Do You Have “Stuck” Colleagues or Friends?
We hardly notice it when things are going the way they are ‘supposed to go’. It is when the situation changes quickly that we notice! A healthy life requires emotional agility. You may find yourself unable to pivot, thus allowing you to occasionally get stuck. Interested in knowing how to get ‘unstuck’? Getting ‘unstuck’ is part of any healthy “Self-care” routine. Keep reading to learn how to become more emotionally agile.
The Research
Emotional agility is the capacity to move freely among a wide range of emotions, and do so with purpose. Recent research and lab experiments have suggested a key component of emotional toughness is the “agile shifting” skill. We often call it resilience, but the broader skill is emotional agility (Waugh, Thompson & Gotlib, 2011).
While it is called ‘emotional’ agility, it turns out three players are involved. They are cognition, emotion, and our body. Each is finely connected and tuned to the others, and you can foster emotional flexibility through the three pathways (mind, heart and body). All three systems ‘talk’ to each other and each impacts the other.
Let’s look briefly at the three, beginning with emotions. Some negative emotions (including chronic stress emotions) were fostered by early childhood experiences (Mayes, 2006). These emotions can help or hurt cognitive performance. With cognitive challenge, novelty, and anticipation you can impact your dopamine (an ‘upper’) and adrenaline (an ‘upper’) systems for emotional agility. And finally, physical movement can generate improved emotional states (Rebar, et al., 2015 and Eime, Young, Harvey, Charity & Payne, 2013). You may already know that physical activity improves cognitive performance (Erickson, et al. 2019). In short, we are all pretty well biologically cross-connected.
The Outer Boundaries
If you picture a bell-shaped curve, emotional agility keeps you in a happy middle-ground. Problems begin to be noticed when your agility runs thin at either extreme.
At one of the extremes, there are those who struggle to shift gears emotionally. We’ve likely all met someone who struggles to move out of a stuck ‘state’, such as extended grief, anger, revenge or sadness. There could be a colleague or family member who carries a grudge for years (Ricciardi, 2013). These cases may be diagnosed (falsely or not) as having depression. For some, counseling or medication may be suggested.
At the other extreme of the behavioral flexibility spectrum is a different problem. This person drops anything and everything at the slightest hint of novelty, a distraction, or a reward. They’ll jump up and jump into almost anything different in a heartbeat. Jumping from emotion to emotion without purpose is what many of us call (unflatteringly) being “scattered and unfocused.” These cases may be diagnosed (falsely or not) as having attention-deficit disorder.
With either of the extremes above, the emotional agility is actually low. When you can ‘turn on a dime’ emotionally, you have the ability to respond flexibly to changing emotional circumstances. Keep in mind, emotional agility means intentional flexibility.
Healthy, emotionally agile people can drive home after a rough workday, take a deep breath, pivot, get out of the car, and greet family with a loving hug and a smile.
High-resilient individuals appear to have emotional agility. They are better able than their low-resilient counterparts to either switch or maintain their emotional responses. They do this depending on whether the emotional context changes. In short, they are far from being a prisoner of their emotion-switching; their life is enhanced by it.
Let’s return to our question about getting stuck. How can we use this connectivity to help us be more ‘agile’ emotionally instead of getting stuck? The answer is fairly simple. You have got to engage and ‘unstick’ your brain with strong actions. Each of the three pathways listed below provides different sets of tools. The takeaway here is simple… you can get unstuck and you can get back to enjoying life!
Practical Applications
Getting stuck can be misery. For many, it is a constant prison one is unable to escape from. The most common stuck state triggers include our brain’s ‘junk mail’. We often circulate and reinforce random, meaningless thoughts in our heads. They are often over situations or events we have minimal control over, which fosters anxiety. For some, though, the pain is greater. In this instance, we may experience overwhelming trauma over the death of a loved one, loss of a job, eviction, moving or even an unforgiving righteousness.
Earlier you read the three systems are connected. In theory, you could use just one of the three to succeed. Yet, the better you integrate and use all three of your systems, the more robust and flexible you become emotionally.
