Identity, Key 2: Emotional Regulation: Mindfulness
[excerpted from, 9 Keys to Identity Crisis & Resolution: Personal Growth ?2023]
Mindfulness is one a form of meditation…and so much more.
Trait, state, and practice, we can simply live our lives in a mindful way (and become ever more mindful as a character trait) by paying attention to the details of our lives.
Mindfulness is also very much about emotional intelligence and regulation, considered a system of mental training. In this way especially, it’s very useful for any period of change – and even more so in a reorganization of one’s identity.
After all, change doesn’t get much more transformational than this, that we become someone new. And it can bring up a great deal of emotions, and emotional lability, that we want to allow ourselves to fully experience. At the same time, we want to better understand what it is that we’re feeling, and to be able to exert some measure of management. (I don’t like the word ‘control’ here. We don’t want to suppress our feelings, just to feel that they are not in charge of us. Less reactive.)
In mindfulness practice, we focus, notice, and detach.
We notice all the richness that’s around us, the small moments of joy, and in this way, we can live our lives more deliberately. We’re also noticing the details of self in the same way, which helps us navigate the reorganization into a new identity.
The same is true for our emotions. In mindfulness meditation, when a feeling arises, we take note of it, and identify it as well as what may be beneath or motivating it. Oh, I’m feeling sad, I wonder what that’s about; ah, I see, it’s my feelings of loss, along with a bit of apprehension at the coming change. And then: we let it go. Rather than trying to push it away, we notice it, see what may be generating it, and then we gently let it drift away like a cloud, or a puff of smoke.
The more you practice, the easier this becomes, and it spills over into your everyday life whether you’re meditating or not. Just going about your day, as emotions arise, rather than reacting along with them, you’ll more objectively notice, observe, then gain a bit of distance or objectivity, and not let it take control of you. Emotional regulation.
If you wish, you can keep a mindfulness journal (writing/audio/video). There you can maintain a record of feelings that arise, of what’s behind them, and of your success (or not) at letting them drift away again. In this, you’re giving second attention to your feelings, and again, in a more analytical and objective way.
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While our emotions can be attached to our body’s chemistry, whether endocrine (hormonal) or neurochemical (brain), this acts as the biological trigger – but the emotion still resides in and is registered by our mind. Mindfulness as mental training, then, allows us to have greater awareness of and management over our emotions rather than being at the mercy of what we’re feeling.
In the course of identity crisis, it’s all too easy to get caught up in our emotions, especially if the trigger of the crisis is an emotionally-based one (trauma, for example, as opposed to my decision to move abroad). In the end, this doesn’t serve us; identity also resides in and is organized by the mind, and we need ours to be clear and free so that we can begin to understand what we’re going through and to reconstruct our identity into its new self.
In adults who’ve had childhood trauma, typically there is both a lack of emotional regulation and a diffuse or unclear identity; the trauma has gotten in the way of healthy development. This further leads to vulnerability in relationships and potential for addiction as well as mental illness. A focus on emotional regulation often helps to disrupt this pattern and better allow for increased identity awareness and mental wellbeing. A similar principle applies, then, when we have formed a healthy identity and haven’t such childhood history, but experience a disruptive event in adulthood; emotional regulation is the key to restoring balance, so that we might better formulate a new identity in the aftermath.
Self-regulation of emotions is a key element in emotional resilience. If we develop this skill now, when not in crisis, then we can better return to it when we are. Overall, the more we understand and regulate our emotions, the more resilient we are when times of major change or impact arise.
Mindfulness also helps us shift our locus of control from external to internal. At the same time that we learn to let go, to surrender to the experience and to allow emotions to drift on rather than to define or control us, we also learn that we can approach life itself mindfully. In this, we aim neither to control our environment nor be passively buffeted by it; instead, we begin to understand more deeply that thoughts and emotions originate within us, and that we have the choice to be defined by them or not. We aren’t controlled by external events, though they do indeed occur as they will and often without our agreement; our response to them, however, and their effect on us, is very much an internal process.
We might also use a mindful regulation of emotion consciously, deliberately, as a tool for reframing those emotions. When in the midst of identity dis-/reorganization, in crisis mode, we can not only notice and focus on our emotions but specifically will them to change, before letting them drift away. Similar to waking in the night from a nightmare, not wanting to return to sleep right away so as not to reenter the same story, we sometimes naturally rewrite it instead – staying awake long enough to reorganize the dream’s story for a better, less disturbing outcome. The monster dissolves, the killer drops the knife and begins sobbing instead, or whatever works, so that if we do resume the story with a return to sleep, it will take a different turn. We can do this with emotion, too; mindfulness gives us the skill to recognize and to look beneath, and we can shift that superficial feeling to the one beneath it before it drifts away. This is emotional intelligence 2.0, and gives us a more authentic experience. We could go even further, shifting that fear into peace, or perhaps even joy, for example.
Emotional intelligence places our emotions within our own ability to regulate – including, change.
And the more we’re in charge of our emotions, and functioning objectively, the better we can focus on the task at hand: our becoming.