You will be able to explain the difference between suppressing an emotion and regulating it, using James Gross's process model.
On Thursday afternoon, during a call with the client, Jason talked over Arif again. This time Arif did what he thought a professional should do. He kept his face neutral, nodded, said "sure, go ahead", and carried on as if nothing had happened. Inside, his jaw was clenched for the rest of the hour. Afterwards he could not remember what the client had said about the revised timeline, and he had to ask a colleague.
Most of us were taught some version of what Arif did, keeping it in so nobody sees, and it feels a lot like self-control while you are doing it. The studies in this lesson point the other way. Hiding a feeling turns out to be one of the more expensive ways to handle it, and there are cheaper options earlier on.
James Gross, a psychologist at Stanford, developed what is called the process model of emotion regulation. Its central idea is that an emotion unfolds over time, from the situation that starts it to the reaction you show, and that you can step in at five points along the way.
The first is choosing the situation, which means deciding whether to walk into it at all. Once you are in it, the second is changing the situation, for example by asking for a different meeting format. The third is where you put your attention within the situation, and the fourth is reinterpreting the event so that it means something different to you. The fifth comes after the feeling has arrived, when what you can still change is your breathing, your expression and what you say and do.
The first four act before the emotion has fully built. The fifth acts after. Most of the effort people put into staying calm goes into the fifth, at the last second.
Suppression is a specific response-stage strategy: hiding the outward signs of a feeling while the feeling itself carries on inside. A straight face over a racing heart. "No problem" through gritted teeth. It is what Arif did on Thursday.
Suppression is sometimes the right call in the moment, for instance when you would rather a client did not see you rattled. The trouble comes when it is your main or only strategy. Research in Gross's tradition has linked habitual suppression to two costs that matter at work.
The first is memory. In laboratory studies, people asked to hide their reactions during an upsetting film or conversation remembered less of what was said than people who were not. Holding a straight face uses up attention you would otherwise spend listening. That is exactly what happened to Arif with the client's timeline.
The second is closeness. People who say they suppress their feelings as a habit tend to report less close relationships and feel less supported by others. One explanation is that suppression makes you harder to read. The people around you sense something is off but cannot tell what, so trust grows more slowly.
The feeling also tends to come back. Arif's Thursday anger did not go anywhere. It came out on Friday night, in a curt reply to Grace that had nothing to do with Jason.
Compare suppression with acting earlier in the process. If you change how you see a situation before the feeling peaks, there is less to hold in. If you change the situation itself, the feeling may never build at all. Steering earlier usually takes less effort than clamping down at the end.
Here is how Arif mapped his Jason problem across the five stages.
Choosing the situation was limited, because client calls were part of his job, but he could stop booking a second call straight after the stand-up so that he did not arrive already wound up.
Changing the situation was more promising. He could ask Grace whether updates on client calls could follow a running order, with each person taking a turn, so interrupting would stand out.
Shifting attention: when Jason cut in, Arif could focus on noting the point Jason raised, to respond to it later, instead of replaying the interruption.
Reinterpreting: he could ask whether Jason was being dismissive or just anxious about the vendor issue. Lesson 3.2, Change the story you tell yourself about what happened, takes this further.
Changing his response: a slow breath, and a calm line such as "Jason, let me finish this point, then I want to hear yours." Lesson 3.3, Buy time when you feel yourself about to react, adds more.
Notice that the last stage is still there. Regulating your response is not wrong. It just works better when it is not the only tool you use.
You do not need to use every stage every time. The aim is to stop relying on the last one alone. For most recurring problems at work, one move at the first or second stage and one at the fourth will take a lot of pressure off the fifth.
In the activity below you take one recurring stressful situation of your own, perhaps one of the top two from your trigger log in lesson 2.4, and write one thing you could do at each of the five stages, as Arif did.
Pick one recurring stressful situation and write one thing you could do at each stage of the process model, from avoiding it to changing your response.
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