EMOTIONS AS EMPOWERMENT
Michael F. Broom, Ph.D.
Empowered, we can focus the energy of our emotions toward the goals of our intellect. Such focused emotion
is called passion. Passion, in this sense, contrasts to the confusion of mixed or denied emotions which often
seem like loose cannons when their pent-up expression explodes. Such explosions have given emotions their
frightening aspect and bad name.
Empowered, we understand that our emotions are energy. We know that we have emotions rather than
emotions having us. Normally, we say, “I am angry.” or “I am happy.” as if these feelings are who we are.
Hence, we act as victims of our emotions. Empowered, we use the energy of our emotions as we choose and
direct. Emotions are like hands. We are not our emotions; we have our emotions just as we have our hands.
From having our emotions we can focus and use our emotions like we focus and use our hands. We have our
hands; our hands do not have us. Have your emotions; don’t allow them to have you—automatically and
unthinkingly directing your behavior.
Empowered, we can be curious about our emotions, come to understand them and use them as we wish.
We’ve already discussed that emotion, literally defined, means “to move out” and that emotion and motivate
both have the same root meaning of “to move.” We understand that our emotions define the degree to which
we will to move or act. In essence, emotions are the experience of caring and importance. The more I care
about something the stronger is the emotion I have. The more important something is to me the stronger the
emotion and the more I will tend to empower myself into action.
We find it ironic that our society so highly values achievement and productivity yet devalues emotions. High
levels of achievement only occur when we feel strongly about what we want to accomplish. As we have
discussed, most of us have been raised to devalue, discount, restrain, constrain, and otherwise inhibit the
emotional energies which are the underpinnings of our passion. Rather than live passionately we live and work
with our joy, love, excitement, anger, and fear bound-up and constrained—an experience that is tolerable at
best and chronically painful at worst. We can accomplish little that we can feel as satisfying or productive if we
are without our passion. We disempowered ourselves when we devalued our emotions. As we recreate
emotions as systemically necessary partners for our intellect, we empower ourselves and avail ourselves of the
focused passion needed to create whatever we want most in our work and in our lives.
To empower ourselves to use our emotions rather than be used by them, the following descriptions of specific
emotions can be useful. They fall into two major categories as follows:
1. JOY is the sense of well-being that is the experience of integrity, completeness, wholeness, and full
productivity. In an ultimate sense, joy, productivity, happiness, and love are contexts that enable us to
satisfyingly accept and deal with any and all of life’s circumstances and conditions. Joy and productivity in
this sense of context acknowledges and accepts pain as a necessary requisite for healing—the return to joy
and productivity.
2. PAIN is the perception of a loss of integrity, productivity, wholeness, and completeness. Pain points to the
need to heal. Betrayal and rejection, for example, are painful experiences in which we experience a sense
of loss of wholeness. To be less then fully productive is to not be truly whole or complete.
Pain is an emotional and physical way of calling to conscious attention the need for healing. Pain is an
experience of dis-ease or discomfort culturally interpreted as bad. Correspondingly, the person experiencing
pain or a lack of productivity is often thought of as “not OK” and thinks of him/herself as “not OK.”
Accordingly, pain is often not acknowledged to oneself and/or to others. This desire to deny pain is often
accomplished by projection, denial, repression (or other defense-mechanisms) and, hence, provides the
base of suffering at work or at home.
Because we have such finitely negative attitudes about pain we also tend to have trouble with the following
pain-related emotions:
a. FEAR and ANXIETY are the perception (real or imagined) of some threat of pain. The goal of fear and
anxiety is to remove oneself from the vicinity of the threat. Anxiety can also be based in the festering of
unreleased, denied pain and the accompanying fear that it may erupt again.
b. ANGER is the desire to destroy, remove, or warn away that which is perceived as having caused or about
to cause pain. Its purpose is vengeance and/or prevention of pain’s reoccurrence. We, too often, have
strongly held stories about the not-OKness of anger and repress it accordingly. Unfortunately, such
repression leaves us open to not resolving dangerous situations that will cause us more pain at some
later date.
c. GUILT is the pain of self-blame from the perception of having caused pain. Guilt is often derived from the
socially conditioned but erroneous belief that one can cause emotional pain in another and that causing
pain makes one a bad or not OK person. Guilt can lead to seeking punishment and being scapegoated
as a means of expiation. Guilt is the pain of our own sense of failure and worthlessness when we believe
we should have done better.
d. SADNESS and GRIEF are reactions experienced from the perception that we have lost something
important to our sense of productivity, integrity and well-being. The goal of sadness is to regain that
which has been lost. When sadness includes the thought that the loss is permanent, grief is experienced.
The goal of grief is the re-integration of self to regain the sense of wholeness and productivity.
Depression and despair occur when we belief that wholeness and productivity may not or cannot be
regained.
e. SUFFERING is the maintenance of pain while healing is still incomplete. Sometimes it is used to avoid
the acute, sharper experience of pain or for the punishment required by guilt.
Emotions exist in a range of quantity from unnoticeable to overwhelming. The pique of being caught by a red
traffic signal is often so small an emotion that it goes unnoticed. On the other hand, many of us deny our
emotions to the point where unconsciously held emotions build-up to be finally released in an overwhelming,
undirected rage. As we learn to experience, focus, and express our emotions in the small to moderate amounts
in which they normally occur, we will no longer experience the over-reactions that come from the unwanted,
sudden release of pent-up, unfinished emotional business.
Many believe that emotional behavior will be uncontrollable if they are allowed full expression. This need not
be so. Again, if we allow ourselves to experience our feelings as they arise, we can begin to choose the focus
and manner of their expression. We can choose to express emotion quietly or vehemently, punitively or
productively. The key to such control of our emotional expression is in being conscious of them. When we
suppress or deny them, we surrender our conscious ability to manage their expression. Emotions will express
themselves—under conscious control or unconsciously through the physical or mental illness and
inappropriate behavior that often serves to make our lives and our loves more difficult than need be.
In and of themselves, emotions are neither good nor bad, though the use to which they are put may be so
viewed. They are crucial and necessary if we are to act on behalf of healing ourselves and creating satisfaction
and productivity. The energy of emotions can be focused toward creativity, problem-solving, and building
effective relationships. That same emotional energy can be used debilitatingly and punitively to damage our
self-esteem, our bodies, and our relationships. As we attempt to repress, suppress, deny and, in effect, hold on
to our emotions, we experience suffering and loss of productivity. As we experience our emotions and focus
them we can achieve our goals of productivity and satisfaction—within ourselves and with others.
Empowered, our feelings are neither suspect nor unworthy. Empowered, we can express our emotions as
freely or privately as we wish and use them strategically as fits our purposes and goals. If we so choose, we
can use anger and fear to galvanize ourselves into positive action rather than fight or hide. We can use our
pain as a signal to attend to wounds and their attendant loss of productivity that need our compassionate
attention. Much better than using pain for blame, worry, or suffering. We can use our joy to celebrate ourselves
and others to support even greater productivity. With our emotions focused and our passions liberated, not
much will stand in our way.