People who regulate emotions quickly

The core characteristics of people who regulate their emotions much faster than ordinary people are never "naturally insensitive" or "deliberately suppressing emotions". Instead, most of them have built their own "emotional diversion and processing system" in advance - classifying and processing the emotions as soon as they are triggered, and will not allow invalid emotions to occupy the current cognitive resources.

I have seen the most exaggerated example when I was doing project review at an Internet company. Xiao Su, the product manager sitting next to me, had just finished explaining the three-version demand plan, and the back-end developer slapped the table directly: "Last week you said you would add a blind box function and I added it. This week, you are adding a friend ranking list?" The interface cannot be adjusted at all. Do you not understand technology at all? ”

The eyes of the whole group of more than a dozen people glanced over instantly. I was sitting next to me and saw the tips of her ears turn red. Anyone else would have cried on the spot or started a quarrel. As a result, she took a half-sip of the iced American at her hand, turned around and asked with a smile: "The interface stuck point you just mentioned requires 3 more days to be scheduled, right? I just thought about it and cut off the non-core point redemption function first. Is it just enough to catch up with the online node? ”

It was only 10 seconds before and after, and the embarrassment and annoyance just now seemed to have never appeared on her body.

To be honest, I used to be biased against this kind of people, and I also held the view of the "emotional isolation" school - I felt that such people lived too fake a life and even had to act out their emotions, which would sooner or later lead to psychological problems. There is another school of thought that is more extreme, equating this ability with "high emotional intelligence" and "emotional maturity", and wishes everyone could imitate it. Even getting angry counts the time cost.

It wasn’t until I worked with a mentor on an emotional intervention project for half a year and came into contact with hundreds of samples with different emotional regulation abilities that I discovered that both statements were reasonable, but neither of them got to the essence.

The emotional dual-processing theory in psychological research has long confirmed that people's emotional instinctive reactions and rational decision-making are originally two parallel neural pathways. The so-called "fast adjustment" is just a shortening of the activation time of the rational pathway through repeated practice. The essence is the priority allocation of attention, not the disappearance of emotions.

As Xiao Su told me later, she had no time to be aggrieved in those 10 seconds. The first reaction in her mind was "Oh, I'm a little angry now, and I'm still a little bit reluctant to get off the stage." The second reaction jumped out, "Everyone is rushing to work on the project now. Arguing will only delay the launch. There's no point getting angry. Let's talk about it after get off work." Instead of suppressing her emotions, she split the "problems to be solved at the moment" and the "emotions to be digested" into two separate things. She put the emotions aside and queued them up, and then dealt with them when she was free.

If you really think they are emotionless, you are wrong. I met her in the elevator after the last meeting, and she was rolling her eyes and talking to her best friend: "He has the nerve to talk about me? Who was the one who wanted to temporarily add the blind box function last time? You must have a problem in your head. ”

Of course, there are also situations where you are really depressed. I once met a senior who was doing To B sales. How fast can he regulate his emotions? After being scolded by a customer for ten minutes and hanging up the phone, I can turn around and call the next customer back with a smile, without any fluctuation in my tone. But he told me privately that he hadn't had a full night's sleep in half a year, and he got flustered when he had some free time. He couldn't help but lose his temper even when talking to his wife and children.

This is the "emotional isolation" that everyone is worried about: instead of diverting emotions, it directly stifles them without even leaving an outlet. Over time, those unprocessed emotions will not disappear out of thin air, they will only accumulate in the body, and they will explode one day.

In fact, it is very simple to distinguish between the two situations: just look at whether he has an "emotional reserve" in private. People who are really good at regulating their emotions have their own channel for dumping their emotions. Some people go to the boxing gym to punch punches for an hour, some people sit on the sofa and write half a diary of complaints that no one will read, and some people spend half an hour cursing their boss. They just don't vent their emotions on unrelated occasions or to unrelated people.

I used to be a person who was easily led by my emotions. When my boss said something, I was stuck in internal friction all afternoon about "does he have a problem with me?" I couldn't finish my work but had to work overtime, falling into a vicious cycle. Later, I learned a stupid trick from Xiao Su. I put a small note pad in my pocket, and when I got emotional, I would write three words, "It's time to get off work." Finish the work at hand first. After get off work, when it's time to cry or curse, just have a hot pot and most of the time, the efficiency is really more than a little higher.

To put it bluntly, we are all ordinary people who eat whole grains. How can there be anyone who is really "emotionless"? It's just that some people spread their emotions on irrelevant people, delaying business, and some people keep their emotions in their pockets and take them out when it's time to take them out.

Last time Xiao Su and I went to eat the Chongqing hot pot that she had been talking about for a long time. She scolded the developer who criticized her while chewing her belly. She scolded the developer for a full 40 minutes. After scolding, she wiped her mouth and picked up her phone to change her needs. She looked up and said to me: "Look, getting angry doesn't delay things, right? You can't get angry because of this. If the project fails, no one will get the year-end bonus. ”

Looking at her greasy mouth, I suddenly felt that there was no natural master of emotions. She just knew what she wanted most at the moment.