In Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett writes, “It is one of the great paradoxes of the human condition- we ask some variation of the question, “How are you feeling?” over and over, which would lead on to assume that we attach some importance to it yet we never expect or desire or provide an honest answer.

You might want to go back and read that again, and again. It’s so true. How often do you respond to this question with more than fine, good, or busy?

So often it can feel as if we are on the hamster wheel: get up, get ready for work, rush off to work or get the kids to school. When we get to school, we are busy and need to get through it all so we ask but rarely make the time for honest answers.

As I listened to Marc discuss the science of emotions on a the Unlocking Us podcast with Brené Brown, the other realization I had is that it’s also hard to deal with the real answers sometimes so we just say we are fine and stay busy to avoid how we really feel.

This especially hit home as I reflected on my own approach as we got ready for my son’s 10th birthday a few weeks ago. My husband and I had planned to decorate the house, got lots of presents and invited friends and family to do a drive-by to acknowledge turning double digits. I remember thinking and saying to my daughter and husband, let’s keep it positive and not focus on the loss and how sad it would be to turn 10 while being quarantined. I had convinced myself that if we didn’t acknowledge that it was sad for my son and a loss of what should be an eventful right of passage, turning TEN and celebrating this with friends and family. We went through the day with positivity and focused on what we could control. I watched him in the zoom call with his class and while he was so gracious and seemed fine all day just going with the flow, I knew that this would also be a defining moment for him. I pulled him aside and asked how he was doing and he just looked at me for a while and finally said, “It’s really hard to be 10 right now.” He hugged me for a long time and I stopped trying to put a positive spin on it all and gave us both permission to feel.

Making space to feel

As we officially started our school’s distance learning program this week, there were lots of feelings. Excited to see friends, anxious about expectations, frustration logging in and all.the passwords. and wifi not handling 4 simultaneous Zoom calls, a sense of loss and so much more.

One thing that I have realized is that if my kids are frustrated and struggling, stopping to talk about it and make sense of it, or as Marc calls it being an “emotion scientist”, in order to understand and deal with the emotions is the most important thing I can do. Acknowledging and making space to feel loss and sadness and moments of joy and happiness is more important than rushing through my task list or more important than finishing the math worksheet. If we bury these feelings now, we will have to deal with them in many other ways throughout our lives.

Here is the highlights of what I took away from the conversation between Marc Brackett and Brené Brown on why understanding our emotions matters and how the science behind it can help us be preventionists instead of interventionists.

Emotions impact our attention capacity and performance

Marc describes being a C or D student despite his intelligence because he was bullied in school, abused by family and didn’t feel like he belonged. Especially as a child, when you long to belong to your friends or family, that often supersedes the 5 paragraph essay or the algebra test. You can’t function focus and concentrate when your basic needs are not met- hello Maslow! This is extremely relevant right now as many people (including the adults are struggling) are stressed out and anxious because they don’t know when they will see their friends again or their family is unstable because they can’t work. 

This doesn’t mean that every time you have a bad day you should be excused from school or going to work but it does mean that we have to acknowledge this connection and attend to our emotions and their impact on our attention in order to learn. This is why many schools focused ensured students were fed and checked in on their emotional state before anything else. Emotional instability is heightened in our current situation but it will continue to be important when we are back in school too. Attending to students’ sense of belonging, and helping to ensure they have the tools and the space to discuss and regulate emotions and challenges won’t distract from our curriculum but instead allow students to engage in it more productively.  

Emotions impact our decisions

A study by Marc and his colleagues conducted with teachers randomly assigned them to two groups: good mood and bad mood.  One group was instructed to think about a good day and the other group was instructed to think about a bad day. Next, they were asked to grade the exact same papers. The bad mood group scored the papers 1-2 full grades lower. Even worse was when the teachers were asked whether or not their mood affected their grading 90% said their mood had no impact.  

Although their emotions clearly shifted how they graded the same content they were unaware or unwilling to admit it. When I suggest that grades are subjective, even with a rubric or clear criteria, this is often met with resistance but the reality is that we interpret the world differently based on our state of mind. It reminds me of the quote, “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”― Anaïs Nin 

Although this study was conducted on grading it demonstrates that our emotions don’t just impact how we grade, they impact how we interact with others and the decisions we make. The sooner we recognize this and better understand our emotions, the more conscious we can be about our emotions in our decision-making process.

Emotions are signals to approach or avoid in relationships

How we feel on the inside sends messages to others on the outside to either approach or avoid us. If we are rude, standoffish, and/or difficult to talk to, people will avoid us. If we are open and inviting, people will more likely be willing to approach us. Understandably there are times when we don’t want people to approach us and might want to give off that vibe but if you always are grumpy, you will be avoided, which leads to a lack of belonging which leads to more negative behaviors and this cycle impacts our relationships and how we connect with others. Understanding and regulating our emotions can help us better connect with us and improve our sense of belonging.

Our environment influences our mental health

This is not likely going to come as a surprise but still really important. The culture and climate of the school are highly correlated with anxiety, stress, negative feeling, mental health problems, sleep troubles, and body mass index. This cycle exacerbates stress and the impact on our emotions and well being.

When the culture is welcoming and supportive and people are trusted, they are more willing and able to engage in positive behaviors and relationships that are good for the adults and students. I see this all the time as I visit different schools and now that we are all teaching and learning from home where we are also trying to parent and manage many other responsibilities and while student’s environments have shifted as well, these factors profoundly impact our mental health. The expectations, community support, and environment at home impacts both educators and learners in ways that we have never experienced before. 

Emotional intelligence impacts performance and creativity 

Most people didn’t have an emotional intelligence curriculum in school. We have focused on getting good grades and high SAT scores to get into college but many CEOs lament that despite their impressive transcripts, people can’t work on teams, don’t know how to regulate emotions, and think that they know everything. The jobs today and in the future will require people who are flexible and creative. Nobody wants to hire people without emotional intelligence but we don’t teach this enough because we are too focused on narrowly covering and measuring academic performance.

Throughout the podcast, one of the many things that stuck with me is the fact that two-thirds of students don’t feel like they have a supportive adult in school that is there for them and there are many kids that feel the same at home. As we are together in our homes, it seems as though there might not be anything more important right than to slow down and understand our own emotions and ensure that our loved ones feel cared about and supported.

As we have been forced to pause and upend many systems that have been part of the fabric of our schools, my hope is that we can rethink education and prioritize what matters most to as we rebuild a new way forward. Given what we know about the power of emotions, What if we equipped those who work in schools (teachers, administrators, and support staff) to know how to regulate and name emotions and ensure that students are taught emotional skills as a foundational part of the curriculum throughout school? It seems clear that emotional intelligence shouldn’t be an add-on when it is foundational to learning and living our lives to our fullest potential.