Emotional Skills I Wish I Had
I’ve never made a list like this before, and it surprises me that I haven’t. I know that when I turn my attention to new skills or abilities, or toward areas in myself that need work, I find a way to grow and improve. Why wouldn’t I want better emotional and social development? What might this list look like if I spent a few hours researching and understanding where others (and I!) fall short? Is there perhaps a test that I could take that measures some of my personality traits? This is a rich area to explore and I’m just beginning!
Receiving Compliments: If there is one particular element of my childhood wound that I wish was better, it would be feeling as though I was deserving of love. I genuinely don’t know how I would go about solving this, but it’s clear that I need to in order to grow and mature.
One small way that this expresses itself is by being pretty bad at receiving compliments. (I even wrote a poem about this struggle). I’m competent at doing the social song and dance of taking them and often “Thank you” is good enough. But especially when they come from those closest to me, I know that they don’t sink deep down. I’d like to be more able to really take them in and let them change my view of myself.
Safe Anger: Years of CBT training while in chronic pain, regular meditation practice, and just getting older and less attached to my ego have made conflict and fighting an odd experience to me. It’s not that anger and frustration don’t swell in me. It’s that I don’t give them as much regard. When I let anger hold the wheel, I tend to get carried wherever the feeling takes me. I say things I would not otherwise say and lose control of my body and mind.
One side effect of having such a tight rein on my anger is that arguing or fighting with me can feel cool instead of hot. I can feel distant in part because I am absolutely holding emotional reserve. Most conflict is not worth getting riled up over, is not worth going to war over. This is all well and good, but it can feel like I’m not emotionally engaged in the right way, which in some ways, is absolutely true.
But anger isn’t always hyperbolic. Sometimes it is justified and signals real support and care for the topic. Being angry about disrespect can cause the other person to understand that you actually care about the disrespect, for example. I want better and mature control over this ability, but worry that the only way to do this is to leak more of my anger into conflict. This is result in me sometimes choosing the wrong time to do this. How does someone get better at this without risking too much anger?
Managing Jealousy, In All Its Many Forms: I used to think that I didn’t have a strong jealousy bone in my body, but have found that it’s either growing or I’m just being put into situations where it rears its head more. Jealousy for me is tied to anger and fear, and is clearly tied to the ego and worry about what will happen to me. I’d like to have a better sense of when this emotion is present, and what to do about it. It’s so rich and exciting to be noticing my capacity for this emotion later in my life! What else is out there that I haven’t experienced yet?
Hearing the Emotional Bid Under the Problem-Solving Bid: It’s becoming more and more clear that I habitually respond to most bids as though they were “fix this and make it better” bids. I’ve even done the meta-move here of acknowledging the emotional bid and moving up one level and reasoning about how to “solve” for why the emotions can change. This is the equivalent of treating all negative emotions like they were hunger. It’s a powerful problem-solving space, but doesn’t acknowledge the lived experience of either my own feelings or the feelings of the person who might be making the bid.
Instead, I need to either clarify the ask, or respond initially to the bid as though it was an emotional bid then ask if my interlocutor would like some problem-solving.