Cognitive Tools
The primary strategies (cognitively) are the following: awareness, acceptance, evaluation, finding counter evidence, labeling, reappraisal, and identity updates. That means your approach may be:
1) Awareness Discover, face, and accept your behaviors as yours. This means avoiding the making of excuses and avoid pointing fingers at others. Own the feeling.
2) Acceptance Ask yourself if this is a pattern. What role did you play in this? Have you elicited this response from colleagues or partners in the past? Evaluate it, critique its validity by finding counter evidence. It’s possible you are the trigger.
3) Label the thoughts and disconnect If your brain is running trivia all day, call it your brain’s “junk mailbox.” Restate thoughts such as, “The junk mailbox is running in overdrive. I’ll just delete a few.”
4) Reappraise your experience Your reappraisal may include reframing the incident (see it differently, value it differently, and find the good in it) (Koch, Mars, Toni & Roelofs, 2018).
5) Update your identity “I am one who can confidently move forward each day.” Or, “I have done this before and I have since moved on.”
Emotional/Affective Tools
1) Be aware of the present moment Your awareness is a form of mindfulness. Allow yourself to be in the moment and to be in touch with your emotions and feelings.
2) Show up to embrace your good and bad emotions or thoughts Face your real feelings with curiosity and acceptance rather than trying to fix or run from them; giving them a name often strips them of their power.
3) Ask what the situation may be ‘teaching’ you Be calm, be open, and listen to your intuitive sense.
4) Begin with compassion for yourself Stuck states prevent you from being your best. When you have awareness that you did something bad and you got stuck in guilt or shame, self-compassion is one of the best ways out of it. That compassion allows you to remind yourself of your goodness and release the stickiness of the stuck state.
5) Shift your language Step out from your inner monologue and see it for what it is. You have emotions that you’re dealing with, but they don’t define you. Here’s your new language: “I notice that I’m feeling stuck at this time.” Or, I’m having a stuck moment.” Notice the ‘stuck-ness’ is a temporary state in these scenarios. Creating space for change is essential as you step back and allow yourself to see options and regain perspective.
6) Elicit and embrace your values Your positive values can function as emotional anchors. They’re always just a thought away and can provide a sense of safety. You can unhook yourself from your difficult thoughts and emotions. Simply ask yourself probing Qs: “How might I connect myself better to my own values? Are my values to be hurtful, sour, and a grudge-holder? If not, what ARE my values?” Values such as compassion, friendship, generosity, forgiveness, ownership, and honesty can support your next actions.
Physical Tools
1) Change your posture and pose In an often-viewed TedTalk, best-seller Amy Cuddy popularized the act of ‘changing states’ with her book, Presence. Her book’s premise is that when we assume confident and assertive poses, we shift into more confident states which alter our endocrine systems.
2) Engage dance moves with fluidity Several researchers (van Geest, Samaritter & van Hooren, 2021) discovered that the experience of modern dancers, moving from one position to another, seemed to generate matching inner changes. The process of moving into a novel committed action is about choosing the gift of change with movement in a conscious way.
3) Take a hike! Look for a well-marked path on a local hiking trail, go to a state or local county park with short hikes. Find an outdoor space with plenty of turns, steps, and angles. Why turns, steps and angles? To disconnect from the stuck state, avoid the endless flat surface of a track or circling a building. Do something that is safe, yet physically challenging. This can ‘unstick’ your brain and enhance creativity (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014).
Remember, all of these processes invite you to make a choice, then move forward.
Notice that each of the three paths above have some kind of ‘brain rattling’. To get out of a stuck state, you have a choice to make. “Which path will I use now?” While there are other very workable paths (specific mushrooms, ketamine, etc.), those are the topic for a different newsletter. By the way, never try to “drink your way” out of a stuck state. Alcohol is a central nervous system inhibitor. That’s bad for change. You want something that activates and unsticks your brain. Use the suggestions above and enjoy!
CEO, Jensen Learning
Brain-Based Education
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