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Forbes
24-04-2025
- General
- Forbes
Try Ethan Kross's Methods to Manage Emotions in the Moment
Circle arrows icon set. Rotate arrow symbols. Round recycle, refresh, reload or repeat icon. Modern ... More simple arrows. Vector illustration. I recently spoke with Ethan Kross, PhD, about his new book Shift—Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You. Kross, an award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and Director of the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory, is also the author of the bestseller Chatter; he's an expert on emotion regulation. His research has been featured on CBS Evening News and Good Morning America, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and many other outlets. How do you keep your emotions from getting the best of you? Is there a quick fix? According to Kross, no; however, you can learn to regulate your emotions in the moment and make a plan to not be bested by intense feeling. Kross said there is no one size fits all tool for emotional regulation. Rather, he encourages readers to keep an open mind and try many different tools. Kross and I discussed methods and modalities you can keep in mind when you need to refocus and emotionally regulate in difficult situations. The WOOP self-regulation plan. If you're prone to reactivity, working a plan for emotional regulation can help you in moments when you are overwhelmed. Kross says implementing this plan pays dividends. He uses the framework 'Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan' (or WOOP) to assess any emotional challenge: W-Wish: Write down a wish or a goal that is important to you and within the realm of possibility O-Outcome: How will it feel when you accomplish this? Write it down. O-Obstacle: What are issues in your path keeping you from success? List them. P-Plan: The action you are going to take when you face this obstacle. Write how you will keep moving despite obstacles. Inevitably, you will face barriers as you pursue the things that are important to you. A WOOP plan allows you to not be thrown off or overly disheartened when you face setbacks. Remember that you have an action plan; feel your feelings, then work the plan. Mentally time travel. Worst-case scenario thinking can translate into rumination. Rumination can quickly lead to shame: thoughts such as 'Why is this happening?' or 'I should be past this point by now.' To break this cycle, you must "flip the switch," says Kross, through mental time travel. To mentally time travel, imagine how you will feel in a month, after you are out of the woods with this particular situation. Realize that whatever you are facing will pass. When you can connect with a feeling of certainty, you allow yourself to access solutions for how you will get through the current moment. Another way of mentally time traveling is looking backward; how have you dealt with these situations in the past? You made it through those times; you'll make it through this rough patch as well. Seek quick relief. When emotions are overwhelming you, reach for quick relief. Reset your emotional state. You can do this by listening to your favorite song on repeat, changing your space (go to your local coffee shop, for example), or by mentally time traveling. Kross shares a story about an interaction he had with his daughter. His daughter Dani played soccer; one Saturday on the way to a game, Dani was sitting in the backseat, surly. Emotions are contagious; Kross said his daughter's bad mood was also bringing him down. Then, one of Kross's favorite songs came on the radio. He and his daughter started singing along; when he looked to the back seat of the car, Dani was smiling and happy. When they got to the field, Dani was happy and ready to play. (Thanks, Journey!) A good song on the radio, a quick dance break—these mood lifters don't take much time, but they can change the tenor of your day. Kross advises readers to take advantage of these resets. Talk it out. Don't wrestle with a difficult situation in isolation. Talk through your issue with someone you trust. However, be careful with whom you share, says Kross; you want someone who will be empathetic, affirming, and solution-oriented—not someone who will cause you to despair more. Seek someone who is not in the same emotional straits as you. Be clear in your intent; say that you would like to share the facets of what is bothering you, and you're sharing because you'd like help seeing the situation differently. You don't want just to keep talking and talking—you want to come to a resolution. Kross shares that there are many different ways to manage your emotions and regulate. Leverage the tools in Shift so you can flip the switch so that you see the situation in a different light.
