How Do You Develop into an Emotionally Strong Person?

What have you been taught about emotional strength and weakness? Do any of the following comments sound familiar to you?

Tearfulness and crying make you look weak. Tough it out. Buck up. Get over it. Will it away. Snap out of it. Do it yourself. Don’t be such a baby. Don’t show your soft side. You’re not feeling that way. That’s not like you. You create your own success. Don’t even think of asking for help. Tender emotions are a sign of weakness. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Do you want help? You have a hand at the end of each arm.

These are the type of long-held, common, yet damaging views of what it means to be emotionally strong or weak that are often expressed by my clients. While there is a possibility the statements were helpful in the short-term, these clichés sustain views of emotional strength that are generally hurtful in the long-term to the individuals who abide by them. I have an entirely different view of what it takes to be emotionally strong. I’ve defined emotional strength; what follows is the first part of my definition – that of being capable; the second, being resourceful will follow in the next post.

Emotional Strength Defined: Being Capable

Though it may seem obvious, many people maintain a faulty perception regarding emotional strength; they believe being emotionally strong means controlling, shutting down, or shutting out thoughts, feelings, needs, and perceptions – in other words, dismissing what you know. When you distract yourself by shutting out what you experience, you can no longer use the emotional reactions (particularly unpleasant feelings) that evolved to protect you or help you discern with whom to connect.

Shutting down in this way actually leaves you feeling weaker and more exposed. This “emotional weakness” – or, rather, vulnerability – is experienced even more intensely when you avoid, suppress, disconnect, or distract from your everyday, in-the-moment reactions to life. Such disconnection is “trying not to know what you know” and is directly related to avoiding these difficult feelings instead of making the choice to stay present to your moment-to-moment experiences.

How, then, do you develop into an emotionally stronger and more capable person?

As paradoxical as it seems, the answer is tied to your capacity to tolerate pain – or your capacity to handle unpleasant feelings. The more you are able to face the pain you experience, the more capable you become.

The first aspect of emotional strength means believing you are capable. Being capable of facing life’s challenges emerges out of your experience of effectively handling eight unpleasant feelings (sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, and vulnerability). These are the most common, everyday, spontaneous feeling reactions to things not turning out the way you need or want, a theme I’ll return to in later posts.

It’s entirely internal – you deal with your own emotional experience on your own emotional terms. When you stay aware of and attuned to your experience (“know what you know”), you consistently feel more empowered and more willing to take risks in all areas of your life.

As soon as you increase your awareness and acceptance of the full range of your feelings – pleasant and unpleasant – your experience of yourself starts to change. Once you are able to tolerate unpleasant feelings, everything else changes, too. You’ll feel stronger and more empowered and there is an almost immediate experience of growth, movement, and momentum.

Why is this so important? Because when you worry about or refuse to take risks, no matter what they are, you are actually less afraid of the risk itself than of the unpleasant feelings that might result if things don’t turn out the way you want. Your sense of feeling capable in the world, then, is directly tied to your ability to experience and move through the eight difficult feelings.

As you heighten your self-awareness, you will likely find you develop a greater capacity to tolerate, face, know, bear, feel, embrace, and express as much of your moment-to-moment experience as possible. Typically, the greater your self-awareness and willingness to stay present to your experience, the more capable you become in negotiating all aspects of life.