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The Land of Emotions

Let’s describe this incredible land of emotions. Emotions form the foundation of who we are, for our emotions are closest to our innermost being. They bring Technicolor to our lives. Researchers generally agree that we experience six primary emotions: anger, sadness, joy, surprise, shame (sometimes called disgust), and fear. Surprisingly, love doesn’t appear on the list. We’ll see later why love is our goal and how it is more than just an emotion.

As we explore these six basic emotions, the first step will be learning what to call them. Each emotion has a “family” of feelings and moods. For example, take the emotion of anger. We can experience the emotion of anger in a wide range. We can feel furious, outraged, seething, upset, mad, frustrated, annoyed, or irritated, plus other nuances of these emotions. These are the feelings associated with anger. The mood associated with an emotion is simply a generalized pervasive feeling. So the mood associated with the emotion of anger is simply a generalized feeling of being upset, uptight, or touchy that is pervasive over time.

Fear can also be experienced in various ways as feelings and moods, and at different levels of intensity. We can feel terrified, panicky, frantic, threatened, insecure, cautious, unsure, or simply worried. The moods associated with fear are a generalized anxiety, being cautious, or a pervasive experience of feeling uneasy or nervous.

Or take the emotion of sadness. It can be as strong as feeling depressed, alone, dejected, miserable, or hopeless. But it can also be experienced as feeling distressed, somber, unhappy, upset, or disappointed. Moods that would fit the emotion of sadness are general melancholy or a very somber view of life overall.

Shame also has its shadings of expression. It can be as strong as feeling worthless, disgraced, defamed, or dishonored. But it can also be experienced as feeling unworthy, guilty, embarrassed, or uncomfortable. The general moods associated with shame could be expressed as a lack of confidence, a general sense of feeling worthless, or even extreme hesitance and bashfulness.

So an emotion is the overarching experience of joy, surprise, anger, fear, sadness, or shame. A feeling is how we experience the nuance of the emotion in the here and now. It is also the word used to describe a mood, which is a feeling we hold on to over a period of time.

Below is a chart that shows the four basic negative emotions and some of the possible feeling and mood words associated with each, with the more intense ones at the top. The negative emotions are the only ones we will look at, as they are the ones we need help with. As you practice naming what you are feeling, you will begin to understand the nuances of each feeling or mood you are experiencing. Make a copy of the word list and learn to identify and name what you feel.

Anger	Fear	Sadness	Shame
Furious	Terrified	Depressed	Sorrowful
Enraged	Scared	Alone	Worthless
Irate	Petrified	Hurt	Disgraced
Seething	Panicky	Hopeless	Mortified
Upset	Apprehensive	Somber	Apologetic
Frustrated	Frightened	Distressed	Unworthy
Annoyed	Nervous	Moody	Embarrassed
Irritated	Timid	Blue	Regretful
Touchy	Anxious	Disappointed	Uncomfortable

An interesting fact about the land of emotions is that there is a unique facial expression for each of the negative emotions. Author Paul Ekman has led the way in this research.1 The positive emotions as they appear on the face are not threatening, so they are easier to identify—most of us can recognize the facial expressions associated with joy and surprise. But growing more intelligent in the land of emotions means that we identify how we handle the negative feelings, moods, and emotions. One way to become more emotionally intelligent is to learn to recognize the negative emotions of anger, fear, sadness, and shame as they show on the face.

I often tell men to study the expressions on their wives’ faces. When they see a look they can’t identify, I tell them to stop and ask her what she was just feeling. Then make a note of it in their “research journal” so when they see that look again, they can identify it. Husbands are usually perplexed at the good response they get from their wives when they tell them they are trying to read their emotions.

Since each of the basic emotions represents a family of feelings, they can also be expressed in up or down moods. So experiencing SMART Love means we first identify the negative emotions in ourselves and then identify the most common feelings we experience that come from those emotions. When we are able to name our emotions and feelings, we will also be able to name our moods. For example, we can learn to recognize the difference between being annoyed and being furious when we experience those feelings. We begin to see quickly that they are both associated with the emotion of anger.

