The Consequences of Emotional Incontinence

Many of us have the utmost respect for feelings. When making big decisions, follow your gut. Emotional? Don't bottle it up; talk about it. Pay attention to your inner life: Focus on your feelings, take them seriously, work them through, think about what they mean. But this uncritical devotion to feelings is not always healthy. For one thing, even if you don’t bother others with it, all that attention to your inner feelings typically does not promote self-knowledge—especially not when you tend to analyze your feelings and think about why you feel the way you do.

In fact, thinking too much about your feelings has mainly disadvantages. Being preoccupied with yourself, you will tend to relate things too much to yourself. What hypochondriacs have with physical complaints, always being preoccupied with possible ailments, can also develop with feelings. Because you focus so much attention on them, you will often think: “Am I feeling something? What is it, and why?” It can even make you depressed.

You strengthen what you pay attention to.

The best advice for worriers and ruminators is: Stop thinking and feeling; start doing something. Do three good deeds every day—compliment someone, get coffee for your colleague, call your sick aunt—and life just becomes more joyful. Accept that not all your feelings, fears, and desires are tangible: that irregular pain or tickle is part of life and that you do not always have to understand what caused it.

Why do we even want to explain our feelings? It is because we want to control them: If you understand why you feel this way, you can do something about it, it seems. But paradoxically, the effect is often the opposite of what we intend: By thinking about unpleasant feelings, we continue to "nourish" them and, thus, reinforce them. Everything you pay attention to, you strengthen, and this also goes for feelings that you want to get rid of. Granted, you should not suppress your feelings, and you should definitely talk about them when you feel the need to, but it is perfectly healthy to mix this with diverting your attention and distracting yourself.

Don't let it all out.

The same goes for expressing your feelings. The idea that you get rid of anger or other negative feelings by venting them (the catharsis principle) has been falsified by controlled experimental research. It has been shown that angry people who are allowed to punch pillows and hit punching balls actually become angrier. By expressing your feelings, you charge yourself even further with those feelings, thus amplifying them (not to mention the effects you reap from the reactions of others to all that unbridled expression of displeasure).

The catharsis assumption, along with the narcissistic notion that we are all "very special" and have a right to our feelings and our happiness, has engendered an unrestrained expression of emotions that can be seen on television and social media on a daily basis. We live in a kind of continuous Jerry Springer show in which everyone has the right to express their every discomfort, and other people are expected to concede because “I just feel it this way,” and “How can you do this if it hurts me?”

Dictatorship of feelings

This dictatorship of emotion is often tolerated because we see emotions as real and authentic; it’s hard to be against how someone feels. But this is based on a misconception. Anyone who has ever been emotional knows that you look at things differently later on. Emotions tend to narrow your scope. You can only think of things that confirm the emotion, stirring yourself up even further.

You can't look at it any other way. With emotions running wild, you are, in fact, in a somewhat primitive, childish stage: Your awareness, your ability to weigh different options, your sense of the long term, and of other possible perspectives are very limited. This effectively limits your agency and your ability to connect with others.

The emotional incontinence in our society—the shameless and boundless expression of emotions—also illustrates this childishness. We would all benefit from practicing a little more on an important part of emotional intelligence: controlling and regulating impulses, enduring discomfort so as to develop a more generous, contemplative attitude. It is more pleasant for others around you—but ultimately, for yourself as well, because it facilitates that you learn to give a creative, constructive turn to negative events.