Two Serious Emotional Errors to Avoid

Almost everyone treats anxiety as a problem instead of what it is: an essential emotion that's an intrinsic part of motivation. And almost everyone makes the same two errors when they think about anxiety.

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Most of the people I talked to in conducting research on emotions blamed anxiety for their problems, even though anxiety helps you deal with problems. And most people treated anxiety as a problem simply due to the fact that many people don't know how to work with the increased energy and focus anxiety brings to us.

The same two errors impact most of us as we think about emotions:

1. We blame emotions for causing problems when, in fact, emotions arise to help us deal with problems.
2. We blame emotions for people's lack of emotional skills.

I call these the emotional attribution errors, and they're everywhere!

What is an attribution error?

It's a mistake in identifying cause and effect.

Here's a true attribution: I can't afford a vacation because my work hours were cut.

Here's a mistaken attribution: I can't afford a vacation because I have terrible luck and the world is out to get me.

Your luck has nothing to do with your workplace losing the ability to keep you on, even though it can feel that way sometimes. Attribution errors can feel true, but because they're wrong, they can lead you down some very unhelpful paths.

For instance, if you attribute your job situation to your luck, you may wish for better luck instead of looking for better work. Your mistaken attribution would lead you in the wrong direction and waste your time (and you'd continue to lose money). You'd also suffer for no good reason.

Understanding cause and effect is important, because it can help us understand the world clearly so that we can act effectively.

Two mistakes of emotional attribution

Our emotional education tends to be pretty poor, but there are two emotional attribution errors that can make our emotional lives miserable and stop us from developing emotional skills and understanding.

For many centuries, we were taught that emotions were problems. Emotions were wrongly thought to be irrational, untrustworthy, unspiritual, or unhelpful. We've been taught many myths, such as the myth of negative emotions, and we've mostly been chased away from our emotions.

Today, we know more, and we understand that emotions are vital aspects of our ability to think, feel, understand the world, and act appropriately. Emotions help us with everything we do, and each emotion brings us a unique set of gifts, skills, and intelligence.

But our centuries of anti-emotion education continue to haunt us, and we continue to make troubling emotional attribution errors.

1. Blaming emotions when problems occur

First, whenever there's trouble, we notice that there are always emotions present. The bigger the trouble, the more emotions there are!

If we don't understand that emotions come to help us, we might blame the emotions for the trouble instead of knowing that they're responding to the trouble. That's a huge attribution mistake.

This mistake makes people distrust their emotions (or even hate them). But emotions are not the problem, and they never were.

Your emotions identify the problem, and they bring you the intelligence, energy, and skills you need to deal with the problem!

When you can learn the language of your emotions and learn to befriend them, you can change your life and your relationships for the better.

Your emotions are not the problem; they address the problem.

2. Blaming the emotions for people's lack of emotional skills

When people think of emotions such as anger or envy, they often think of worst-case scenarios: people exploding with rage and hurting others, or people being consumed by envy and grabbing too much while everyone else gets nothing.

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These are terrible behaviors, and it's easy to understand why people would mistakenly see the two emotions as the culprits; however, anger and envy aren't to blame.

All of your emotions bring you gifts and skills, and all of them are necessary. Anger and envy are powerful feelings that can help you accomplish amazing things, but you have to know how to work with the power they bring to you.

Anger helps you set boundaries around what you value. How you set boundaries is where your emotional skills come into play.

You can set boundaries well or badly; you can set them with cruelty and hurt people; you can set them with passivity and confuse people; or you can set them with strength and kindness.

Your anger is a tool that brings you specific skills. How you use the tool of your anger depends on you.

Envy helps you identify opportunities and keep yourself and others safe in the social world of money, possessions, and recognition. How you keep yourself and others safe is where your emotional skills come in.

You can identify opportunities and resources well or badly: You can focus everything on yourself and leave nothing for others; you can give away too much and reduce your own resources; or you can create equality and fairness for yourself and everyone else.

Your envy is a tool; how you use the tool of your envy depends on you.

Your emotions are vital aspects of your intelligence

Your emotions are essential parts of your social skills and your ability to think, love, dream, and heal. Identifying the job your emotions do, and learning how to help them do it with skill and maturity, is essential for your well being. It's also essential for your relationships and every part of our social world.

Emotional attribution errors are completely understandable, because we've been taught to distrust, suppress, and even hate our emotions. But we and our emotions can survive any kind of bad training, thank goodness.

Your emotions, all of them, contain gifts, skills, and specific intelligence to help you make sense of your world and act with emotional sensitivity and awareness.

If you can welcome your emotions, learn their language, and develop your emotional skills, you can access the emotional genius that has lived inside you your whole life long.