We all have subconscious ways we manage most of our moods. If we are tired and feeling down, we know if we call a friend and meet for coffee or ice cream, our mood will probably be lifted. If our friend doesn’t respond positively or is unavailable, it can deepen our down mood. Moods can be influenced easily by our actions and words. But emotions and the feelings associated with them are more entrenched and don’t easily change with our activities. These three things—emotions with the consequence of feelings and moods—make up the landscape of the world of emotions.

The Problem for Men

Men can be at a disadvantage when it comes to SMART Love. As boys, they were most likely taught by their parents and/or their peers to hide their emotions. The only exception is the emotion of anger. Anger is okay for men to experience, but only in the right places. For example, if an eleven-year-old boy is playing in his Little League baseball game, and he is so ashamed when he strikes out that he cries, his dad and perhaps even his mother may be mortified. They may sit in embarrassed silence. Or maybe Dad will quietly confront his son and tell him to act like a man. The other boys on the team don’t know how to handle it either, so most of them will just ignore it or tease the “crybaby.”

But if he strikes out, gets mad, and throws his bat against the fence or slings his helmet to the ground, his parents may sigh and say to each other, “Ah, that’s my boy!” Anger is an okay emotion for men and boys, but they’re not taught how they can manage and express it.

In my counseling room, I often ask a husband, “What are you feeling right now?” as his wife sits next to him in tears. He can’t say that he’s angry, because he’s probably the cause of his wife’s tears. He sits in silence for a moment, then typically answers, “Well, I think—” and I interrupt. I emphasize, “I don’t want to know what you think; I want to know what you feel right now.” And there is a long silence. Men know how to think but often are at a loss when asked to describe what they feel. I use this as an opportunity to show that the husband has feelings; he just doesn’t have the language to identify or describe them. So we go through a list of feeling words, and he is able to say yes to those connected to what he is feeling and no to those not connected. I do this exercise in part because I want his wife to learn to recognize his inability to self-generate the language of emotions.

Men are at another disadvantage in that their brains are designed to listen in order to fix whatever is wrong. Their brains are not designed to have a conversation about feelings for conversation’s sake. It drives a wife crazy because all she wants her husband to do is listen to her and seek to understand the heart of what she is saying. She doesn’t want him to try to fix the situation, even though that is his natural bent.

The Problem for Women

Anger is not very ladylike. It’s okay for little girls to cry, but to be angry—no way. I’ve talked with women who should be angry, but all they can do is feel sadness. For a quick moment, some might experience anger as a protest, but it doesn’t last very long before the tears take over again.

The other problem women face when learning the principles of SMART Love is that they don’t know how to relate to the different way their husbands talk and listen. For her, talking is the way to stay connected to him. For him, talking is a means to fixing a problem. As a result, she often doesn’t know how to respond when he either wants to fix the problem or doesn’t want to talk. So gradually she becomes more critical—something she would never do or ever need to do when facing misunderstandings with her female friends. In her mind, her criticism is designed to strengthen or repair the marriage. But the more critical she becomes, the more she pushes him away and ends up feeling disconnected. SMART Love is designed for both the husband and the wife to understand their own natural tendencies whenever they are in the land of emotions.

SMART Love

SMART Love is based on four big ideas regarding how both a wife and a husband can learn to experience connection and peace in their marriage.

1. With SMART Love, you will each learn how to regulate your emotional self. When you are able to identify your emotions and feelings, you will become more grown-up in your relationship with each other. The skills you develop will make you instantly aware of what you are feeling as you begin to feel it. You will develop a new ability to name your emotions and manage them before they have done harm to the relationship.

Part of self-awareness involves being able to understand how our buttons get pushed. So much of how we react to each other is a continuation of patterns that were set in place when we were young. When we’re adults, these reactions often become automatic. Recognizing the expression of our emotions also includes the idea of understanding and dealing with the roots of our typical tendencies.

2. With SMART Love, you will each learn how to break the cycles that are so entrenched in your marriage relationship. Most arguments are basically an attempt to define who is right and who is wrong. That’s always a losing pattern of behavior. Even if you are right, you don’t win. It’s a fact that most couples coming to marital counseling have an agenda. Both the husband and the wife come with the intent of proving to the counselor that “I am right and my spouse is wrong!”

