Why Being More in Tune with Our Emotions Can Help Better Navigate a Difficult Mental Wellness Journey

Boardgames are experiencing a burst of popularity and well they should. There is an incredible range out there and they all exist on a spectrum of 100% luck, like snakes and ladders, to 100% strategy, like chess. 

The 100% strategy games are an interesting category. Games like Chess, Connect 4, Hive etc. give players total visibility of every element of the game involved with zero surprises, and assuming everyone is familiar with the rules, winning is typically simply a case of who has practised the game more and who can process more information quicker. It pits logic against logic. 

These games attract a certain type of player who likes total control, total visibility, and no jeopardy. People who say they are ‘left-brained’, logical, analytical thinkers, who reason with facts, not emotions. 

However, this is nonsense. We all exist on an emotional spectrum and even the most logical of thinkers are ruled by emotions. How do you know what is a good decision? A good outcome? Because, ultimately, it feels right, it feels good. There are no decisions without emotions, there are no connections without emotions, there is no living without emotions. 

The spectrum we all live on is not how much we feel emotions, but how much we understand them and how we react to them. Those that say they do not feel and are ruled by logic may actually be more reactive, purely through not understanding what they are feeling, and so not building the skills to understand and work with their feelings. This is why they like games of total control and no surprises. The problem is life isn’t a game and there will always be surprises. 

We are all on a mental health journey, in the same way we are all on a physical health journey, and within that, no person’s pain is bigger or smaller than anyone else’s. 

This is something I really struggle to understand. I volunteered at the North London Holocaust Survivors centre a few years ago, which was a hugely humbling and grounding experience. On my very first day, there was an afternoon party to celebrate a documentary the BBC had made about a few of the survivors who had made the Royal Honours list. I remember being sat at the back of the room, listening to the horrific stories people were telling on screen, people who had been telling me jokes over our lunch of soup and bread, and suddenly seeing this helicopter view of myself. I was seeing the room top down. I was sat there, among more than 40 people who had survived the worst horror in history, seeing their families murdered in front of them, tortured and then having to build a new life in a war-torn Europe, alone and away from home. I remember thinking that while I had been through some serious stuff, it was miniscule in comparison to the tragedy of the lived experiences I saw in front of me. 

However, my psychologist argues otherwise, pointing me to Edith Eger, an Auschwitz survivor who became a psychologist after the war. In her famous book ‘The Choice’ Edith says that 

“There is no hierarchy of suffering. There's nothing that makes my pain worse or better than yours.” (Edith Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible).

We are all on a mental health journey, we all feel pain and it is all relative. So, understanding our feelings, and that they are relative to every person, is so important for understanding our lives, our relationships, and our work. 

Our work is hard. It is pressurised. In some ways it is constantly evolving and in others it is built on a foundation of principles, so running to keep up with the new, but staying still to observe the constant is exhausting.

We are a young industry too, with people going from being a young person at school or at university to suddenly being alone in the world and going through major life events constantly. Understanding what we are feeling, and what other people are feeling, will give you the skills to understand what is needed to build the best people and create the best work. Understanding that compassion isn’t a weakness and actually, that it turns up in three ways – how you treat others, how you let people treat you and how you treat you. 

I feel a sense of responsibility to talk about this for men because it is hard for us. Young men are taught not to feel, to bottle up emotions and to resolve conflict with anger and physicality, meaning we do not know what we need when we feel. 

But we do feel, and our feelings are relative and relevant. But if we don’t know what our feelings are, if we do not know how to identify them, we cannot know how to soothe, amplify or just be with them. 

Kae Tempest wrote in their fabulous book ‘On Connection’:

‘How can it be in the age of self-care, self-harm and self-improvement, knowledge of self hasn’t yielded the kingdom of heaven?’ 

Maybe, just maybe, we need to go back to fundamentals and build the base of understanding what we are truly feeling so we can act boldly on what they are telling us we need.