your head and studiously ignore something, or any of a hundred other actions. When you and your instincts choose the right action, you'll complete the actions that your fear required, and your mood-state fear will recede naturally.

Your fear should never disappear completely, because fear brings you the gifts and instincts needed to prepare for any eventuality. However, you shouldn't be in a fear
mood state
every minute of every day (this would be rough on your health). If everything in your environment knocks your fear from its flowing, nearly imperceptible, intuitive state into its full-on, adrenaline-pumping, action-requiring state, then something is going on. In this situation, you may have a physical condition or a past trauma that needs to be addressed. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be very helpful for hyperactivated fear conditions, as are certain antidepressants and beta blockers. Somatic therapy is also wonderful for resolving the residual activation that can be associated with traumas.

It's really important to address hyperactivated fear, because fear's job is to keep you aware and safe. If your fear is hyperactivated, you'll orient to everything, whether or not you need to, and every change will feel like a threat or a physical hazard. You don't want to be feeling that way all day long (unless you're in a war, and then I take it back). But even for very competent warriors, feeling mood-state fear all the time is hard on the body. PTSD is a very real possibility when you live at the mood-state level of fear for long stretches of time.

The point with fear (and every other emotion) is that it has a very specific purpose. Fear needs you to take action—to orient to change, novelty, and possible hazards. When you properly identify the change or hazard and when you take an action to ensure your safety (or the safety of others, if your fear was evoked on their behalf), then fear's work is done. When you complete the correct action, your fear will revert to its flowing state, and you won't consciously feel afraid. Your fear will still be there, but it won't be in a mood state, and it won't require any overt actions from you. You will have completed the actions that your fear required. Excellent!

The problem with emotions is almost never about the emotion itself—even when the emotion is
way
out of kilter. The fact that people can get into trouble with repetitive fear doesn't mean that fear is negative. Fear is irreplaceable—it brings you instincts and intuition, and it will literally save your life. You want fear! But you want fear to be in its proper place, doing its proper work, with the proper intensity.

For instance, if a child's ball rolls into your field of vision, you want fear to help you notice it, orient to it, and then realize it's not a threat. Excellent, fear, thank you! If a car suddenly swerves toward you, you want your fear to orient you, make a series of split-second decisions and maneuvers (that you don't even have to think about, thanks to fear), and get your car out of harm's way. Whew! Adrenaline rush! Excellent, fear, thank you!

UNDERSTANDING THE PURPOSE OF ANGER

From its healthy, flowing state (where it quietly maintains your self-image and your standpoint), your anger is evoked into its mood state when you sense threats to your self-image, your standpoint, your voice, or your position (I call these, collectively, your
boundaries).
When someone tries to disrespect you, your anger should come forward to protect your boundaries honorably. With that anger, you can set the person straight (or laugh, or raise your eyebrows, or deepen your voice, or any of a hundred nonviolent but self-strengthening, boundary-setting actions). Then your anger will recede, and your boundary will be reset.
Bing.
It's done. No one gets hurt.

I call anger the Honorable Sentry because when you understand the importance of boundaries, you will honor those boundaries in other people. Your anger will not be a weapon; it will be a tool. In a healthy conflict, you
both
should be protected by healthy anger, and you
both
should be restored. Anger is the
Honorable
Sentry.

If you ignore or repress your anger, you're teaching people that it's totally okay to be unkind and insensitive, and you're helping them become less skilled, less socially aware, and less valuable in the social world. You're not doing them any favors; you're actually dishonoring them. The healthy action for anger is to take hold of its strength so you can address any boundary violations honestly and without cruelty. This healthy action helps your relationships deepen and flourish; therefore, you shouldn't repress your anger (in a pantomime of politeness) as a matter of course.

Now, let's switch things around and say you feel anger
all the time.
Politics inflame you, advertising inflames you, other people's behavior inflames you, and you wake up every morning with your fists raised, yelling, “Why, there oughtta be a law!” You also lash out at people regularly, sometimes without meaning to. In this situation, you have
too much
anger, and it's being activated by absolutely everything in your environment. This is a very precarious situation for your social viability. If you ratchet up your anger every time it appears and you attack persistently, you're teaching people that you are (1) not a safe person to be around, (2) not emotionally skilled, and (3) not empathically aware. You might think that your anger outbursts make you look strong, like some action figure. But if you're using your anger to destroy the boundaries and the self-image of others, you haven't learned the true strength and purpose of anger. Sorry. Learning how to channel your anger will help you create and define an honorable and healthy sense of self—for everyone.

Too much of any emotion—even joy—is not healthy for you, for your social viability, for your cognitive skills, or for your physical health. But with continual anger, there's the possibility of damaging your cardiovascular system as well. There's work you can do on your own, such as asking yourself why you're so completely boundary impaired that absolutely everything gets to you. However, you might also need some help from a counselor or your doctor, because repetitive anger that never resolves is simply not good for you.

If your anger goes to DEFCON 1 every time it appears (or even every other time it appears), you may have a rage disorder. Repetitive rage can also be a sign of untreated major depression. So don't fool around with repetitive rage; instead, reach out for help. But remember, it's not the anger that isn't good for you; you absolutely need your anger. (You can get into a repetitive state with any number of emotions, including depression, fear, joy, sadness, or shame, and each will destabilize you in its own particular way.) The problem in a rage disorder isn't that the anger exists; the problem is that the anger
is stuck in a feedback loop that needs to be resolved so the anger can get back to its regular job.