It’s so easy to get caught up in the blame game, even when we know that resolving who is to blame accomplishes nothing except to add hurt to each spouse. After all, we will still be left with the task of resolving the problem behaviors. Most marital counselors are able to see through the effort to place blame and get to the cycles of behavior that need to be broken. With SMART Love, you will develop strategies and behaviors that will help you know how to change your negative cycles and manage your emotions, even when you are caught in a seemingly no-win situation.

3. SMART Love will help you restore the connection you had with each other. Being connected to your spouse was a legitimate expectation when you got married. You felt it before the wedding. But for many, that expectation gradually slips away as time passes.

Connection in your marriage is built in the land of emotions. It is based first on being emotionally available to each other. The more uncomfortable we are with each other’s emotions, as well as with our own, the less we are emotionally available. We have to break free from old patterns so we can be open to each other.

The second part of a connection is being emotionally responsive to each other. In the previous chapter, we met Jerry. He was too afraid to respond to Kimberly, and that was a major factor in their disconnection from each other. When we expand our ability to manage what we experience emotionally, we become more responsive to each other.

The third part of what constitutes a connection is acceptance, being increasingly able not only to accept the emotions of your spouse but to identify with them. All three are necessary components of an emotional connection.

4. SMART Love ultimately allows you to embrace love. Everyone says they got married because they were in love. As we pointed out earlier, none of the lists of emotions include love. It is typically seen in research as not being a primary emotion but rather a secondary emotion that is based on our emotional responses to loving behaviors. As we will see in the next chapter, love is the most important emotion, for it is the one God intended us to experience. When we become emotionally SMART, loving behaviors increase, and that allows a couple to more fully embrace the feelings of love.

SMART Love is about gaining the ability to identify your own emotions, but equally important, it’s about learning how to identify your spouse’s emotions. It includes the ability to empathize with what your spouse is feeling, just as you identify your own emotions as they are happening. It also means you can use the information gained from observing your spouse’s emotions to regulate your own, and ultimately to manage successfully the emotional climate in your marriage and your family.

SMART Love is different from IQ. SMART Love is an intangible, which makes it difficult to measure. So there is no generally recognized SMART Love test that places your score in relation to other people’s. (An official Emotional Intelligence Appraisal is available from www.talentsmart.com, which is primarily oriented to the business world.)

Also, IQ refers to your ability to learn things, which does not change based on what you have learned. It stays pretty much the same throughout your life. In contrast, the ability to love SMART is changeable. You will increase your EQ as you learn to put into practice the skills of SMART Love. So if you are not very SMART in your marriage, you can become very SMART!

The Skills of SMART Love

Two of the competencies we will develop in SMART Love are personal—they develop within us individually. Three of them are relational. All of them are interactive. Competence in the personal skills is foundational and involves becoming knowledgeable about the common language of emotions.

First, you will be able to describe an emotion as you become more aware of what you are experiencing emotionally in the situation. As a result, you will become more skillful at being able to appropriately manage your own emotions in a conflict situation.

Think back on the three case studies in the first chapter. No one in these examples was able to describe what they were feeling in the situation, and none of them, even Angie’s mom and dad, were able to appropriately manage their emotions. Pat and Don were both out of control with their anger, as was Kimberly. Jerry and Angie’s parents were completely unable to express any emotion since they were so bound up by their fear. The foundational step for each person begins with becoming aware of what they are experiencing emotionally and being able to identify what basic negative emotion they seem to fall into.

Then comes the second personal skill, which is being able to manage strong emotions as they are identified and occur. If we can’t identify our emotions, we will not be able to manage them. Most of us simply give in to the emotion and then wish we had just ignored what we felt. Or we ignore the emotion because of our fear of the consequences of dealing with it.

As personal foundational skills become stronger, competency in the relational area develops. The third skill is relational and focuses on being accountable to each other as a couple and to someone else for how you are handling your emotions.

Fourth, you will be able to empathize more with your spouse, which includes not only having the ability to read what they are feeling but also experiencing those feelings as if you were in their shoes.

Finally, the fifth skill is for both of you to become comfortable and relaxed as you travel together in the land of emotions. No longer will it be a scary and strange land.

Before we look in depth at the basic skills of SMART Love, let’s do an appraisal of where each of you is in relation to the five skills of SMART Love.