Insights Into Teens: Episode 162 “Managing Your Emotional Reactions”

INTRO THEME]
[INTRODUCTIONS]
Insights Into Teens: Episode 162 “Managing Your Emotional Reactions”
My calm and collected co-host Madison Whalen

Summary
Managing our emotional reactions is vital to learning how to control our emotions instead of letting our emotions control us. On today’s episode of Insights Into Teens we’ll take a look at learning how to react well to emotions, understanding those emotions, and how to control those emotions.
But first I’d like to invite our listening and viewing audience to subscribe to the podcast.

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[TRANSITION]

[SEGMENT 1]

https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/emotional-reactions.html#catbest-self

It’s Friday afternoon, last period.
The weekend trip you planned with a friend starts in exactly 4 hours.
You’ve been catching up on studying and chores all week so you can enjoy the time away.
And now the teacher announces a test on Monday.

You probably feel annoyed — or maybe downright angry.
You might feel disappointed.
You might also feel pressured or stressed about all the studying you’ll have to do.
But how do you react?
What do you do and say?

You may want to jump up and yell at the teacher, “That’s not fair! Some of us have weekend plans.”
But you know you need to keep your cool until class is over — then share your feelings with your friend.

But what if you’re not the calm, collected type?
Don’t worry.
Everyone can develop the skill of responding well when emotions run high.
It just takes a bit more practice for some people

Learning to React Well

Managing emotional reactions means choosing how and when to express the emotions we feel.
People who do a good job of managing emotions know that it’s healthy to express their feelings — but that it matters how (and when) they express them.
Because of this, they’re able to react to situations in productive ways:

They know they can choose the way they react instead of letting emotions influence them to do or say things they later regret.
They have a sense of when it’s best to speak out — and when it’s better to wait before acting on, or reacting to, what they feel.
They know that their reaction influences what happens next — including how other people respond to them and the way they feel about themselves.

You’ve probably been in a situation where someone reacted in a way that was too emotional, making you cringe or feel embarrassed for the person.
You also might have been in a situation where your own emotions felt so strong that it took all your self-control not to go down that path yourself.
Maybe you can think of a time when you didn’t manage your reaction.
Perhaps anxiety, anger, or frustration got the better of you, It happens.
When it does, forgive yourself and focus on what you could have done better.
Think about what you might do next time.

[AD1: SSE]

[SEGMENT 2]

Understanding Emotions

The skills we use to manage our emotions and react well are part of a bigger group of emotional skills called emotional intelligence or EQ, similar to IQ which is a reflection of your Intelligent Quotient.
We discussed this topic in more detail in Episode 161 of the podcast.
Developing all the skills that make up emotional intelligence takes time and practice.
People who react well are already good at some basic skills.
But these are skills anyone can practice:

Emotional awareness.
This skill is all about being able to notice and identify the emotions we feel at any given moment.
It is the most basic of the EQ skills.
Sometimes, just naming the emotion we feel can help us feel more in charge of our emotions.

Understanding and accepting emotions.
Understanding emotions means knowing why we feel the way we do.
For example, we might say to ourselves,
“I feel left out and a little insecure because I didn’t get invited to the prom yet, and two of my friends already did.”
It helps to view our emotions as understandable, given the situation.
We might think to ourselves:
“No wonder I feel left out — it’s natural to feel that way in this situation.”
It’s like giving ourselves a little kindness and understanding for the way we feel.
This helps us accept our emotions.
We know they’re reasonable, and that it’s OK to feel whatever way we feel.

Accepting emotions means noticing, identifying, and understanding our emotions without blaming others or judging ourselves for how we feel.
It’s not helpful to tell ourselves that how we feel is someone else’s fault.
It is also not good to judge our emotions and think,
“I shouldn’t feel this way”
or
“It’s awful that I feel this way!”
The goal is to acknowledge your feelings without letting them run away with you.
Once these basic skills feel natural, you’re more able to manage what you actually do when you feel strong emotions.
Practicing the basic skills also will help you get past difficult emotions faster.

[AD2: ENTERTAINMENT]

[SEGMENT 3]

What Would You Do?

Imagine this situation:
Your friends have received promposals (or college acceptances, team places, etc.).
But you haven’t.
Once you identify, understand, and accept how you feel, how might you react?

Look unhappy when you’re around your friends, hoping they’ll ask you what’s wrong.

Gossip about people who already have dates, and say you don’t even want to go to the stupid dance.

Confide in a friend, “I feel bad about not getting asked yet. But I can still go with friends.”

Remind yourself that it’s not the end of the world. Decide to give it time and not let it ruin your day.

Consider each choice and think about what might happen next for each one.
Which reaction would lead to the best outcome?

We always have a choice about how to react to situations.
Once we realize that, it’s easier to make choices that work out well.

Learning to react well takes practice.
But we all can get better at taking emotional situations in stride and expressing emotions in healthy ways.
And that’s something to feel good about

How to control your emotions

Next time you’re faced with a situation that elicits strong feelings from you, pause to consider what meaning you’re going to attach to it.
You can develop emotional control by using one of the following tactics:

Take a deep breath
Instead of reacting right away – whether positively or negatively – give yourself a moment to process what just happened.

