The consequences of emotional constancy
What do the words “emotional constancy” mean to you? For most of the leaders we work with, they’ve internalized those words to mean that they shouldn’t register “negative” emotions - and feelings like fear or anger should never see the light of day. For many of those leaders, “emotional constancy” is a good thing - something they’ve been praised for and feel a need to convey - but it’s also driven by fear, and deeply connected to race and gender.
Even as a white man I share the fear of being overly emotional and seeing my own image tarnished in some way. My ego tells me that I have no “right” to emotions like insecurity or fear, and that if I share them with women or people of color they will judge me for being dissonant or blind. Of course, both women and people of color in our intensives often share their own deep fears about what it could mean for them to be honest about what they actually feel - and that the consequences of being labeled as emotional, weak, or angry feel downright dire.
So I don’t mean to judge anyone striving for “emotional constancy.” Especially when the consequences feel so scary. But trying to be “emotionally constant” carries its own set of consequences, and that’s what I invite us to explore.
“Emotional constancy” is not how we’re designed. Nowhere in our evolution did we develop an emotional cruise-control button. In fact, the opposite. Emotions are a form of intelligence. They are a tool that Homo sapiens have been refining for hundreds of thousands of years. The butterflies in your stomach, the lingering heartache, the flash of anger – those aren’t signs of weakness or areas of growth. They’re all telling you something important.
As psychotherapist and author Ilene Dillon put it, “Emotions are energy – each with a different pattern that carries a different message. Love says, ‘come closer.’ Loneliness says ‘you’ve got more energy going out than coming in.’ Emotion gives us a message and once we learn that message and use it to deal with our experiences then we complete the learning and turn the emotion loose and move on.”
And that’s key - when we let ourselves feel, we can learn and set the feeling loose. The choice is not between performing “emotionally constant” or getting stuck in a fit of rage, uncontrollable sobbing, etc. Instead, we can accept normal feelings like frustration, fear, disconnect, mistrust, sadness, etc - and we can let ourselves feel them and move on. What leads to the sobbing and the rage? Suppressing emotions and trapping them inside. As Dillon writes, “All emotions, when held inside of us, grow and start festering, trying to find a way out.” We explode with anger only because of our many, many attempts to hold the anger inside. We burst into tears after continually pretending like we’re okay. Trying to control emotions is what ultimately allows our emotions to control us.
The consequence of holding all that in is real - for us as humans, and for our leadership. The research tells us that striving to be “unemotional” creates psychological unsafety, team dysfunction, and exhaustion. The effects are even greater on people (often women and people of color) that feel heightened stakes for being seen as too emotional.
So I’d invite you to explore your own relationship with “emotional constancy.” Do you feel like there are any emotions you’re not allowing yourself to have? Are there feelings that you’ve held inside? Are they festering? What would it feel like to let them out?
