Life experience creates an inner knowledge which links stimuli with feelings. Emotion therefore indicates when we should be particularly attentive. This enables us to act quickly in dangerous situations. If our emotional reaction to the stimulus tells us that one of our basic needs is not being met, we act instinctively. Then the goal is to resolve the problem – without thinking about it – as soon as possible. This is quite normal because every human being strives to live with a positive basic feeling.
Emotions therefore indicate that something is out of balance. Basically, it is a kind of early warning system, using familiar inner patterns, mostly based on our experience. So, the emotion indicates that we have a need. This can be the need for security, predictability, belonging, etc. Emotions are important cues for us, indicating when something is dangerous or important, for example. This is especially the case in situations where emotions are strong.
It is important to know, that emotion-regulation is not about getting rid of feelings overall, but about recognizing emotions precisely. This is important, because in the heat of the moment a multitude of emotions come up and it can be difficult to understand whether we are dealing with disgust, anger or perhaps even fear.
Some emotions have a negative reputation in our society, they are seen as negative. Anger, for example, is often dismissed with:” He/she can’t control him/herself!”. Fear also has a bad reputation.
We have therefore become used to recognizing these emotions less, to ignore them and above all not to address them openly. Concealing them from the outside is not necessarily a problem since social systems form implicit rules. But for us internally, for our inner decision compass, it is. The thing is, we then no longer recognize it when something basically scares us, and we use the wrong techniques to calm ourselves down. Thus, we should try to clarify whether fear or anger is present or another of the basic emotions.
Becoming more and more precise in recognizing one’s own emotions is central in my coaching approach.
To do this, we use biographical methods such as the genogram or the lifeline, so that you can get to know your history and understand why particular emotions come up in certain situations. This is especially relevant for our personal handling of them. After all, how are we supposed to regulate our emotions, if we don’t know from the start what we are dealing with?