Find out what you’re feeling
It’s easy to say, “I’m feeling angry because they hurt me.” Dig deeper.
Are you angry because you’re afraid they’re right?
Are you sad?
Emotions are complex and often piggyback onto one another.

Replace negative thoughts
If your mind goes straight to how you’ve been wronged or how terrible everything is, divert yourself.
Dwelling on negativity will only make you more prone to it, so focus on positive emotions.
Change your thoughts and change your story.

Channel your energy
Human emotions are incredibly powerful.
Let that energy go by participating in some sort of physical activity – going for a run or a walk.

Explore your emotions
Why do you feel the way you do?
Journaling or talking with a trusted friend or family member can help you understand why you’re feeling what you do.
Once you understand an emotion, it’s that much easier to control it.

[TRANSITION]

[CLOSE]

Closing thoughts shoutouts

[OUTRO AND CREDITS]

Show Plugs
Subscriptions:
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Email us at:
Comments@insightsintothings.com
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Hi-res videos on Youtube:
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Links to all these on the web Web:
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00:00:01:22 – 00:00:50:16
Michelle
Insightful podcasts by informative host insights into Things, a podcast network. Welcome to Insights into Teens, a podcast series exploring the issues and challenges of today’s youth. Your hosts are Joseph and Madison. Well, as a father and daughter team making their way through the challenges of the teenage years.

00:00:51:11 – 00:01:06:02
Joseph
Welcome to Insights into Teens. This is episode 162. Managing your emotional reactions. I’m your host, Joseph Whelan, and my calm and collected co-host, Madison Wayland.

00:01:06:07 – 00:01:06:27
Madison
Hi, everyone.

00:01:07:05 – 00:01:08:12
Joseph
How you doing today, Maddie?

00:01:08:23 – 00:01:10:04
Madison
I’m doing all right. How about you?

00:01:10:11 – 00:01:19:10
Joseph
Oh, I couldn’t complain. Well, I could, but nobody really wants to listen, so I won’t complain. Any exciting happened this week?

00:01:19:27 – 00:01:21:29
Madison
Not really. It’s the new marking period.

00:01:22:25 – 00:01:23:26
Joseph
That’s not very exciting.

00:01:24:02 – 00:01:25:29
Madison
Yeah, not really. I’m starting driver’s ed.

00:01:26:08 – 00:01:31:27
Joseph
That’s the terrifying. I’m not really sure it’ll be exciting, but, yeah.

00:01:32:01 – 00:01:33:17
Madison
It’s something that’s happening.

00:01:33:19 – 00:01:59:21
Joseph
Yeah, it’s funny. I had a conversation with a colleague at work today, and she told me that her daughter’s starting driver’s ed as well, and she’s about as equally as terrified, I think, as I am. So. And that’s not anything bad to say about you or her daughter. It’s just it’s kind of a big thing. So I’m sure you’ll do fine.

00:02:01:01 – 00:02:29:09
Joseph
But that is not what we’re talking about today. It’s not. Today we were talking about managing our emotional reactions and the fact that it’s a it’s vital to learn how to control our emotions instead of letting our emotions control us. Today’s episode of Insights into Teens, we will take a look at learning how to react well to emotions, understanding these emotions and how to control the emotions.

00:02:29:27 – 00:02:55:13
Joseph
But before we do that, I would like to take a moment to invite our listening and viewing audience to subscribe to the podcast. You can find audio versions of this podcast listed as insights in the teens. You can find video and audio versions of all of our podcasts listed as insights into things, and you can find them pretty much anywhere you get a podcast.

00:02:55:16 – 00:03:18:27
Joseph
Apple, Spotify, Google and so forth. I would also invite you to write in. Give us your feedback. You can email us at comments and insights into things that. You can hit us up on Twitter at insights, underscore things, or you can find links to that and everything else on our official website at WW w that insights into things.

00:03:19:07 – 00:03:24:04
Joseph
Dot com. Are we ready? Yes here we go.

00:03:28:02 – 00:03:50:18
Joseph
So we are dipping into the kids health dot org. Well once again for some words of wisdom on today’s topic they tell us that it’s Friday afternoon last period the weekend trip you plane with a friend starts out in exactly 4 hours. You’ve been catching up on studying and chores all week so you can enjoy the time away.

00:03:51:09 – 00:04:10:24
Joseph
And now the teacher announces a test on Monday. You probably feel annoyed or maybe just downright angry. You might feel disappointed. You might also feel pressured or stressed about all the studying you’ll have to do. But how do you react? What do you do and say?

00:04:11:22 – 00:04:35:18
Madison
You might want to jump up and yell the teacher. That’s no fair. Some of us have work and plans, but you know you need to keep your cool until class is over. Then show your feelings with your friend. But if you’re not the come. But what if you’re not the calm and collected type? Well, don’t worry. Everyone can develop the skill of responding well when emotions run high just takes a bit more practice for some people.

