Our Emotions Are Not For Public Consumption

This applies mainly to unwanted emotions.

Based on the evolutionary stage of the person, he/she maintains a certain emotional state. A person who has just started the journey of self-improvement may live in a highly volatile emotional state and surprisingly that will be a norm for him while a person higher up in the evolutionary stage may generally be in a calmer emotional state.

When a person encounters a life situation that creates higher volatility in his emotional state then he will want a way to release the excess energy. The most common way is to take it out on others i.e. let your emotions be used for public consumption. This is the most common approach taken by a majority of people.

Example: Ram is a person who has started his journey of self-improvement some time back and his emotional state is neither calm nor too volatile. On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being unmoved by the external situation and 10 being a state of extreme volatility), he is at level 6.

Ram had an appraisal meeting where his manager gave him a rating that was not as per his expectation. This aggravated Ram and he had an argument with his manager. After coming out of the meeting his emotional state went from 6 to 8. This led him to feel restlessness and desperately needed an outlet for his emotions.

Ram called up not just his family members and friends but his other colleagues as well and vented out his frustration against his manager on them. In this process of letting his emotions be used for public consumption, Ram was able to bring back his emotional state from level 8 back to level 6.

Emotions for public consumption can be positive as well

Let there be another person named Shyam whose emotional state is also similar to that of Ram (say level 5). Contrary to Ram, his appraisal meeting went well. He was awarded a good raise and promotion as well. He did not have such expectations and hence became overly excited. His emotional state went up from level 5 to say level 7.

Shyam is not usually at a higher level as far as his emotional state is concerned and hence needed a way to take out his emotions. He also called up his family members and friends and, in a very excited tone, conveyed his appraisal news to them. In this process of letting his emotions be used for public consumption, Shyam was able to bring back his emotional state to its original level.

Energy is just transferred

By taking the route of using others as the outlet for excess energy, a person is just transferring energy to them. In the examples taken above, Ram would have increased the level of frustration in all the people with whom he had the conversation and similarly, Shyam would have increased the level of excitement in all the people with whom he had the conversation post appraisal meeting.

The recipient people would in turn use other people for the outlet of their increased level of emotional state and this process would continue.

A point to note is that the level of increase of emotional state in other people may not be equal to that of the person who started the chain. Hence this flow of energy will stop after passing through few steps in the chain of transmission of energy.

Example: After the bad appraisal meeting, Ram had an increased emotional state of 8 instead of his usual 6. After talking to his friends and colleagues his emotional state came back to 6 but it caused an increase of 1 level in the emotional state of his friends and colleagues and hence they, in turn, called up their friends and colleagues to vent out the extra energy. These new people in the chain had a minor increase in their level of emotional state and hence some of them called up others while others stopped at that point.

What is the better way?

When the rise in the level of the emotional state of a person is due to frustration and anger, one needs to find a better way to find an outlet for the excess energy (For the rise in the level of the emotional state due to excitement, one can still choose others as a medium for the outlet as being human it will help foster relationships).

Catharsis comes to the rescue for people finding a way to bring back their emotional state to their original level. In catharsis, one should re-experience the incident which caused fear and anger and vent it out through means of fast breathing, etc. After removing the emotional charge, one should try to find the belief that caused him to feel anger and frustration in the first place and try to replace it with an improved belief that would make him calmer in the situation.

This process would make the person undergo a permanent change in the way he would process any further situation that is similar to the one he experienced earlier. Details of catharsis have been explained in the below articles:

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Example: After having the bad appraisal meeting, Ram decided not to let his frustrations be transferred to others. He came back home and performed catharsis on the incident that caused him to lose his temper. By means of fast breathing and making spasmodic movements, he was able to bring down the emotional charge. Thereafter he analyzed the incident and found that his desire for respect amongst his peers, was the reason he could not take the bad appraisal in a calm manner. He thought he would lose respect amongst his peers and that was unacceptable for him.

Ram then changed his belief from considering others’ respect towards him (based on his position) as paramount to believing that he should be respected not for what he achieves but what he actually is as a person. This change in belief caused him to remove the undue pressure for him to prove to others and made him even lower his usual level of emotional state from 6 to let’s say 5.

Thus, using catharsis, Ram not only avoided spreading the negative energy onto other near and dear ones but also made himself achieve a calmer emotional state.

Conclusion

Upon encountering a situation where the emotional state becomes more volatile, a person normally vents out the excess energy by transferring them to others. This public consumption of the emotions may be ok for so-called positive emotions such as excitement but for negative emotions like frustration and anger, one should find alternate ways of releasing the excess energy. Catharsis has been found to be extremely effective in dealing with excess energy without involving other people. If done properly it will also help in bringing the person to a calmer emotional state that he earlier was. Hence there is a double benefit of using this approach and should be exercised by the majority of people.