There are the good manageable emotions like the love you feel when you see your significant other or a piece of avocado toast. Then there are the really difficult to manage emotions such as the rage you feel when someone takes your piece of avocado toast. A prevailing belief is that you only have two options in dealing with such baddy emotions: either confront them head on immediately or avoid them so that they come out later in some unexpected Anakin Skywalker-Hulk-Carrie type of way. But Ethan Kross, PhD, a professor of psychology and management/organizations at the University of Michigan, suggests shifting away from this all-or-none thinking in his new book Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don’t Manage You.
The book covers different ways you can shift the impact of your emotions and what you end up feeling, hence the title. This lays out a more flexible middle ground between the avoidance versus fully process as soon as possible extremes. Kross knows a thing or two about emotions and self-control as he is the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan and has been studying such things over the past two decades.
“You hear that you immediately have to face your fears and that avoidance is toxic,” Kross explained to me. “While chronically avoiding something is not good, being flexible with your attention, for example, can be useful.”
Attention Shifters
This brings up one type of shifting: attention shifting. As Kross indicated, this is about “the spotlight in your mind and where do you point it towards.” So rather than immediately and constantly dealing with an emotion, not resting until it is fully processed, it may be better at times to shift attention away from such a problem, “to give time for things to calm down while strategically deploying our attention,” in the words of Kross.
Kross mentioned how diverting or distracting yourself here and there from dealing with the emotion can be a useful strategy as long as we eventually get back to dealing with it. “Where we point our attention can powerfully drive or diminish our emotions,” he said. “Sometimes we need to go back and forth before the problem is gone.”
This does make sense. Imagine yourself playing professional football. Going all out and constantly playing at a full sprint would probably not be a wise strategy. Instead, varying your effort and taking periodic breaks can offer adequate rest and allow you to gain new perspective and tackle opponents in different ways.
Perspective Shifters
Speaking of perspective, Kross then moved to another set of shifters, perspective shifters. In this case, perspective is how you view the problem and situation. “A key to helping people reframe a situation is to shift perspective, give them distance,” Kross emphasized. “People can focus narrowly on the aversiveness of what’s happening.”
Now, Kross admitted, “This is “easier f—ing said than done.” He mentioned Solomon’s paradox, named after the fact that King Solomon could deliver great wisdom to others while failing to get his own personal life in order. But Kross did offer some specific ways to change perspective, such as “mental time travel. How am I going to feel about that next week?” Another possibility, “When in the midst of an emotional experience, turn the volume down. Things could be worse.” Then there’s the shifting language possibility. “When in another language, it doesn’t have the same effect as when in the native language,” said Kross. “It’s the foreign language effect.” This may be yet another reason to take those Silbo Gomero language classes that you’ve always been wanting to take.
Sensory Shifters
It also helps to get a better sense of what your senses are taking in as “senses are powerful emotion regulation shifters,” according to Kross. “Scientists asked several hundred individuals, why you listen to music,” Kross related. “And many responded, ‘I like the way it makes me feel,’ as the links between sensation and emotion are strong.”
Therefore, you can change how you are feeling by changing the types of sensory inputs you are receiving. Say, for example, the Hanson song “MMMBop” really speaks to who you are. Then playing that song can help you feel more whole. Kross cautioned that the effects “tend to be fleeting,” though. There are only so many times you can keep playing MMMBop on loop. Plus, “sensory shifters can be potent, so potent that people can use this tool to detriment,” Kross warned. “Risky sexual behaviors and emotional eating are two such examples.”
Space Shifters
Your physical environment certainly can provide many different sensory inputs. But there’s more to physical space than just that. “Physical spaces can play a powerful role in impacting how we feel,” Kross explained. “Going somewhere new can literally give us distance from our problems.” Therefore, one way of space shifting is to take a trip.
It may not be the most practical thing to go on vacation whenever you encounter a negative emotion. Fortunately, space shifting doesn’t necessarily mean having to completely get away from your present locations. “There are ways of interacting with local environment differently,” Kross emphasized. “ You can modify your space, apply small shifts to your physical surroundings.” This can include removing the cues that lead to negative emotions and putting in cues that activate the emotions that you want to have.
One example offered by Kross is showing photos of pleasant experiences after you’ve had a painful experience. Another example is turning down your darn smartphone. You don’t need to hear and see all those notifications from your smartphone every time a celebrity chooses to wear a new outfit. It can help to make your surroundings more peaceful and comforting. “In the same way we attach to people, we attach to places in our environment,” Kross related. “We can have an oasis to go to when struggling.”
People Shifters
Speaking of people, people can be great, except when they really suck. “People can make you feel better or worse,” Kross emphasized. “How you talk to other people about your problems is important. Venting can be useful to strengthen bonds but it can lead to co-ruminations.”
In other words, will talking to others help you let go of negative emotions or instead cause you to dwell even more on the inciting problems? The latter issue is a common problem with talking about politics, where a constant cycle of complaints never leads to much action. Therefore, as Kross urged, “Determine who in your network is a good emotional advisor. Who will first listen and empathize, and then work with you to broaden your perspective.”
Oh, and you know that standard advice to not compare yourself with other people that you may frequently hear? Well, Kross calls it “some of the worst advice. We are a social species, there’s no getting around that. When we are not sure where we stand, we suss that out.”
Telling people to not compare themselves with others can be a bit like telling telling a football player running onto a field to not pay attention to the opponents or teammates. Instead of avoiding comparisons, Kross suggested, “Reframing comparisons. When comparing yourself to people to who are more successful, think ‘If they can do it, I can do it.’” Similarly, when comparing yourself to people who are supposedly “beneath” you, think, “If that happened to them that can happen to me.” This can motivate you to help them. “It feels good to help other people,” Kross emphasized. “Doing good deeds gives people a larger boost in positivity. A win-win all around.”
Culture Shifters
Yes, helping each other can establish a good culture, which brings us to one more type of shifter: culture shifters. “Culture is the air we breathe,” said Kross. “If it is all around us, we consume a culture that is promoting certain emotional states.” He described how the prevailing culture in a social circle or organization will have norms that reinforce certain values and belief. These values and beliefs may or may not value emotional regulation and mental fitness.
Of course, shifting the culture around you may not be the easiest of tasks. “Clearly people at the top are in a position to shift culture,” said Kross. “There are always movements to shift the culture from the bottom up.” But such movement can go bottoms-up when not enough people cooperate.
Just because such movements fail doesn’t mean that you have no control, though. One possibility is to identify or form a micro-culture that works better for you within the organization or social circle. And if you can’t seem to grow that possibility, there’s the make like a tree and leave option. “If a culture isn’t working for you, you can always leave that culture,” Kross advised. “Toxic cultures can have significant effects.”
Different Shifters Work Better For Different People
Kross described the various shifters as tools that people can use just like “a carpenter showing up for a job. Different combinations of tools, work for different different people,” Kross said. “You have to believe that you can manage your emotions, motivated to managing feelings and what happens next.” He emphasized that while you can’t control some parts of the emotional experience like an emotional trigger, you can control what comes afterwards. “I can’t determine for example when a cockroach will cross my desk,” Kross related. “The subsequent trajectory is different and more under your control. You have to think, ‘Welcome to the playground.’”
So, the use of shifters itself requires a shift, a shift from believing that you have no control over your emotions to being more of a boss over how you feel. In other words, when you find yourself in a difficult situation emotionally, you may want to get your shift together.
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