00:04:36:07 – 00:04:52:09
Joseph
So have you ever had a situation where something like that has happened, where you kind of have your own plans and something happens or somebody kind of throws a monkey wrench in the works there and and everything that you’ve been looking forward to kind of gets messed up.

00:04:52:26 – 00:05:37:07
Madison
Yeah, actually, more specifically, recent example in which we were planning on going out to Maryland for comic convention and my we had already our in history, we had taken a quiz. And what he does is he gives us back our quizzes for quiz corrections. And it was Friday and I wasn’t really expecting to have two or I think it was a long weekend, but I whatever the last day of school was, I wasn’t expecting to get our quizzes back for our quiz corrections because it was because he said he still had to have another student take the test and he wasn’t going to have the student take the test and he wasn’t going to give

00:05:37:07 – 00:06:04:05
Madison
it back. However, the student took the test because other people were pressuring him because they wanted to get the quiz corrections done. And it was due on Monday. So I was pretty pissed because like, because, well, I really I really didn’t want it to have to ruin the weekend we had planned, and I’d spent a decent amount of time doing it and what kind of grumpy about it.

00:06:04:13 – 00:06:21:00
Joseph
Okay, well, and I think that’s understandable. I think we’ve all kind of been put in positions like that in the past. How did you react to it? Did you react in class or did you just kind of bottle it up and and carry it with you into the weekend?

00:06:21:17 – 00:06:34:27
Madison
I really just followed it up. I’m not really the type to scream out unfairness I like kind of grumbled to myself at that point. And then when it was, you know, the weekend, I kind of felt miserable from it.

00:06:35:19 – 00:07:10:06
Joseph
Yeah. And that’s the thing. It kind of tends to drag you down at that point in time. I’m the type of person who I certainly could benefit from learning how to react better to things for the most part. From a professional standpoint, I’m okay, but we’ve not been very, very, you know, hesitant to discuss my tendency to get angry at inanimate objects when I don’t get things to work and I get frustrated.

00:07:10:21 – 00:07:29:24
Joseph
And that’s when I tend to have my emotions get the better of me. And I really need to learn how to do things better because it’s cost me, like literally cost me money because there have been times that I’ve been trying to do something or get something to work and I get so angry and I wind up breaking it and have to replace it.

00:07:30:23 – 00:07:57:22
Joseph
So learning to react well is kind of an important skill. Managing emotional reactions means choosing how and when to express the emotions we feel. People who do a good job of managing and managing emotions know that it’s healthy to express their feelings, but that it matters how and when they express them. Because of this, they’re able to react to situations in productive ways.

00:07:58:20 – 00:08:26:10
Joseph
They know they can choose the way they react instead of letting emotions influence them to do or say things they later regret. They have a sense of when it’s best to speak out and when it’s better to wait before acting on or reacting to what they feel. They know that their reaction influences what happens next, including how other people respond to them and the way they feel about themselves.

00:08:27:29 – 00:08:52:15
Madison
You’ve probably been in a situation where someone reacted in a way that was too emotional, making you cringe. I feel embarrassed for that person. You also might have been in a situation where your own emotions felt so strong that it could that it took all of your self-control, not to go down that path yourself. Maybe you can think of a time when you didn’t manage your reaction, perhaps anxiety, anger or frustration got the better of you.

00:08:52:20 – 00:09:00:22
Madison
It happens when it does. Forgive yourself and focus on what you could. You could have done better. Think about what you might do next time.

00:09:01:11 – 00:09:19:04
Joseph
Now, I would ask you at this point in time, have you ever seen a person who has had their emotions get the better of them? But you’ll look at me and you’ll probably come up with a half dozen instances right off the bat. So have you ever had have you ever experienced that type of thing with someone besides me?

00:09:19:04 – 00:09:52:11
Joseph
Because I know I’m a prime example of this bad habit where they’ve and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they flew off the handle or got angry. It could be someone who was overcome with grief or sorrow or anything where they couldn’t control their emotions. And it kind of put you in an awkward situation, being present for it. And if you can’t think of someone else, you can use me as an example.

00:09:52:11 – 00:10:21:15
Madison
Well, I’ve seen it with Mommy, too. She can get emotional at times. Well, I mean, there was the recent time, along with the previous example I had where I don’t think it was actually on her part, she she she just had an emotional reaction to something we said. And I don’t think it was necessarily her fault because she wasn’t necessarily in control.

00:10:21:15 – 00:10:43:07
Madison
But outside of that example, she’s had other points where she can like get mad at me and will yell at times. And I do the same to her sometimes. But, you know, we’ve worked on that. We talk about our differences afterwards. But yeah, there have been instances where she’s yelled at me and I kind of feel like backing off.

00:10:44:07 – 00:11:03:27
Joseph
So in situations like that, when that happens, how do you typically react? Is that something where you try to diffuse the situation? Do you sort of sit there and just sort of let the person vent? Do you try to take a more active role when that type of thing happens?

