Master Your Emotions, Control Your Mood?
Something about this article rubs me up the wrong way — maybe it’s the title itself, “Master your emotions”. The cheerful, practical, common sense tone reinforces the idea that we are messy souls who need keeping in line, and who need to enforce a certain wholesome discipline for our own good. It sounds as if an adult is taking charge of a child.
An article from ivillage, the women’s online community, offers five ways to
master your emotions and improve your mood. It’s all pretty common sense advice, which stresses the mind-body connection. It advocates sensible nutrition and avoiding comfort eating, breathing right in order to send the right signals to your brain and not inadvertently set off a panic response, finding a way of relaxation that suits you, keeping it rhythmic (!), getting to know your habitual responses to situations and re-evaluating them, and getting plenty of ‘Vitamin L’ — love and laughter — by reaching out to others. (I think the portrayal of food as no more than ‘fuel’ is slightly one-sided and joyless — is food not an art form, a sensual feast, a communal ritual and way of celebrating togetherness? Obviously not in the culture to whom the article is addressed…)
So far so good — but something about the article rubs me up the wrong way. Maybe it’s the title itself, “Master your emotions”. The cheerful, practical, common sense tone reinforces the idea that we are messy souls who need keeping in line, and who need to enforce a certain wholesome discipline for our own good. It sounds as if an adult is taking charge of a child, here.
So it is probably my inner child who responds to this by saying, “but I don’t want to be sensible! I don’t want to be in charge! I want to follow my dreams and inspirations, sometimes I want to be sad and unsociable!”. And maybe it is my wise adult who says that the attitude all these wrongly eating, breathing, un-relaxed habitual responses need is acceptance and not cajoling into being better people. They need to all be able to kick off their shoes and then find out what they really want, which is likely to lead to more healthiness and happiness, but as a side effect rather than a point in itself.
Although information on how our bodies and minds interact, and how best to feed them, never hurts, I would say, let’s un-master our emotions! Let them be, and listen to what they are telling us.
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