From Rage to Restraint: Do This Before You Send That Furious Email
When emotions hijack your keyboard, here’s how to take back control.
It was just a regular Friday at the office, until I saw it.
My email inbox showed one unread message.
I glanced at the name of the sender and took a sharp breath of air. This was yet another infuriating email from the rudest person I have ever dealt with in my career.
I should have been used to him by now, but I once again started feeling my blood boiling with rage.
I reread the email three times, getting more wound-up by the second.
Five different comebacks started flooding my brain.
This time, I had to respond. He went too far.
So, I clicked on “Reply”, removed his name from the recipient list (just in case I inadvertently sent the email before I was done) and started typing a satisfying, I’ll-put-you-back-in-your-place answer.
I was typing so fast, smoke was almost coming out of my keyboard—and my ears.
I reread my email feeling anticipatory satisfaction, the kind you get when you attack someone you feel has truly had it coming.
This is a guy who has a history of making various people from the organization cry.
A bully if there ever was one. Who does he think he is?
“I’ll show him,” I thought.
When navigating difficult emotions, I find that as a society, we are poorly equipped.
Things might be changing now, but as a millennial, the education system has not taught me much about a crucial skill: Self-soothing.
Talking about emotions is mostly seen as awkward, perhaps something for the weak.
This leads to many of us having worse lives than we would if we knew better.
As Brené Brown famously said:
"We like to think we are rational beings who occasionally have an emotion and flick it away, and carry on being rational. But rather, we are emotional, feeling beings; who, on rare occasions, think."
She explains:
“When something difficult happens, emotion is at the wheel. Cognition and behaviour are bound and gagged in the trunk and emotion is driving."
It is therefore crucial that we give emotions management more attention if we want to take better decisions and lead happier lives.
The Goal is Happiness
To the question “What do you want out of life?”, most people would reply some variation of: “To be happy.”
Now I know happiness will mean a different thing to different people, and the meaning we attach to it might evolve over time as we change and grow.
Thirty-four year old current me has by now realized two profound truths:
No one is coming to save me. Happiness is my responsibility. I have to make it happen for myself.
Happiness is a calm mind. A calm mind covers many essential things: the absence of suffering, being in the present, feeling content.
Therefore, the matter at hand becomes almost mathematical:
If Happiness is a function of Calm,
then to increase Happiness, I must increase Calm.
To increase Calm, I must decrease Intensity of difficult emotions.
To decrease Intensity of difficult emotions, I must increase Self-Soothing Skills.
5 Simple Steps That Actually Work
The art of emotions management is a broad topic, one I find endlessly fascinating. There is so much to be said about it — from how children acquire emotional regulation skills to topics such as emotional intelligence, self-awareness, emotional maturity.
The subject could be split into dozens of separate articles.
However, today I just want to give you five simple and practical actions that make a difference for me every day:
1. Notice It
When a difficult emotion arises, notice it.
How will you control it if you don’t even know it’s there?
It will pull you from your belly-button with a hook and jerk you in a direction you might have not chosen to go in the first place.
2. Name It
Once you’ve noticed the emotion, name it.
Be as specific as you can and avoid broad adjectives like “bad”, “mad”, “sad”.
Tap into your vocabulary to find specific words for what’s moving within you.
Disappointment is not the same as apprehension. Irritation is different from melancholy.
I oftentimes find I’m experiencing many emotions at once. Just yesterday, I found myself grappling with extreme irritation, sadness, and fatigue at the same time.
3. Pause
Before you react, pause.
Resist the urge to let the emotion take over and make you take action immediately.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is:
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor E. Frankl
It reminds me of this biology experiment we did in high school that consisted of applying electrical discharges (the stimulus) to the thighs of a dissected frog and observing its muscles’ contractions.
Unlike the poor frog’s body, you are very much alive and able to decide whether or not the stimulus should trigger a reaction from you — and if so, choose the adequate response.
4. Breathe
If you can, take a few minutes to breathe.
Try to look inward and notice the physical sensations in your body.
Be curious about it.
Perhaps you’ll be surprised to find a clenched jaw, a tight chest, or tense shoulders.
There is a myriad of breathing techniques and free guided breathing resources online to help with this.
I personally always go to Tamara Levitt’ Daily Calm 10-minute meditations on the app Calm.
It works as a reset button on me. I always feel better afterwards, even if I’m terrible at meditating and my mind always ends up wandering.
5. Envision Your Ideal Self
Once you’re calmer, conjure up the image of the ideal version of yourself, or that of someone you look up to.
How would they react?
What would they say?
Then go ahead—and try to do just that.
Sometimes, the Best Reaction is No Reaction
After saving my furious email as a draft for later, I noticed that I was feeling angry and disrespected.
I was at work and could hardly do a 10-minute meditation at my desk, so instead, I just took a few discreet deep breaths and tried to lower my shoulders and relax my jaw.
I then moved on to other tasks.
A couple of hours later when I went back to the email, I was still annoyed but calmer. I had distanced myself from the topic a little bit. I wondered what the best version of myself would do.
I decided she would simply rise above it.“When they go low, we go high”, as the saying goes.
I truly believed that the best version of me would simply not give this petty man a minute more of her attention and would busy herself with more important things.
And I did just that. I went back to my email draft and pressed delete.
I could visually see my ideal self, looking professional and unbothered.
She was elevated.
And for a second, I was her.
Have you ever had to manage your anger at work? I’d love to hear about your experience and how you handled it.
If any part of this resonated with you, subscribe for free and let’s get a little wiser together—1% at a time.