00:11:04:13 – 00:11:35:21
Madison
Oh, well, for my friends, if one of them ended up like letting some of their emotions go, I would kind of just sit back and, you know, show them that I’m listening. I might offer some advice occasionally, but half the time I kind of just let them let it out, because sometimes that’s all you really need. Other times when people are yelling at me, I kind of just still sit there and take it, or I just try to leave the situation because it makes me uncomfortable and I don’t really like it.

00:11:36:13 – 00:12:00:13
Joseph
Now, when you’re going through something like that where you’re emotional and you’ve kind of let your emotions get the best of you, how do you prefer people react to you and is it always a consistent reaction? You’re looking for good. I mean, obviously at the time you’re not thinking about it. It’s one of those after the moment type things that you reflect on them.

00:12:00:13 – 00:12:12:21
Joseph
But how would you prefer would you prefer people to leave you alone or snap you out of it or support you had? What’s your ideal reaction that you would like to see?

00:12:12:21 – 00:12:40:18
Madison
I guess it depends on the situation, really. Like if I need to vent stuff out to somebody, I would prefer them to kind of listen. I don’t really all the time need advice when it comes to it unless I specifically ask for it. So really, as long as they can just sit there and take it for a bit, I wouldn’t mind that in a situation, I don’t really know how I’d really picture a situation in which I actually got angry at somebody and kind of screamed at them.

00:12:40:18 – 00:12:52:04
Madison
But I guess I would want them to leave me alone at that point because I would want to be left alone and kind of just have some time to myself and to rethink everything.

00:12:52:15 – 00:13:10:06
Joseph
Okay, that makes sense. I mean, there’s different ways to approach different types of emotional states. So I think one of the keys to knowing how to react is understanding emotions. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that when we come back from our first break. All right.

00:13:10:06 – 00:13:47:14
Michelle
Insights into Teens, a podcast series exploring the issues and challenges of today’s youth. Talking to real teens about real teen problems, to explore issues from braces to puberty, social anxiety to financial responsibility. Each week we talk about the topics concerning today’s youth. We look at how the issues affect teens, how to cope with these issues and how parents, friends and loved ones can help teens handle these challenges.

00:13:47:14 – 00:14:07:01
Michelle
Check out our video episodes on YouTube.com backslash insights into things. Catch our audio versions on podcast are insights into teens. XCOM or on the web and insights into things. XCOM.

00:14:12:26 – 00:14:45:10
Madison
Welcome back to Insights into Teens. Today we’re talking about managing your emotional reactions, and now we’re going to talk about understanding emotions, the skills we use to manage our emotions and react well are part of a bigger group of emotional skills called Emotional Intelligence, or IQ, similar to IQ, which is a reflection of your in intelligence quotient. We discussed this topic in more detail in episode 161 of the podcast.

00:14:45:10 – 00:15:00:19
Madison
We promotion developing all the skills that make up emotional intelligence takes time and practice. People who react well are already good at some basic skills. But these skills and but these skills.

00:15:02:15 – 00:15:04:03
Joseph
Use your words, read the script.

00:15:05:09 – 00:15:26:15
Madison
But these are skills anyone can practice. So emotional awareness. This skill is all about being able to notice and identify the emotions we feel at any given moment. This is the most basic of the IQ skills. Sometimes just naming the emotion we feel can help us feel more in charge of our emotions.

00:15:27:17 – 00:15:54:12
Joseph
Understanding and accepting emotions is another skill you should learn. Understanding emotions means knowing why we feel the way we do. For example, we might say to ourselves, I feel left out and a little insecure because I didn’t get invited to the prom yet and two of my friends already did. It helps to view our emotions as understandable, given the situation we might think to ourselves.

00:15:54:12 – 00:16:12:12
Joseph
No wonder I feel left out. It’s natural to feel that way in this situation. It’s like giving ourselves a little kindness and understanding for the way we feel. This helps us accept our emotions. We know they’re reasonable and that it’s okay to feel whatever way we feel.

00:16:13:16 – 00:16:37:29
Madison
Accepting emotions means noticing, identifying and understanding our emotions without blaming others or judging ourselves for how we feel. It’s not helpful to tell ourselves that how we feel is someone else’s fault. It is also not good to judge our emotions and think I shouldn’t feel this way, or it’s awful that I feel this way. The goal is to acknowledge your feelings without letting them run away with you.

00:16:38:13 – 00:16:51:18
Madison
Once these basic skills feel natural, you’re more able to manage what you actually do when you feel strong emotions. Practicing the basic skills also will help you to get past difficult emotions faster.

00:16:52:06 – 00:17:19:12
Joseph
This kind of goes back to what we were talking about last week, about the fact that as much as we see emotions in positive and negative ways, emotions themselves don’t have intent. So the first thing to understanding emotions is that we’re susceptible to all emotions. But it’s important to understand what those emotions mean to us at that time.

00:17:20:05 – 00:17:48:03
Joseph
Anger can mean one thing when you’re talking to a friend and your friend says something mean and it can mean something completely different. If you see an injustice on the news that you think should be corrected. So understanding emotions is a lot about context as well. Can you do you have any examples of where an emotion might have two different meanings for you under different circumstances?

