It isn’t easy, at times, to find the right words for how you are feeling. It's also very impossible to tell what produces specific feelings. What causes someone to be angry or disappointed? Sometimes the granularity of the difference between the two feelings is so minuscule that you might not know it yourself.

You may be upset but express your disappointment as rage. Regrettably, as a society, we judge behavior and then attribute emotion to that behavior, where it should be the other way around. For instance, disappointment is caused by unmet expectations. When there is an injustice or unfairness, on the other side, anger is aroused. Just as everyone had to learn their ABCs in school, developing an emotional vocabulary is important for recognizing, comprehending, and expressing emotions, particularly in the workplace.

It's tough to stay focused and perform well in our work-life while we're struggling or suffering in our personal lives, no matter how hard we try. For most of us, we have been trained to leave our emotions at the door. As a result, we become detached from our emotions, particularly the ones such as sorrow, anger, and anxiety. But while we can suppress or deny our emotions, we can’t get rid of them. Whether we recognize them or not, they’re still there.

Consequently, until you are connected to all of your emotions, you cannot cope with stress, fully understand your actions, or regulate how you think and behave. Everyone keeps repeating the phrase "We're all in this together," which is a cliche that people are sick of hearing. It's also utterly untrue. The emotionally intelligent way to express the “We are in this together” statement is instead to say, “We are all weathering a different storm, and HOW can we ask for help to get through it”. We will suppress our feelings if we do not learn to articulate them properly, and we will never receive the care we need.