Mental Fitness Mondays: Emotion Regulation in the Face of Injustice
How to Stay Calm When You’re Furious at Injustice
You’ve just found out that your employer is making a load of your colleagues redundant, while the CEO has been awarded a £2 million bonus.
You’ve read a news story about hate crimes targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Your social media is full of a hate campaign against your local MP for supporting the rights of a local Muslim community… and that MP also happens to be your boss.
It’s hard to stay emotionally regulated when you’re constantly exposed to social injustice.
At Real Clear, many of the people we work with are employed by MPs, unions, and schools; environments where they’re regularly confronted with deeply upsetting information. It can make you question humanity.
So in today’s post, I want to help you strengthen your Emotion Regulation muscle, while still honouring the fact that anger is real, valid, and meaningful.
What is Emotion Regulation?
Emotion regulation is a mental fitness muscle we can all build. It’s your ability to:
- Recognise your emotions
- Sit with them, rather than act on them immediately
- Respond in healthy, constructive ways
It’s part of the Self Care Muscle of mental fitness, because taking care of your emotional wellbeing is just as vital as tending to your physical or psychological health.
From Anger to Action
Imagine you’ve just read or heard something that’s made you furious.
The mentally fit response isn’t to suppress your feelings or to explode with rage. Instead, it’s to:
1. Feel the feelings, acknowledging them and their impact.
2. Understand why you feel that way, with self-compassion.
3. Channel that energy into something purposeful that also helps you to restore your nervous system (staying angry is tough on your body).
A Story: Khorshed's Response
Khorshed is a Caseworker for an MP. At a recent constituency meeting, he learns that one local religious community is being targeted: bricks through the windows of their religious buildings, hate messages through their letterboxes.
He feels furious; how can people be so hateful? He also feels heartbroken for the community and frustrated that he can’t do more in that moment.
Instead of reacting immediately, Khorshed pauses.
He notices his mix of emotions: anger, sadness, helplessness, and even a desire for revenge. He takes some deep breaths. He reminds himself to respond, not react.
And so, he makes a meaningful plan. He looks at how he can provide practical support to the community. He talks it through with a trusted colleague. He schedules time to rest, breathe, and care for himself, drawing on the tools he learned from Real Clear (of course!).
Most importantly, Khorshed shifts his focus. Instead of fixating on the upsetting story, he directs his energy toward the change he wants to make.
(For the record, Khorshed is fictional. But he could easily be one of the real-life Caseworkers I’ve worked with.)
Why This Matters
When you work closely with injustice, it’s easy to feel hopeless or permanently angry.
It can lead us to feel stressed and like the whole world is rotten. This feeling impacts on your nervous system and can affect relationships and motivation levels.
Zooming Out
One way to build emotional resilience is to zoom out.
If your day is full of people bringing you difficult news, make it a habit to seek out the good stuff too. Watch a bee enjoying a flower. Share a moment of kindness. Practise using your Mindfulness muscle to notice the beauty that’s still around you.
Celebrate what you did to make it better
The injustice happened, but you did your bit to make things better. If you can focus on what you achieved, over how unfair it all was, that can help shift your emotions.
A coaching question for you:
What helps you stay emotionally regulated when you encounter injustice?
