In agile software development, analyzing requirements and refining user stories is our daily bread and butter. We continuously put a significant amount of effort into making sure that we know what we’re doing and that it makes sense to us. Now imagine being able to describe your emotions as neatly and clearly as we describe client requirements, functionalities, components, integrations and whatever else… sounds doable?

The previous article can be found here.

In the previous article about negativity, we learned about some of the most common hooks that make people spiral into a neverending circle of negativity. When it comes to the most common ways how to treat these uncomfortable feelings, Susan David defines two types of people — bottlers and brooders.

Let’s start with bottlers. Ted Lasso says that bottling is great, because that’s how we get pickles. But pickles and human emotions are a bit different. Bottlers try to unhook by pushing their emotions to the side and getting on with things — any unwanted feelings that could distract them are being intentionally overlooked. Bottlers are basically experts at pretending. Very often they trick themselves into believing that their problems will naturally resolve with time, and while some issues actually may resolve without any intervention, it certainly doesn’t apply to deep-rooted problems we carry with ourselves throughout our whole life.

People who are bottling their emotions are usually so focused on doing “what they’re supposed to do” that they haven’t been in touch with their real self and emotions in years, which blocks them from making any potential change or personal growth for better. Research shows that attempting to minimize or ignore thoughts and emotions only serves to amplify them. Bottling feels like it gives us control, but it actually denies us control. It’s like closing door behind a room full of fire — suddenly there’s no fire in sight and we feel safe, but eventually it will come to burn down the whole house around us.

If you feel like this was dramatic, wait to hear about brooders.

Unlike bottlers, brooders are well aware of their emotions, they’re literally feeling all of their feelings. A bit too much though. Brooders get totally absorbed by their emotions, they just can’t let go. They can even reach a point where they worry about the fact that they worry so much.

They are more likely to succumb to self-blame, feeding their mind with questions like “Why am I like this” or “Why does this keep happening to me?”. And don’t get me wrong, asking such questions is super important, but analyzing without any results is just absolutely pointless. Imagine having tons of refinement meetings and not one single user story that would be estimated and put into development. What would be the point of the whole product?

Another term that’s worth mentioning, because I think at some point we all enjoy this activity, is called co-brooding. It’s when one brooder meets another brooder and together they brood brooderesly. We might think that these “venting sessions” make us feel better, but if there’s no move forward, no helpful advice or push to make a change, it usually keeps us in the same mood or worse — by getting a validation from someone else that everything is truly madly and deeply f*cked, we might feel even more hopeless.

Whenever we use bottling or brooding as a strategy to deal with our problems, it doesn’t serve our happiness or our health. It’s much like taking an aspirin for a headache — the medicine relieves your pain for a few hours, but if the source of the headache is lack of sleep or a cold, the headache will return with full force as soon as the analgesic wears off. Bottling and brooding are short-term emotional aspirins.

When we don’t go directly to the source of our difficult emotions, we miss the ability to really deal once and for all with what’s causing our distress.

A lot of psychological research shows that our life satisfaction depends on not how many worries and regrets and sad experiences we have, but on the way we deal with them. If we bottle or brood, it’s not good.

How to get real with our emotions?

This is the part that sounds super easy in theory and is gut-wrenchingly difficult in practice.

Getting real with our emotions is about finding an open and honest way how to live with them with acceptance and awareness.

I know, I know — it sounds like a speech from a yoga instructor at some Spa retreat. But pay attention to each word in that sentence and try to imagine making that happen. It really isn’t that easy — and maybe that’s why it sounds like such a cliché.

Being open and honest about our emotions is super scary. Being able to stop and analyze what’s going on and admit to ourselves that we feel bad because of something is uncomfortable to do, but so… so important to gain control. It’s freeing. Get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Yes, at first it’s a pain, but the more you do it, the more you allow your system to accomodate this activity, the more of a habit it becomes. And then there’s nothing scary left, because you’ll be ready to face up to any emotion.

Living with acceptance and awareness comes together with it. Our feelings are not facts, but only data coming from our brain, signals from our body. Being aware of our feelings gives us power to control them better. And so does accepting our thoughts and feelings without beliving them to be true.

Remember — acceptance is a prerequisite for change.

Getting real with our emotions also means having a big dose of self-compassion.

Nobody is perfect. Perfection is one-dimensional, unrealistic and boring. Think of all the flawed characters in your favorite movies or TV shows. We love them for their imperfections — and we need to do the same with ourselves. You can’t have a real compassion without first facing the truth about who you are, what you want and what you feel. Making a bad decision or doing something bad does not make you an irredeenably awful human being. It’s a just a setback, a lesson perhaps. It’s how you approach it that matters.

Having self-compassion means looking at ourselves from an outside perspective, a broad and inclusive view that recogizes our challenges and failures as a normal part of being human without getting too self-critical.

Self-critical people fall apart when they fail, self-compassionate people improve from it.

Be also careful about comparing yourself to other people. It’s good to use comparison as a motivational tool, but definitely not for judging our own success. That kind of comparison kills self-acceptance. Keep your eyes on your life and your work. Who do you want to be? What other people want you to be is irrelevant.

Getting real with our emotions also means facing up to our worst demons and giving them a name.

Looking our personal struggles in the eye saying “Hey, you’re here, I’m here, and I won’t let you make me feel like a piece of shit.” is another way how to get in control.

We come into battle with many demons throughout our life, some of them are small, some of them big enough to annoy us for months or years. Finding the right name can be difficult, but again — if we’re open and honest — eventually we’ll know exactly what name is fitting. It can be a demon named “I don’t have any self-esteem” or “I have an unfulfilling job” or “I miss my friends” or “I feel like I have no purpose in life”.

Probably the most difficult demon’s name is “I’m not happy.”

Calling the demon by its real name is the first step in defeating it.

Getting real with our emotions also means labelling them correctly.

In her book, Susan David describes an encounter with one of her patients. Everytime he would come to her office, she’d ask him “How are you?” and his response would be “Just a little bit of bother.” (loving this phrase by the way)

When he used the same response while informing her that his mother died, she realized he had an inability to differentiate among his emotions.

Saying “I’m stressed” can mean something completely different to two individuals. For one person it could mean “I feel inadequate because I have so much work and I’m so slow” and for another person it could mean “I’m guilty because I have so much things to do that I don’t spend enough time with my loved ones.”

Learning how to lable emotions with a more nuanced vocabulary can be absolutely transformative. People who can identify the full spectrum of emotion — who realize how sadness differs from boredom for example, or pity, or loneliness, or nervousness — do much better at managing the ups and downs of ordinary existence than those who see everything in black and white.

Next time you feel stressed (or any other emotion) try to dig a little deeper into what’s hiding beneath instead of just using a generic label.

Key takeaways

• Get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.
• Next time you feel bad, don’t bottle or brood; think about that emotion, describe it, analyze what’s it telling you, find a solution, estimate it and put it into development. You’re building the most important product inside of your head.
• Try to do this more often — create a habit.
• Accept what you dislike about yourself. Only then you can ever start changing it. Perfection is an illusion.
• Don’t walk around the bush. Give your struggles a real name.
• Try to dig deeper to analyze all the feelings behind your emotion.

This article series is based on the Emotional Agility book writen by Susan David, Ph.D.

We are ACTUM Digital and this piece was written by Nikol Sokolová, Delivery Coach of Apollo Division. Feel free to get in touch.