Ready for Anything by Samantha Boardman

Author:Samantha Boardman [Boardman, Dr Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241292242
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Expand Your Vocabulary

Understanding why he had so assiduously avoided discomfort was an interesting insight for Mike, but he cared more about learning how to become more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Expanding his emotional vocabulary was a good place to start. When something was bothering him, I pressed him to be more precise about what he was feeling, instead of habitually rationalizing or avoiding. Labeling his emotions helped him feel more empowered to deal with them. For instance, during one of our next sessions, Mike mentioned his ex-girlfriend had sent him a text to ask if he could leave the pair of sneakers she had left at his house with her super so she could pick them up.

“It’s just annoying,” he remarked.

I encouraged him to be more specific. “The text stings because it feels so final,” he explained. “Having those sneakers in the closet made me feel connected to her. They always gave me a little bit of hope that we would get back together. I have been hanging on to this fantasy that we would meet up for coffee so I could return the sneakers. Then we would have this great conversation, and I would tell her that I’m in therapy and working on my issues. I hoped she would agree to give our relationship another chance. This text extinguishes all of that.” By putting his feelings into words, he was able to articulate precisely what he hoped for. It also gave him the courage to text her to suggest they meet for coffee.

The next time you find yourself feeling down, be as specific about the reasons for your state of mind as possible. Do you feel frustrated? Disheartened? Despondent? Exasperated? Instead of resigning yourself to a generalized negative mood, try to identify your emotions. Distressing feelings are less likely to dominate your attention and dictate how you behave if you can label them.6

Pinpointing what it is that’s upsetting you empowers you to seek a solution and to tailor a response. For example, recognizing that you are feeling dismissed by a colleague might prompt you to speak to the manager or perhaps go for a walk outside. Simply feeling “bad” about work doesn’t provide you with any useful or actionable information, but hovers over you like a cloud and can easily rain on other aspects of your life. Nebulous feelings might manifest later as irritation with your partner or impatience with your child.7 Identifying what upset you and putting a name on the emotion is like sealing off a crime scene with police tape. A clearly demarcated problem is less likely to become an emotional boomerang.

We’re taught to consider emotions and moods as binary: you’re happy or sad, calm or anxious. Ask your friends, “How was your day?” or “How are you?” and they’ll probably answer along positive or negative lines. There is value in recognizing that far more nuance exists in emotional states than we often allow for, and that negative and positive emotions can coexist. Evidence suggests that

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