00:17:48:03 – 00:18:09:17
Madison
Hmm. I mean, the anger one’s pretty good because in a lot of cases I can feel angry about something my friend said or something that you guys might have done. And in other ways I would feel angry that there’s some type of injustice going on and I’d want to try to have the desire to fix it.

00:18:10:12 – 00:18:31:17
Joseph
So the kids that you hang out with, how would you grade them, let’s say, on a as a whole, you know, like we shouldn’t really stereotype people or stick everyone in the same box. But just for the sake of this discussion, on a scale of 1 to 10, where would you say the typically four on the emotional understanding scale as we described it here?

00:18:32:19 – 00:19:00:09
Madison
Well, the friends that I can talk to this about, I’d probably say seven out of ten. Okay. A lot of the times they can listen to me. And if I need to talk to them about something, I can adjust. Sometimes they give advice when I don’t really need them to, or they give advice that I don’t really think would really work and I know hasn’t worked.

00:19:01:09 – 00:19:06:00
Madison
So, you know, it’s iffy, but I can at least still talk to them about it.

00:19:06:00 – 00:19:30:29
Joseph
And of those friends, the ones that you’ve known, let’s say the longest, have you seen their emotional understanding and their emotional intelligence improve over the years, or are you really not seeing that level of and I don’t mean this in a derogatory term, but have you seen that maturity not progressed as much as you would have expected?

00:19:31:15 – 00:19:49:28
Madison
Yeah, And some of my younger friends who I’ve known for longer, surprisingly in some cases they have some of them have gotten, you know, better with their emotional control. And I’ve noticed that some of them have also gotten worse with it.

00:19:50:16 – 00:20:08:17
Joseph
Okay. And it happens. You know, we all go through phases in life. We all go through different rates of maturity in life. So that’s not that that unexpected. Where would you grade your own level of emotional understanding on that scale of 1 to 10?

00:20:09:16 – 00:20:20:02
Madison
Um hmm. I’d say maybe five.

00:20:20:24 – 00:20:21:09
Joseph
Okay.

00:20:21:18 – 00:20:23:21
Madison
Not really grade, but not all that bad.

00:20:24:15 – 00:20:52:21
Joseph
And I think that’s middle of the road. And I think for someone your age, that’s probably where you’re expected to be. You know, I’m, I’m significantly older than you, and I would rate myself probably a seven, maybe an eight, depending on the people that I’m around. That emotional understanding is subjective as well. It’s based on the situation you’re in.

00:20:53:09 – 00:21:29:25
Joseph
It’s based on the people that you are conversing with. Like, I’m far better at emotional understanding with you and Mommy than I am with people that works. People that work. I’ll think they’re feeling one thing and being completely wrong. And it’s caused situations for me where misunderstanding what others emotional states are and their reaction to things has caused me to say things that I don’t want to say got me in trouble.

00:21:29:25 – 00:22:05:00
Joseph
But it certainly didn’t help the situation. Like if you think someone responds to you in a lighthearted, joking way and you respond in turn and it turns out they were deadly serious, you kind of come across as a, I don’t know, not very professional in that type of environment. Have you run into situations like that where you’ve misjudged your understanding of somebody else’s emotions and it may not have ended as smoothly as you would have liked it to?

00:22:05:00 – 00:22:25:06
Madison
I’ve had fights with friends over that kind of stuff. They weren’t all that serious, but I have had experiences with that and I think that ends up kind of leading me down the path of just not responding Half the time. It’s like, you know, I just let them know I’m listening if they need to talk to me and I let them know of, Hey, if there is anything up, just let me know.

00:22:25:17 – 00:22:48:22
Madison
I don’t really try to joke around. I, I can somewhat read people, but at the same time, like, I don’t really try to anymore. It’s like sometimes if I can tell my friend is there’s something up with my friend, I may not say something directly. I would just kind of like you know, see how they’re doing and, you know, just kind of ask like smaller questions.

00:22:48:22 – 00:22:53:11
Madison
And if I don’t think that they would really want to talk to me, then I kind of stop talking.

00:22:53:11 – 00:23:21:00
Joseph
Okay? And then I think that’s kind of a natural reaction to it. Now, when you find yourself failing to manage your emotional reaction to things and you’re around other people, does their reaction help you to better regulate or to kind of use them as a mirror to step back and take a look at yourself and realize you may be losing control of your emotions there?

00:23:21:16 – 00:23:51:00
Joseph
Or when it happens to you? Are you oblivious? Like for me, when I’m trying to fix something and it’s I’m just angry at it. It takes a lot of external stimuli for me to kind of take that step back and realize, All right, I’m being irrational at this point in time and I need to calm down. What kind of what kind of reaction does that have to you when you see how other people react to your emotional issue?

00:23:51:15 – 00:24:20:20
Madison
Well, I think the whole what started me down the path of really not trying to burst out at people is really their reactions to whenever I get like really angry, like a lot of like one time I ended up lashing out at a teacher and I got in trouble kind of for it. And then I realized that it hurt my relationships with my friends and I realized how it affected you and Mommy when I would lash out at you.

