Emotional Currency

This lived in my drafts folder too long. Since I may never be happy with an aspect of my emotional journey, the never ending arc of self-improvement… it’s probably best to release this to the wind. Feel free to read this with a few pinches of coarse, sea salt.

My husband is Italian and that helped me come up with the memory trick for emotional growth as “LIRA”. Emotional LIRA is the currency I use to pay for Personal Upgrades. LIRA stands for Literacy, Intelligence, Resilience, and Adaptability, and they are emotional skills I continue to develop over time.

• Emotional Literacy - knowing WHAT you are feeling

• Emotional Intelligence - knowing WHY you are feeling it

• Emotional Resilience - Bouncing Back from an emotional incident

• Emotional Adaptability - Bounding Forward to handle similar situations better in the future.

In Brene Brown’s “Atlas of the Heart” she discusses a finding that most people can identify their emotional state, while it is happening, only in terms of three big buckets: Mad, Sad, Glad. In a way, that makes sense because many emotions “feel the same”. It’s more accurate to say many emotions “present” the same way because they trigger similar physical reactions.

For example, when you “feel mad”, you might experience a rise in blood pressure, a racing of your heart, a feeling of warmth or a flush to your face or extremities, or you may feel shaky or light-headed. That collection, which can describe feeling MAD, could also describe how your body feels when something is unfair or a betrayal, or you recognize a threat to something or someone you value, as well as a list of other primary and secondary emotions. The physical presentation can be the same, but the emotions are different.

Emotional Literacy, knowing WHAT you feel, is the skill of recognizing and distinguishing the different emotions that feel the same in the body. Getting from Mad/Sad/Glad to granularity within those buckets takes practice and attention. That effort relies on and builds your Emotional Intelligence - knowing WHY you are feeling it.

Developing emotional intelligence is a life-long practice that can start as simply as consciously checking-in during an emotional event. When something ticks you off, make a mental note of the circumstances: the who and what and why of what you are feeling. You can come back to that memory later to dig deeper, but the simple act of recognizing you are reacting emotionally, and attempting to understand the circumstances is the first and most important step in moving from reactive behavior to intentional living.

Mastering any new skill requires taking the journey from unconsciously doing it wrong (through consciously doing it wrong, onto consciously doing it right) to finally unconsciously doing it right. Becoming an intentional emotional being is not a right or wrong thing, but mastering Emotional LIRA skills is still analogous. I unconsciously feel things and react in the moment, and simply by building awareness and trying to recognize and learn, I can move towards consciously feeling and reacting.

Emotional literacy and intelligence grow in parallel when we recognize what we are feeling and try to understand the circumstances. This creates the foundation of emotional self-regulation (Resilience) and emotional growth (Adaptability).

Quickly returning to a state of calm, or at least pulling back from the intense reaction of the emotional event, requires Emotional Resilience. Emotions, physical feelings, emotional events in our body, are hormonal. There is a laundry list of chemicals produced in the brain and body that bring about, maintain, then back us away from the physical expression of an emotion. The whole process can take less than ten seconds, or two to three slow, deep breaths.

Emotional Resilience then is how quickly you can recognize an emotional incident and consciously step in to regulate it. When you feel your heart rate or blood pressure or body temp start to rise in response to a comment or situation, you can decide to lean into the emotion or pull yourself back from it - but either response is intentional and exhibits your conscious emotional behavior.

To go even further, your Emotional Adaptability is taking what you learn about yourself and others thru emotional events, and using that knowledge to make Future You better at similar situations. Developing Emotional Intelligence leads to improved Emotional Resilience. Practicing Emotional Resilience leads to improved Emotional Adaptability and to better responses to similar situations in the future.

I absolutely react, on occasion, in a way that does not match the current situation. When I am stressed, or tired, or hungry - kindness and objectivity do not always rule my actions. That argues I might be human - although the jury is still out. Dedicating energy towards LIRA practices has done something more for me. I now more easily recognize myself reacting with the correct emotion but with the wrong intensity. This is my most common indicator that I am bringing something similar from the past into this moment. When that happens, I get another opportunity to be better - and taking advantage of them is awesome.

Found this great comment on the site: https://brownmedpedsresidency.org/self-care-name-it-to-tame-it/

“Naming an emotion begins the process of regulating and reflecting on it. What we can name we can tame; when we give meaning to something, we can tolerate it and even change its impact.” —Dr. Sue Johnson