I’ve been thinking a lot about emotional bandwidth, in particular because I think the next stage of being a country will require a wider swath of people to have a larger bandwidth before being dysregulated.
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The way this was taught to me some time ago is that we all have an emotional cup, and it has levels. It fills based on different experiences we have which cause us to feel “good” and “bad” emotion.
So an extra difficult day with a ton of triggers will have your cup fill up and if it hits a 10 - you can implode (disassociate severely, say terrible things to yourself, withdraw) or explode (yell, externalize internal feeling without control or choice).
Every human needs a set of activities, tools, rituals that empty your cup. The thing is, while the cup goes 1 to 10 in everyone - some folks have a 10oz cup and some folks have a 2 gallon jug. This means your wingspan, what you can hold in a given day, is larger.
We are watching men with 2oz shot glasses run the country into the segregationist ground for instance. It is important as a leader to know which subjects shrink your normally large cup and which subjects you have your full bandwidth for.
Sometimes majority groups have barrier to talking about race is trauma they have around “being a good person” or not. Learning becomes constricted by an identity based attachment.
I've been thinking along similar lines in recent years of like "I think the only way we're going to make durable positive progress as a country is for more people to do the deep work of introspection and personal growth".
Which like...how do we help make that happen? How does that scale? etc
I mean, the word vulnerability was pretty looked down on until Brene Brown. I think it’s multiple narrative changes and to deeply train lots of folks who can guide. It is certainly a huge lift, but it is possible. I firmly believe.
Leading/living by example is what I got so far in my thoughts, and what I try to do every day. I'm sure you probably have more concrete/scalable ideas though?
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Which like...how do we help make that happen? How does that scale? etc
Because I don't think waiting around and simply hoping is a strategy, but we also can't like, force an entire country into talk therapy.