00:24:20:20 – 00:24:38:21
Madison
So the reactions normally bring me back to reality, and it’s stopped me from really trying to well, it started me down the path. It started me down the path of controlling my emotions. But it’s also gotten to the point where I just never say anything to anybody unless I feel like I can trust them.

00:24:39:18 – 00:25:23:01
Joseph
Well, that’s kind of an extreme degree to take it, too. But I think your arrival at that extreme reaction is really what the definition of emotional understanding is. You know, whether or not you’re causing an emotional reaction in someone or something else is in this case, you’re the one causing me reaction because of your outburst will say. But you’re able to read that on other people and then have that influence your reaction at that point in time.

00:25:24:01 – 00:25:50:19
Joseph
So that ability for you to understand emotions in others helps you to regulate your own emotional reaction. It’s a kind of it’s kind of a, you know, cycle that feeds on itself at that point in time. Once you’re able to understand those emotional reactions. Well, we’re going to take another break and we’re going to come back and we’re going to do a little what would you do to keep the discussion?

00:25:50:19 – 00:26:00:13
Joseph
We’ll be right back.

00:26:00:13 – 00:26:31:15
Michelle
Insights into entertainment, a podcast series, taking a deeper look into entertainment and media. Our husband and wife team of pop culture fanatics are exploring all things from music and movies to television and fandom. We’ll look at the interesting and obscure entertainment news of the week. We’ll talk about theme park and pop culture news. We’ll give you the latest and greatest on pop culture conventions.

00:26:32:14 – 00:27:03:11
Michelle
We’ll give you a deep dive into Disney, Star Wars and much more. Check out our video episodes at YouTube.com backslash insights into things, our audio episodes and podcast insights into entertainment dot com or check us out on the web at insights into things com.

00:27:03:11 – 00:27:37:00
Joseph
So what would you do in certain situations emotionally? So imagine this situation your friends have received in this case will say college acceptance to a school that you’ve been trying to get into, but you have it once you identify, understand and accept how you feel, how might you react? Would you look unhappy when you’re around your friends? Hoping they’ll ask you What’s wrong?

00:27:37:25 – 00:28:01:05
Joseph
Would you gossip about people who already have been accepted to the school and say that you don’t want to go to the school anymore? Would you confide in a friend that you feel bad about not getting into that school, but you’d still be friends with them? Or would you remind yourself that it’s not the end of the world and decide to give another school a try?

00:28:01:05 – 00:28:06:08
Joseph
Some other time? Which of these would your reaction be in this situation?

00:28:07:15 – 00:28:08:20
Madison
Probably the last one.

00:28:09:01 – 00:28:12:00
Joseph
Okay. So you’d be rational about it.

00:28:12:00 – 00:28:46:15
Madison
Probably again, with the idea that I really don’t know what school I’m going through just yet, I definitely think that that would probably be my best reaction. I’m not the type to really gossip about it and I wouldn’t like deny it necessarily. I wouldn’t really purposely try to look unhappy. It might happen because, you know, I don’t control my face all that often, but I wouldn’t like try to do it in hopes that they’d ask.

00:28:46:15 – 00:28:48:05
Madison
So yeah for would probably be.

00:28:48:22 – 00:29:03:07
Joseph
So So in which reaction which of those four reactions do you think would lead to the best outcome in this given situation?

00:29:03:07 – 00:29:04:09
Madison
Probably four three.

00:29:04:23 – 00:29:18:02
Joseph
Okay. Now how do you honestly think now that’s how you’d want to react? How do you honestly think you would react in this situation?

00:29:18:02 – 00:29:19:28
Madison
Probably three, probably three.

00:29:21:11 – 00:29:25:11
Joseph
So you would you would confide in a friend. Then at that point?

00:29:25:11 – 00:29:25:22
Madison
Yeah.

00:29:26:01 – 00:29:54:07
Joseph
Okay. I think that’s fair. So once we we always have a choice about how we react to situations. And I think it’s important that we realize that and that it’s once we realize it, it’s easier to make choices that’ll work out well, why don’t you take it from there?

00:29:54:07 – 00:30:06:04
Madison
Learning to react well takes practice. Well, we all can get better at taking emotional situations in stride and expressing emotions in healthy ways. And that’s something to feel good about.

00:30:06:24 – 00:30:37:29
Joseph
So do you ever have an opportunity to sort of practice like one of the things that that I’ll do and I don’t know if it’s really healthy, to be honest with you, but if somebody says something to me at work and I don’t get a chance to react, I’ll, I don’t want to say do on it, but I’ll think about it and I’ll play through scenarios of how I’d react or what I’d say or what the tone of my voice would be.

00:30:38:11 – 00:30:49:22
Joseph
And I kind of play act in my head. How I’m going to react to these types of things. Do you do anything like that to try to coach yourself into how you’re going to react to things?

00:30:50:11 – 00:31:11:28
Madison
Yeah, actually I do that a lot. Most of the time. I tend to my imagination tends to take it a little too far to the point where like a situation would probably never happen. I take it to like the extreme of it, but like, sometimes it’s more rational. Other times I don’t think it would ever happen.

