Emotion Management Group

The core value of the emotion management group has never been to teach you to suppress negative emotions and be a permanently "emotionally stable" adult, but to help you find your own feasible path to peacefully coexist with various emotions in a safe co-frequency field - there is never a standard answer, and even the definition of "effective" varies from person to person.

Last year, as an assistant consultant, I attended three offline groups. The most contrasting example I saw was a post-95s girl who worked in Internet operations. When she came for the first time, she had three or four Internet celebrity emotion management books in her bag. Her first sentence was, "I have been practicing deep breathing and counting for 10 seconds for half a month. How can I still get angry when connecting with customers? Am I too weak in self-control?" ”In the first three visits, she cried every time she talked about work. She said that every time she got angry and turned around, she would slap her arm, thinking, "If I can't even manage my emotions, what else can I accomplish?"

The emotion management teams currently on the market actually take two completely different technical routes, and controversy has never stopped. The first category is Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)-oriented and has very strong tool properties. When you come in, you will be given an emotion record sheet to teach you how to use the ABC theory to dismantle each emotional fluctuation: what is the triggering event, what is your subconscious belief, and what is the final emotional result, step by step to remove the irrational beliefs in your cognition. Some people complain that this kind of group is too much like a logic class, and they have to fill out a form even when they are angry, which is too cold. However, a male programmer team member I met was particularly fond of this method. Every time he filled in his anger in the form and dissected it to the end, he found that it was not the need for product changes at all, but the other party only said it 10 minutes before getting off work every time, delaying him to go home to feed the cat. Later, he directly set a rule with the product to "synchronize the change requirements 24 hours in advance", which solved most of the emotional problems that had troubled him for more than half a year.

The other type is a humanistic-oriented group, which does not give you any tools in the whole process, and no one will teach you "what to do". There is only one rule: no judgment, no suggestion, only feedback on your current state. Many people call this kind of group a "useless group chatting game." They sit for two hours and listen to people cry, but they can't solve any practical problems. But there is a female junior high school teacher who leads a graduating class. She was so stressed that she had hyperthyroidism and took sleeping pills for three months in a row before she could fall asleep. She went to this group for eight weeks in a row. When the group was finally formed, she said that she had never been so relaxed anywhere else in her life - she had to be an emotionally stable person in school. Teacher, in front of your parents, you should be a sensible daughter who doesn’t need to be worried about. Only in the group, when she cries until her nose runs, no one will hand her a tissue and say, "You have to be strong." Some will only say softly, "My voice was shaking when I heard what you just said, maybe you have accumulated too many grievances." She doesn't need to change any work habits, she just has two hours a week to be her "unconscious self" and her insomnia problem will be solved without her realizing it.

I have also encountered people asking before, which group is the right one to choose? In fact, there is nothing right or wrong at all. I have seen some people find it too stiff after sitting in a CBT group for half an hour, and then go to a humanistic group for half a year. Others feel that the humanistic atmosphere is too boring, so they took the CBT emotion record sheet home and filled it out themselves, and the results were very good. There was even a group activity that almost got into a quarrel. Two group members had completely different views on "should you forgive the leader who once cheated on you?" and they slapped the table in front of everyone. The leader did not break up the argument. He waited until both people calmed down before asking, how did they feel when they slapped the table just now? One said, "The anger I had been holding in for half a year finally came out, and it felt so good." The other said, "This is the first time in my 30 years of life that I dared to choke on someone. After what I just said, I wasn't afraid at all." After that time, the two became friends and even made an appointment to eat hot pot together.

To be honest, too many people have misunderstandings about the four words of emotional management. They think that success must be achieved without expressing emotions and anger. The purpose of joining a group is to learn "how not to be angry." But what left the deepest impression on me after following so many groups was the operation girl who cried every time at the beginning. The last time she shared, she held up a glass of iced milk tea and laughed. She said that last week she met a customer who was deliberately looking for trouble. She still exploded on the spot. Before, she would have felt guilty all night. As a result, after the attack that day, she turned around and went downstairs to buy a cup of iced milk tea with double taro paste. After shopping for half an hour, she completely forgot about it.

You see, in fact, you don’t have to treat your emotions like a scourge, and you don’t have to force yourself to be an “emotionally stable adult.” The best thing an emotion management group can give you is never some tried-and-true control technique, but rather, it allows you to slowly admit: I just get angry, feel aggrieved, and shed tears for no apparent reason. There is no shame in this at all. And you can always find a way that suits you to catch these emotions steadily without forcing yourself to carry them.