Over the past few weeks, I have had to do a lot of emotional regulation – ensuring that who I am talking too is on the same page, balancing my emotions with my audience, but ensuring I am still calmly stating facts, and not posting everything I am currently feeling on social media because…well I work for the Federal Government, and some of my feelings are intense.

My mother was not a person who ever said sorry – she was a hit first, ask questions never, and you better believe she was always “right” – you know the type. Growing up in our household was probably not very different from the 50’s – children were seen and not heard, and an adult was always respected, and a child never received an apology, even if the adult was wrong. I learned to keep my emotions concealed and that has served me well in life – but it does have its downsides.

Keeping your emotions bottled up all the time is not healthy – and much like a can of soda in the freezer, if you don’t take let them out eventually those emotions are going to burst – usually in unpredictable chaotic outbursts that could consist of yelling, crying or both. For a long time, I thought I had everything under control – but in reality I just hadn’t burst yet.

Working with children was probably my saving grace – I had learned patience from dealing with my mother for so many years, but I never had a voice for the emotions inside – until I had to help toddlers and preschoolers understand the emotions inside them. Cannot state enough how beneficial the movie “Inside Out” is to helping military kids process the emotional turmoil of moving as a pre-teen.

Getting my emotions under control – understanding my triggers, and the best way to react to them – was genuinely HARD. Even after 15+ years working in childcare, being married and raising two children for 14 years, and numerous leadership positions later, I still make mistakes. BUT I am finally starting to feel comfortable with my self-regulation, my emotions and how to respond in different situations. Emotional self-regulation is critical to being a good leader, a good person, and a responsible human being.

Recognizing your role in the situation, what your emotions are, the beliefs, values, biases, prejudices, experiences, fears, dreams, feelings and fallacies – everything you are in a single conversation is IMPORTANT. If you don’t know what makes you you – how are you supposed to relate to anyone else and have a true conversation where you both listen and connect with one another? How do we move forward, if all we ever deal with is the visible surface of the iceberg, and we don’t recognize the underlying breadth of the ice about to tear a whole in the relationship, because we refused to acknowledge it was even there?

We can’t…. But for some reason the people in charge refuse to acknowledge this, and have put the country in a stalemate. What can we do to fix this?