00:31:12:15 – 00:31:31:15
Joseph
So that’s a good point though, to to recognize that Now, when you take it to the extreme, do you realize you’re taking it to an extreme and realize that, well, either this will never happen this way or this probably shouldn’t happen this way? And does it influence how you actually react to it?

00:31:33:11 – 00:31:53:09
Madison
Well, sometimes I kind of like going to a loophole where, like, I keep thinking about everything that could go wrong and I continue to play this thing out and then I stop myself at some point and realize, wait a minute, this would never happen. Why? Why am I still thinking about this? And then that’s like, I mean, it prepares me for, you know, knowing that, hey, this probably will never happen.

00:31:53:09 – 00:31:54:13
Madison
So don’t think about that.

00:31:55:06 – 00:32:25:13
Joseph
And, you know, it’s interesting you put it that way. Years ago, I used to work in emergency management. You know, the guys when there’s a hurricane and they come in and they coordinate things and whatever. One of the things that the training of that job taught me was preparation and planning and scenarios. And there was a lot of unlikely scenarios that we had to account for so that we had a plan for everything.

00:32:25:29 – 00:32:48:25
Joseph
You didn’t have a Plan A and a plan B, We had plans for every letter of the alphabet for the stuff that we had to do and to come up with those plans. We had to sometimes think of crazy things. You know, I lived in a small town and that town was bordered by a county road and then a popular local road.

00:32:49:15 – 00:33:25:01
Joseph
And one of the things we had to consider was, okay, occasionally we’ll get tractor trailers that drive down that county road. Well, what if something’s, you know, hauling toxic waste and it gets into an accident and it flipped over and we have a spill now, there had never been anything like that in the 80 years, 90 years the town existed, but we had to plan for it and we could do that planning because of the the scenarios, the crazy scenarios we came up with.

00:33:25:27 – 00:34:06:21
Joseph
But that prepared us for a whole nother scenario that actually does occur later on. When there was there was a accident and a tractor trailer flipped over. But my point is, is that going down that path and doing those exercises, even if they were just flat out unlikely, never to happen, and they’re totally crazy in your mind, the ability that you the fact that you recognize the unlikelihood or the fact that you recognize the unhealthy ness of what you’re thinking, these are all things that help you to mature emotionally.

00:34:08:12 – 00:34:30:01
Joseph
If you were to go down that path and ultimately lead to something that was crazy and you didn’t realize that it was completely off the wall, then you’re showing a lack of emotional maturity. Where have you done this and had scenarios that you’ve thought through actually come to pass where they’ve actually helped you out?

00:34:31:17 – 00:34:47:16
Madison
I don’t think any of the extreme scenarios I’ve ever thought about ended up actually happening in real life from what I know, because again, they get really extreme and dark really fast. So I don’t think any of them ever come true. And honestly, I’m grateful for that.

00:34:47:19 – 00:34:58:16
Joseph
Well, and have any of those scenarios maybe stopped you from going down something that might not have been as extreme but could have been negative, a negative outcome for you?

00:34:59:14 – 00:35:14:00
Madison
Yeah, I’d say so. There have definitely been instances where a lot of the times something bad that happened was from my own choices and it kind of stopped me from doing things that I felt like would not help me at all. So yeah, that’s good.

00:35:14:00 – 00:35:37:20
Joseph
That’s a good example of how to control your emotions. So the next time you’re faced with a situation that elicits strong feelings from you, pause to consider what meaning you’re going to attach to it. You can develop emotional control by using one of the following tactics. You can take a deep breath instead of reacting right away, whether positively or negatively.

00:35:38:09 – 00:35:41:20
Joseph
Give yourself a moment to process what just happened.

00:35:42:09 – 00:35:55:24
Madison
You can also find out what you’re feeling. It’s easy to say I’m feeling angry because they hurt me. Dig deeper. Are you angry because you’re afraid? They’re right. Are you sad Emotions are complex and often piggyback on to one another.

00:35:56:24 – 00:36:17:29
Joseph
It’s important. And this is this you kind of touched on. This is to replace negative thoughts. If your mind goes straight to how you’ve been wronged or how terrible everything is, divert yourself. Dwelling on negativity will only make you more prone to it. So focus on positive emotions. Change your thoughts and change your story.

00:36:19:00 – 00:36:29:20
Madison
You can also channel your energy, human emotions are incredibly powerful. Let that energy go by participating in some sort of physical activity, like going for a walk.

00:36:30:27 – 00:37:06:01
Joseph
And explore your emotions which again, you obviously didn’t with some of these scenarios that you walk through. Why do you feel the way you do journaling or talking with a trusted friend or family member can help you understand why you’re feeling what you do. Once you understand that emotion, it’s that much easier to control it. And I think that’s really the biggest lesson to take away from here, is emotions can be very overwhelming for us a lot of times until you recognize them, you can’t control it.