Chicago Tribune
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Heidi Stevens: What a psychology professor's grandmother — and Dennis Rodman — can teach us about regulating our emotions
Ethan Kross grew up under the loving, watchful gaze of his Polish grandparents, who lived a few blocks from his childhood home in Brooklyn. His grandmother greeted him after school with elaborate meals and generous helpings, which, Kross jokes now, kept his grandfather — a tailor — busy catching up with his grandson's expanding waistline. Dora and Izzy, Kross' grandparents, moved to Brooklyn after immigrating to Lithuania and then Israel. They were Holocaust survivors whose families and friends were slaughtered by Nazis, a fate they barely escaped. And they never talked about it. 'Except,' Kross writes in his new book, 'for one day a year.' 'Every year, on a crisp Sunday in the fall, my mom would drag me from my soccer game, still dressed in my cleats and typically muddy uniform, to attend the Holocaust remembrance day gatherings my grandparents held with other survivors,' Kross writes. 'That was where I first heard my grandmother speak of the time she spent living in the woods, going days without food, surviving the winter in a thin dress and coat. 'It's where,' Kross continues, 'I heard her talk about learning that her mother, grandmother and younger sister had been massacred in a ditch off the town square, and the moment she realized her father's rushed farewell from the home where they were hiding would be the last words she ever heard from him.' And it's where he saw her cry. Once a year. 'These were people I normally knew to be pillars of stability,' he writes, 'which made this display of raw emotion even more jarring.' Kross asked his grandmother all sorts of questions over their after-school meals — about the war, about her childhood, about her memories. But she brushed his queries away. Those weren't memories — or emotions — she wanted to access in those moments. Her reticence to open her wounds on demand sparked in Kross a curiosity and fascination with human emotions, particularly our ability to regulate them. 'As I grew up,' he writes, 'I became an observer of emotion.' He's now a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory. His new book, 'Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don't Manage You' became an instant bestseller. In it, Kross turns on their heads many of our assumptions about emotions, including the notion that we should tap into and process them the moment they surface. He writes about the long history of humans trying to control (defeat may be a more accurate term) our emotions, including the ancient practice of carving holes in our skulls. He profiles people, including a Navy SEAL, who've trained themselves to experience their emotions as signals — not to avoid, but to tune into and deploy with precision. He shares emotional regulation research and strategies, including this one I love: Talk to yourself in the third person. Because we're so much better at giving advice to other people than taking advice of our own, a simple shift to 'You can handle this' instead of 'I can handle this' can be a game-changer. It's called distanced self-talk, and it helps you see and, importantly, feel a situation from a different perspective. The book is fascinating, and Kross' grandmother is gently and generously woven throughout. In a particularly powerful passage, he writes about what his grandmother had in common with, of all people, Dennis Rodman. Rodman, the five-time NBA champion and former Chicago Bull, was known for what he did off-court as much as what he did on — especially his occasional disappearing acts before big games. Hiding out in Las Vegas, hitting a World Championship Wrestling match in Detroit with Hulk Hogan, marrying Carmen Electra for nine days. 'When I look at Rodman's antics,' Kross writes, 'I see more than just a party boy shirking his responsibilities. I see someone strategically using distraction and avoidance to regulate their emotions. Rodman's determination to step away from the stress and anxiety of such a high-pressure position was an effective counterbalance to his focus and determination on game day.' What does all that have to do with Kross' grandmother? 'The septuagenarian that I watched describe her father's last words was not a stoic,' Kross writes. 'She was suffused with emotion, shot right back into the past, fully feeling the reverberations of her trauma. I wasn't wrong that my grandmother suppressed emotion in her day-to-day life. She certainly did. But what I didn't understand was that her superpower wasn't denial; it was her ability to flexibly deploy her attention to what she'd endured.' I think this is such a powerful reframing of what so many of us may view as a weakness. Instead of seeing a kid who takes breaks from schoolwork as not applying himself; instead of seeing a partner who doesn't want to process that fight in that moment as avoidant; instead of beating ourselves up for taking a couple days to reply to that tricky email, we can acknowledge that a little time and distance might be assets, not liabilities. 'Our emotions are our guides through life,' Kross writes. 'They are the music and the magic, the indelible markers of our time on Earth. The goal is not to run from negative emotions, or pursue only the feel-good ones, but to be able to shift: experience all of them, learn from all of them, and when needed, move easily from one emotional state into another.' And if not easily, I would add, at least with some grace — for ourselves and for the people we love.
Wall Street Journal
28-02-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
‘Shift' Review: Riding the Ocean of Emotion
Ethan Kross was close with his grandmother, but throughout his childhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., she rebuffed his questions about her harrowing escape from the Nazis during World War II. Once a year, however, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, she would speak at her synagogue, sobbing as she recounted the murders of her immediate family members in Poland and her own improbable survival. Mr. Kross is a psychologist who directs the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan. He returns to his grandmother's story throughout 'Shift: Managing Your Emotions—So They Don't Manage You,' his lucid guide to emotion regulation. His grandmother was a typical Jewish bubbe the rest of the time, so growing up he was mystified by that annual display of anguish. 'Where did all that emotion go?' he asks. 'How did she manage to keep it locked up inside, and did she suffer for it?' Conventional wisdom would posit that she must have: We're told to process our emotions, not push them down. But Mr. Kross frequently breaks with conventional wisdom. His conclusion is that instead of repressing her feelings, his grandmother was able 'to flexibly deploy her attention to what she'd endured.' That flexibility is at the heart of 'Shift.' Mr. Kross suggests that while we can't control which emotions are triggered within us, we can, with practice, control their trajectories. The goal is to consider the messages that fear, anger and anxiety are sending us before shifting to a more constructive emotional state. Mr. Kross takes readers through recent research in the neuroscience of emotion, as well as a number of engaging case studies. And, with an amiable, can-do air, he offers a range of strategies to help manage emotions: They can be as simple as putting on a favorite song to alter your mood. 'No judgment, please,' he quips after revealing that he likes to sing along to Journey's 'Don't Stop Believin'.'
