DailyJim: March Madness, political conversations, and the myth of emotional compartmentalization

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, March 21st, 2024, I think, the first day of spring. Today I want to talk about March Madness political conversations and the myth of emotional compartmentalization.

That is a mouthful. So today was the start, the official start of the NCAA tournament that is the college basketball tournament for men in the U.S. Today and there are a lot of emotions a lot of people love watching this tournament myself as well because there are 64 teams that fight it out over I think it's like two weeks and it's one game elimination so if you lose you're out you move on to the next round and it can be really intense some of the games are very close and there are some upsets where the big favorite team loses to the small team like for example i am up in a small town right now called rochester michigan and the oakland university uh golden grizzlies beat kentucky wildcats i think it's wildcats who are very famous for being very good most years and so So, yeah, there tends to be a lot of emotion when it comes to March Madness compared to sports in general. And I would say sports in general often carries a lot of emotion. And I'm curious if you've ever noticed somebody in your life or yourself have almost a disproportionate reaction to something that's happening in sports. So maybe your team wins or your team loses and you feel more upset or more excited than you would have expected. I think this happens a lot. I think a lot of times sports is one of the few places where we're allowed to express emotion, especially as men, but just people in general, like where we're allowed to feel the full range. change. Okay, now let me talk about political conversations. So a friend of mine was going to see another one of his friends for lunch, and he was worried that it was going to be a political conversation about politics in the U.S. And didn't really want to get into it because he couldn't figure out a way to almost disarm the anger and suspicion and distrust that his friend has.

What I kept saying and thinking is that sometimes we have, again, this disproportionate response to something that's happening in politics. Like, for example, maybe we hate Hillary Clinton. Why do we hate her so much or why would somebody hate her so much? Again, maybe it's disproportionate. Maybe politics is one of the few spaces, along with sports, where we're allowed to talk about feelings, where we're allowed to feel the anger, the excitement, the disappointment, the sadness, whatnot.

And so it comes to my main point about this idea of the myth of emotional compartmentalization, oh that word is tough and i'm a native speaker oh my goodness but i'm thinking i should have my friends in uganda try to say the word compartmentalization some of them will i'm not trying to say people in uganda can't speak english very well but sometimes depending on the accent certain words are hard just like it would be very difficult for me to do a tongue twister in a foreign language. Sometimes I can't even do the words that aren't tongue twisters.

But back to the original point, I think a lot of times we think that we can maintain emotions for one thing in one space and that those emotions do not overlap into other aspects of our lives. And I think it's mostly bullshit, to be honest. I think it's not really how emotions work or how the body works but we like to think it is I don't know why we like to think it so much and I think this causes a lot of challenges for me sometimes because some I'd say some people believe this but I think most people believe this and they get frustrated with me they're like no no but why can't you love me but not love other people I'm like well if I get better at loving I love I just feel loved they're like no no no but like just just focus it on me. Don't focus it so much on others. I'm like, I just, I feel it. Or what if you get so excited about one thing, only get excited about it in this space. Or if you get angry, only be angry here. Don't let that anger transfer into other aspects of your lives. And I'm thinking, anger, I feel it in the body. And so if I didn't sleep well, and I'm frustrated that I didn't sleep well, it's very likely that I'm going to be more frustrated if my basketball team loses.

Conversely, if I slept really well and I just got an email from somebody that made me feel really happy, then I may be even happier if my team wins.

Who knows? Maybe if I feel more disappointed with the email, then the relief of the win hits me even harder because I've been struggling so much in life and I really needed that win. I think so often we don't talk about how emotions don't just stay in their neatly confined boxes and how our beliefs and behaviors often don't stay in those boxes either. There and so i like i was trying to talk to my friend i say listen if you're talking about this guy try to get it to go deeper try to have a deeper conversation the challenge is this guy may be allowed to talk about his anger when it comes to politics but not his anger when it comes to his wife or not his fear when it comes to his medical condition and maybe that's the real thing that's happening maybe that's causing 90 of the fear in his life or you know related to 90 of the fear in his life. And he's just not allowed to talk about it. So he gives the impression that 100% of the fear is coming from Joe Biden or whoever the political figure is that they don't like at the moment. And gosh, I just wish we would realize that it's hard, I would say maybe maybe damn near impossible, to actually confine certain emotions to certain aspects of our lives. I think people try to do it, but I think what happens in general is that we squash emotions overall. So if I'm not allowed to be too excited around some person, then I just stop being excited in general. Or if I'm not allowed to be too angry around someone, then I just stop being angry. I stop feeling it. My body still feels it. I just disconnect from it so I can get angry, but I don't realize I'm getting angry. And I've seen this happen with lots of people. And so for me, it's just this conversation, this awareness that when somebody. Like when I'm talking about something political or when I'm driving out to Rochester to go celebrate, maybe it's not only because Oakland University won and I'm excited to hang out. Maybe it's I'm also excited to get out of the house. Maybe it's I'm also excited to be around a large crowd because I haven't been around a large crowd that's really amped up and celebrating something together. Maybe it's I'm missing kind of the energy of being in that large space. Maybe there are so many things happening in my life that are causing me to feel so many things. And those things, I would say, all come together to contribute to the decisions that I make and the behaviors that I do.

Man, I just wish people would stop saying, well, I just compartmentalize it. That's over here. And then I do this other thing over here. And I'm like, no, you don't. You think you do. It looks like you think you do. But I'm not getting that impression.

I can't tell you how many people have been like, well, I'm not angry. I'm totally over that thing. That thing has no impact on what I'm doing here. I'm like, yeah, right. That thing has no impact. Are you sure? You sure? Sure, you didn't sleep well, and that has nothing to do with you being grumpy. You sure? Uh-huh. You haven't eaten in a while. That has nothing to do with you being hangry? Oh, okay. Oh, you're just angry at the politician. You're just angry at the referee in the sports game. It has nothing to do with you fearing that you're going to lose your job and angry at some of your behaviors of not leaving the job earlier. Oh, but we're not allowed to talk about those. So I think we like the idea of compartmentalization, compartmentalization, but I just don't think it's that much of a thing or that it actually plays out that way. But I'm curious if people want to rebut this, please. The point of these podcasts is not for you to say, yes, I fully agree with you. It's more think, feel, speak, exercise, or not exercise, express. So if you want, please reach out to me, reach out to somebody else, just talk, open up and share what's going on for you so that we could start communicating, Communicating, coming together as humans instead of just sitting in our own bubbles and shaking our heads and pretending we're not feeling how we're feeling. Okay, this is going to be about 10 minutes. I'm going to end and go watch some more basketball. Take care, y'all. See you next week. Talk to you next week. No see you. Talk to you.