What I notice about raging people is that their boundaries are totally permeable—absolutely everything gets to them. Therefore, their anger, which exists to help them strengthen their boundaries, is continually required (remember that emotions are always true, though they're not always right). The anger is responding appropriately to the actual circumstances in their lives. Their anger constantly, regularly, and dependably arises (this anger is true), but because they don't understand how to complete the actions that anger requests of them, their anger becomes trapped in a feedback loop (this anger is not actually right). We all require healthy boundaries and healthy anger, but in the case of a rage disorder, this feedback problem must be dealt with first.

Emotions are very powerful, and their nature is to move quickly, address an issue succinctly, and then move on. All of your emotions have important jobs to do, and you need all of them. But if something behavioral, chemical, or neurological is impeding or inflating your emotions, you can easily tumble into confusion, exhaustion, and disorder. If this happens, your job as the partner of your emotions is to reach out for help—from a friend, a counselor, or your health provider—so that you can bring balance back to your emotional life.

If you have an emotion that's hyperactivated, that appears in seemingly inappropriate situations, or that won't resolve, then that emotion is out of kilter. Your job isn't to crush or suppress the emotion, or breathe it out and pretend to be feeling something else. No, your job is to find out what's going on so that your emotion can get back to its regular work!

THE ANSWER IS PRETTY SIMPLE, REALLY

So, the answer to the question
How much emotion is too much?
is the same for any of the emotions: If an emotion appears constantly or repetitively, and you can't get it to resolve, then that's too much. That emotion is out of balance, and you need to attend to it so it can get back to its regular work.

Emotions are very powerful, and a repetitive emotional state can throw your chemistry out of whack. Attending to a destabilized emotion may require therapy, mindfulness practices, antidepressants (in cases of repetitive rage, anxiety, or depression), antianxiety meds, or a change in your lifestyle so you can work your way back to health. You can also rely on your Einfühlung
capacity to make a full-bodied empathic study of the emotion that got out of balance in you—and wow, this will tell you amazing things about yourself, your current home and work environments, your social life, your childhood emotional training, and your beliefs about the world.

Your emotional awareness is crucial to your ability to empathize with others, to take their perspective, and to have concern for them. Think about it: if you have a problem with one or more emotions, you probably won't be able to be fully present when that emotion arises in others. For instance, if you have an unaddressed feedback loop in your own anger program and someone near you gets angry,
your
anger will probably start looping. Anger is an awesome emotion, but when it's in a feedback loop, it's too much—and it will probably impede your ability to perform Perspective Taking or do anything other than rant or shake internally with rage. That's not helpful! You definitely want to have the capacity to use rage when you need to, but it should be a choice and not an involuntary, repetitive reflex. The situation is the same with fear, sadness, joy, envy, anxiety, or any other emotion: if you have a problem with your own emotions, your empathic capacities will be reduced when that emotion is present in others.

In our six aspects of empathy, Empathic Accuracy and Emotion Regulation are the stepping-stones that help you make the journey from the fairly involuntary act of Emotion Contagion to the culminating and intentional act of Perceptive Engagement. So, if you have one or more emotions that are problematic for you, take care of yourself and get them back into balance within your entire emotional realm. Emotions are irreplaceable, necessary, and powerful aspects of your cognitive skills, but if they're out of kilter, every single one of them can be too much!

IS IT A FEELING OR AN EMOTION?
³⁷

It's important to understand the distinct difference between emotions and feelings. This understanding will help you become more empathically accurate and aware of your emotions.

Someone once asked me about the difference between an emotion and a feeling. My answer was that emotion is a
thing,
and feeling is an
action.
One's a noun; the other's a verb. Although I didn't really understand why the distinction was important, I did think about it a great deal. I really wondered what the confusion was about—I mean, you have an emotion, you feel it, you identify it, and then, you know exactly how to work with it. Right?

Oh, yeah. It's not that simple for many people.

So I went back to the books, and after rereading Damasio's books (
Descartes' Error, The Feeling of What Happens,
and
Looking for Spinoza
), some books on the sociology of emotion (
How Emotions Work,
by Jack Katz), and some books on the neurology of emotion (
The Emotional Brain,
by Joseph LeDoux, and
On Being Certain,
by Robert Burton), I finally figured out what's up.

IT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAVING AND KNOWING

An
emotion
is a physiological experience or neurological program that gives you information about the world, and a
feeling
is your conscious awareness of the emotion itself. I hadn't really understood why the distinction was such a big deal, because I don't experience a huge gap between emotion and feeling. I mean, if there's an emotion going on, I feel it, and because I've organized emotions into sixteen distinct categories, it's easy for me to identify which one it is. But this isn't true for everyone. Many people are honestly unaware that they're experiencing an emotion. For them, the emotion and the capacity to feel it are not strongly connected, and they don't even realize that (for instance) they're fearful or angry or depressed. They
have
the emotion, but they don't
know
about it. The emotion is certainly there, and their behavior displays the emotion (to others at least), but they aren't
feeling
it properly. Their emotional state has to become an obvious mood—or it has to become very persistent—before they can realize, “Oh, I guess I've been really sad about my dad, or afraid about money, or angry about work.” Their Empathic Accuracy is low and, therefore, so are their Emotion Regulation skills.