To avoid the kicking cat effect of emotions in emotional management

The first is to find an exclusive outlet for bad emotions that will not be transmitted downwards, and the second is to establish a boundary firewall between the emotion and the vulnerable party that cannot be easily breached - this is the most intuitive conclusion I have come to after working as a psychological counseling assistant for three years and having been exposed to nearly a hundred related cases.

You must have seen this kind of scene, right? The boss of the company was scolded by the board of directors for being late due to a traffic jam in the morning. Then he called the project manager who had made no mistakes to the office and gave him a scolding. The project manager returned to the workstation in anger, and happened to meet an intern who came to ask about the format of today's report. He scolded him and cried. The intern came home from get off work and was so miserable that he couldn't even eat. When he saw that the cat had touched the limited-edition lipstick he had just bought, he raised his hand and threw the cat half a meter away. The kitten was so frightened that it hid under the sofa and peed all night. This is the most typical "cat-kicking chain": negative emotions are always transmitted downwards along the ladder of power, and the innocent people at the bottom who are unable to resist receive all the malice that does not belong to them.

When many people mention "avoiding the cat-kicking effect", their first reaction is to retort: "Can't I get angry when I'm angry? Who is responsible for suppressing psychological problems?" This is also a controversial point in the industry. The current solution to this problem in the psychology community is actually divided into two obvious schools. There is no absolute right or wrong. It all depends on which one is more suitable for you. Supporters of traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) prefer the "emotion tracing method": when you are about to get angry, stop for 3 seconds and ask yourself a question - is the reason why I am angry now really something done by the person in front of me? I once encountered an operation manager who scolded his subordinates for being inefficient every time his plan was rejected by Party A. It wasn’t until I asked him to write down the reason for his anger on a note every time he wanted to curse, that he discovered that nine times out of ten, the reason he was scolding had nothing to do with his subordinates, and he was just venting his anger towards Party A on his subordinates. The essence of this method is what is often called "cognitive dissociation" in CBT. If you detach yourself from the emotions that are about to explode and become a bystander, a lot of anger will naturally not be released.

However, the school of positive psychology, which is now more popular among young people, feels that there is no need to worry about where emotions come from. It is more effective to build a "buffer zone" for emotions first. To put it bluntly, when you are angry, don’t immediately enter into a situation with a vulnerable person: if your boss scolds you, go to the corridor to smoke a cigarette, go downstairs to buy a glass of iced Americano and hang out for 10 minutes before returning to your work station; if you are angry at the company, stand downstairs for two minutes before opening the door. Don’t face children and the elderly directly with a look of aggression. I had a mother who used this method to change her habit of always scolding her children. She also added a little ritual: before entering the house, she imagined all the bad emotions as a ball of paper, "threw" it into the trash can downstairs and then went upstairs. It sounds a bit metaphysical, but she persisted for three months, and the parent-child relationship with her children has indeed improved by more than one level.

To be honest, I’m particularly annoyed by people who use “I just have a straight temper” as an excuse to vent their anger. In essence, they are bullying the weak and afraid of the strong - why don’t you dare to use the energy of scolding your subordinates to attack your boss? Why don't you dare to vent your anger on your child-swearing colleague who made you angry? To put it bluntly, you know that your subordinates, children, and cats at home will not resist you, and the cost of venting is zero, so you dare to treat each other as an emotional trash can. To avoid the kicking cat effect, you can never hold your breath and bear it hard. You can go to the gym to hit the punching bag for an hour, go to the KTV to yell until your voice is hoarse, or even find a place where no one is around to scold the person who made you angry. It doesn't matter how you vent, as long as you don't vent your anger on innocent people who can't resist you. Just like you are holding a newly lit cannon in your hand, you can throw it into the open space, or you can hold it tightly and wait for it to go out. You can't throw it at the children who are not wearing thick clothes next to you, right?

I myself have made this mistake before. The year before last, I had been working on an industry report for three days in a row. The notes I had just finished were trampled on by a cat that jumped on the table, and I pulled it to the ground without thinking. It was so frightened that it did not dare to come near me for three days. Later, I placed a stress relief ball full of bulges next to my desk. Whenever I felt irritable, I would squeeze the ball for five minutes before touching the cat or talking to my family. This has never happened again. There are also people who put a small sticker on their workstation that says "Don't scold your subordinates, their salary does not include being criticized." Some people put a note on the refrigerator saying "Children are not punching bags." These are small actions, but they are effective.

In fact, there is really no need to make emotional management a subject of spiritual cultivation. Everyone can't control their temper sometimes. Don't blame yourself too much if you can't hold it back once in a while. It's enough to apologize afterwards and pay more attention next time. We don’t need to be completely free of negative emotions. As long as we don’t let our bad emotions turn into a knife that stabs the weaker ones, we have already done a good job.