12/22/2023 0 Comments Negative moods![]() When someone you care about is in a bad mood, try to understand how and why they’re feeling the way they are rather than how it can be fixed. When you shift from problem-thinking to puzzle-thinking, your mindset becomes driven by curiosity rather than morality, which is far more helpful in an emotionally-intense situation, both for you and the person across from you. Even though they don’t like feeling sad, is there some kind of benefit they might be getting from it?.What kinds of external situations or circumstances might have set them up for feeling this way?.What could be going on in their mind that would lead to so many painful feelings?.If only they knew how much they impacted other people, they’d never be like this.Īnd instead, substitute more curiosity-driven questions:.Don’t they see this isn’t doing them any good!.How are you thinking about their emotion to yourself? Try to catch and hold back on thoughts like: So, pay attention to your own self-talk when someone you care about is very emotional. And when we’re curious about another person’s emotion, it’s far easier to be validating, understanding, and empathetic, which is what most people experiencing strong, painful emotions really need. On the other hand, thinking of it as a puzzle puts us in a mindset of curiosity. Viewing someone’s emotion as a problem puts us in a moral frame of mind-we think of the emotion as something bad to be gotten rid of quickly. Instead of viewing someone’s bad mood as a problem to be fixed, what if we shifted our perspective slightly and tried to see it as a puzzle? This is why we so often turn to advice-giving when people we care about are upset.īut as I’m sure you’ve come to learn, giving advice to someone in the throes of a bad mood is typically unhelpful at best and often counterproductive. When someone close to us is racked with anxiety, overwhelmed by sadness, or just incredibly frustrated, it’s natural to see their emotion as a problem-something to be taken care of and resolved quickly. Treat strong emotion as a puzzle, not a problem If you can learn to cultivate them, these skills will help you keep your cool in every relationship in your life, especially the most important ones like spouses, bosses, parents, children, etc.ġ. In this article, I want to share 5 specific skills that help me to effectively and respectfully handle other people’s difficult emotions. The point is: Managing other people’s bad moods and difficult emotions well is an ability that can be practiced and strengthened. But, if anything, I feel like I’m a little better at managing both my own emotions and other peoples’ because I get to practice all day long as a result of my job as a therapist. ![]() You might imagine all that sadness, frustration, anxiety, and shame my clients tell me about would start to rub off on a guy after a while. How do you sit there and listen to people’s problems all day? Don’t you get depressed? Here’s a question I get asked a lot as a therapist:
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