One way that emotions go astray is they become disconnected in space, time, or direction. This seems to be especially true with anger and anxiety, although, I am sure it fits for other emotions as well.

Emotions can be thought of as providing information (I will post more on this idea later). The information provided by emotion is typically about “situations” that involve our self. Is the situation good, if so the emotion is positive? Is the situation bad, if so the emotion is negative?

Too often though we appraise a situation as negative, e.g. work was bad today, then we carry the negative appraisal forward in time and place. The classic is we go home and “kick the dog.” The bad day started at 10 a.m. (time) while we were at work. We kicked the metaphorical dog at 6 p.m. (disconnect). The boss gave a negative appraisal to our monthly sales result and proceeded to chew us out. Instead of kicking back at the boss (direction) we kicked the dog (disconnect). The boss is at work (space) the dog is at home (disconnect).

One path to improving our relational life is to make sure our emotions are accurately located in time, space, and direction.