On Friday, I decided to track my emotions, just to see what I’d learn. During lunch with DH, I learned that he is a cold fish, while I am a seething volcano of emotions. As lunch ended, I listed the emotions I had just experienced, and asked him about his. “None,” he replied.
“None!?! How can you not have emotions every second of the day? Even when I looked at the menu, I noticed an emotion of pleasure when I saw that they were serving my favorite soup!”
“So? I don’t have any emotions over lunch. It’s just lunch.”
“Don’t you have emotions all day long? Every few seconds a new one, or several mixed together?”
“Nope. I was too busy working,” my darling cold fish replied.
Arrgh. Sometimes I think it’s an absolute miracle how men and women ever form lasting relationships.
I managed to track my emotions for about half my day, even though I probably forgot about a third of them before I had a chance to write them down. Here they are:
My emotional day
Between Breakfast and 10 a.m.
Worry that I eat too much
Happy at funny internet shows
Warm fuzzy at American Idol
Excited at finding French idol
Awe at the beauty and stillness snow brings
Guilty that the kitchen isn’t clean from last night
Happy anticipation of my delicious breakfast
Love at watching my husband shovel snow
Pleasure at finding the camera
Satisfaction at bringing up more toilet paper
Tense from not being able to make DH understand my work problem
Worry that I won’t be able to make others understand it either
Amazement at the amount of email
Fear of failing at a new request from my boss
Anxiety at having to make small talk at the coffee machine
Anger at the work chaos caused by top mgt
Wish to help colleague with work problem, can’t because too busy
Anger at fat cat mgrs
Warm fuzzy at For Better or Worse cartoon
Amusement at Doonesbury
Empathy at Dilbert
Relief when listening to harpist Susan Drake
Power at analyzing a problem and assigning it to someone else
Relief when someone I’ve been looking for finds me first
Around 10 a.m.
Nervous when I find several people in my office
Fun at the chat with the group
Annoyed at the person for the language
Disappointed that I don’t like their advice
Relieved when they leave
Displeasure at having to solve a computer problem
Focused while working on it
Dissatisfied that I didn’t completely solve it or even try
Glad that I at least got the data
Amazed at the number of emotions I have
Guilt for not working at the moment
Around Lunch
Worry about eating too much
Worry that I’m late for my lunch appointment
Frustrated at not making more progress
Overwhelmed a little at the amount of learning on the new projects
Worry that I’m too emotional when hubby and I compare notes on detecting emotions
Fear of slipping and falling when we have to cross a fallen tree and icy snow patch
Anger at husband when he wants to go back and do the tree again, just to “get me used to it”
Powerful when I decide to not let the kid go away for a few days
Scared that it’s the wrong decision
After lunch I got too involved in work to track any more. I clearly forgot more than half my emotions during lunch time.
Look at all those emotions! When I extrapolate across my whole day, that’s probably 100 remember-able emotions, plus who knows how many I can’t remember. I know I suppressed most of the guilt feelings, and actually had to go back and remember when I felt guilt.
That’s maybe 1000 emotions a week, 50,000 a year. Man o man, if I tried to suppress my emotions by eating 1 calorie per emotion, I would gain about 14 pounds a year! Clearly eating to suppress emotions is a real problem.
Now to practice letting emotions go by without eating over the stressful ones.
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