Published on 12, July, 2020
HI all,
I've come across the concept of Intolerance of Uncertainty - something my psychologist mentioned and after a recent blip I've started investigating it. Most of the material I've come across is academic papers (taking a wee bit of time to absorb) but I was wondering if anyone else had come across the idea and what they made of it?
On a semi-related topic the Coursera platform is running a course by the Yale Centre of Emotional Intelligence: Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty and Stress. It's free (although you can pay £36 for a certificate if you want one). Link > https://www.coursera.org/learn/managing-emotions-uncertainty-stress
It's intended for school staff (and neurotypicals) but looking at the syllabus I'm fairly sure there's ideas that might give me another perspective and increase emotional awareness. I'm going to explore it - but I thought I'd share in case anyone else is interested.
The course leader Marc Brackett has a website @ https://www.marcbrackett.com/ (apologies for the big book ad slap bang in the middle of the homepage - I'm not on commission, It's the video I'm pointing to)
Week 2:
Well I completed the "action plan" which was all about listening to emotions and the body. This ties in with my reading by Gabor Mate, the prods from my therapist and my learning from last week - where after two very hefty experiences I was sat thinking "what is my body telling me".
This week has been about the importance of emotional awareness in oneself and others and use of the "mood meter" (which I use already) - with some work on distinguishing between closely related emotions. What I find difficult is being aware of my feelings "on the fly", I need to sit and allow myself to feel - and I also need a prompt to name the feeling otherwise it's a vague ("down", "ok" and so on).
Although some of the course seems obvious (different people have different reactions dependent on the situation) I wonder in practice how much I'm really aware of this and live it. My therapist pointed out once that I had a tendency to treat people like "widgits" - so I related to them in the roles assigned to them, and not as the body language or emotional state communicated.
There is a different language to emotions than I've been aware of. Use of words like leverage, shift and create environment. This is a language I never used - emotions were just "there" and either "good" or "bad" (depending on how acceptable they were to the person I was with).
This course may not solve anything, but it may make things easier to manage. I'm starting to think how many small actions there are in each day based on emotional awareness and relationship with other people.
Putting the action plan aside until later. It encourages an emotional check-in - I've mood meters in my study and living space to encourage me to do this. Alarms rarely work - I just ignore them. 8 sections (weeks) to go. Feel better now about going on my streaming binge....