00:37:06:11 – 00:37:33:19
Joseph
And a lot of people tend to be overwhelmed and kind of just go with the flow. But it’s okay to explore your emotions. You know, we’ve talked in the past about labeling them, if you can, if you feel a certain way and you can name it and you can describe it and you can talk about why you feel that way, that gives you control of that emotion at that point in time and that allows you to explore it.

00:37:34:23 – 00:37:42:27
Joseph
Have you felt a situation where you’ve been overwhelmed and you’ve tried any of these techniques in the past?

00:37:42:27 – 00:37:54:12
Madison
Well, I’ve definitely done that, taking a deep breath one, especially when I’m having a breakdown, because in a lot of cases, especially whenever you’re around, you always tell me to take a step back.

00:37:54:13 – 00:37:56:02
Joseph
Oh, I thought that was what was causing the bad.

00:37:56:05 – 00:38:21:10
Madison
No, no, no, no. You’re good. But yeah, you’re like, especially if I’m like, stress on a project. You tell me. Hey, let it go. Take a deep breath, Relax. And that’s like the first step we take whenever I have a breakdown, I’ll find out the feeling. I probably don’t go as in depth of my feelings. I kind of just say I’m stressed, I’m angry, I’m sad.

00:38:21:21 – 00:38:22:25
Joseph
Yep. You’re very good at that.

00:38:23:01 – 00:38:37:17
Madison
Or I just don’t say anything at all. It’s like, I don’t know. I genuinely have no idea why I’m doing this. Replacing negative thoughts. That’s a hard one. But I got cats for that.

00:38:37:29 – 00:38:58:13
Joseph
Well, and I think, you know, the way you described how when you go down that thought process, the thought experiments will say and and they turn dark, you recognize that you may not be actively replacing those negative thoughts, but recognizing them, I think, is the is the most important step there.

00:38:58:29 – 00:39:12:26
Madison
To then channeling my energy. I do some physical activities beat saber and just dance were stuff that I did that ended up helping a lot.

00:39:13:19 – 00:39:32:13
Joseph
So I think you channel your energies in the creativity. MM You know, you’ll, you’ll pour yourself into a drawing that you’re doing or some other creative project that gives you that focus that you need to kind of shut the rest of the world out and allows you to just sort of focus on something in and clear your thoughts.

00:39:32:19 – 00:39:33:18
Madison
Or video games.

00:39:33:23 – 00:39:35:15
Joseph
Or video games, you know.

00:39:36:01 – 00:39:48:27
Madison
And then exploring my emotions. I don’t really do journaling, but I do talk with friends and family. I don’t explore it as much. But, you know.

00:39:49:21 – 00:40:14:02
Joseph
It’s it’s an area that we can maybe expound on to help you get through some of those things, But you’re having fewer and fewer situations where you have to deal with that, though. So your emotional maturity level is different, improving with each of these. And I think that’s the important thing. Everything that you every time you have an emotional outbreak and you get over it, that’s a step forward.

00:40:14:02 – 00:40:22:25
Joseph
So that was all we had from a power excuse me, content standpoint. We’ll take a quick break, come back and get your final thoughts.

00:40:22:28 – 00:40:54:09
Madison
All right. All right. So to everybody out there, I just want to say that managing your emotions is something everybody can do, but it doesn’t come as easily to some people. Some people could be really great at this and other people would probably need a bit more practice. But know that there’s always ways that you can improve. And if you can take some of the steps we’ve started here, help you, then you know, that’s great.

00:40:54:10 – 00:41:03:13
Madison
Do some more research on your own and you know, see what you can do to get manage your emotional reactions.

00:41:03:29 – 00:41:28:28
Joseph
All right. Sage advice, as always. Before we do go, I would like to once again invite you to subscribe to the podcast. You can find audio versions of this podcast listed as insights in the teens. Video in audio versions of the podcast can be found listed as insights into things you can find us on Pandora, Castro, Stitcher anywhere you get a podcast.

00:41:30:19 – 00:41:53:27
Joseph
I would also invite you to subscribe or not subscribe, but if you haven’t, just subscribe again because you know you can do that twice. We have two different ones you can subscribe to, but I would invite you to provide some feedback. We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we’re doing, your suggestions on show topics. You can email us at comments and insights into things that come.

00:41:53:27 – 00:42:22:14
Joseph
You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash Insights into Things podcast. You can find us on Instagram and Instagram dot com slash insights into things. We do stream five days a week both on Twitch and on YouTube. Twitch you can find us at Twitch that TV slash insights into things where you can find links to all that and more on our official website and insights into things dot com and you.

00:42:22:23 – 00:42:34:16
Madison
And don’t forget to check out our other two podcasts Insight and entertainment usually hosted by you and Mommy and Argentina tomorrow are not really a monthly podcast anymore hosted by you and my brother Sam half the time.

00:42:34:22 – 00:42:42:19
Joseph
Okay, well, if that’s not going to convince you to watch the I don’t know what that’s it. Another one of the.

00:42:42:19 – 00:42:43:26
Madison
Books by everyone.

00:42:43:29 – 00:43:10:10
Joseph
By.