Some emotional pools are worth avoiding

​Maybe there is no greater threat to our collective health than living in a world where we are constantly exposed to each other's emotional turmoil.

Pastor Ashley Wooldridge says, "when emotions are high, wisdom is low."

We are all capable of saying and doing things that aren't our wisest choices because our emotions get the best of us.

Just a few decades ago, those poor choices had limited reach. The ripple effect was a few yards. Today, those poor choices can race across the ocean. Literally. And they can virally drag hundreds of thousands under on the way.

Our brains are constructed such that when we are experiencing high emotions, our ability to think logically is restricted. That's a brain function that is supposed to protect us. High emotions feel like a threat, so our nervous system wants us to react - fight, flight or freeze - not think.

With social media, we are daily invited into emotional pools that are NOT threats on our lives, but we go into them anyway fighting as if they are.

We enter into them without our thinking brains. Without wisdom.

The latest example of this is the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce relationship. I've stumbled into many online spaces where people are ripping people apart that they do not know over a couple they will never know.

Strangers tearing each other apart over strangers. How often is that the social media storyline?

Just a few decades ago, a room full of people could go to war over such a relationship, assuming they even knew about it. Today, a whole world goes to war over it.

The thing is, Kelce and Taylor go about their lives kissing and holding hands and doing concerts and playing in Super Bowls. The emotions they experience with each other seem to be working out just fine.

The emotions many of us experience fighting about their emotions, however, well that's another story.

These emotions have consequences. We say things that inflame our emotions and other's emotions. And there's plenty of science today to help us understand that inflamed emotions have significant health consequences.

Diving into each other's emotional turmoil and engaging in the related interpersonal attacks; it's killing us.

I love social media. It's personally given me a platform to give and receive inspiration and goodness in my life. But I have taken steps to minimize the risk of drowning in someone else's emotional turmoil.

If someone consistently triggers my emotions in ways that aren't healthy for me, I disengage from them. And we are all pretty good judges of emotions that aren't good for us.

If I find myself tempted to dive into emotional pools that have no real relevance on my life, I move on. You read one comment in an inflamed emotional pool, chances are you're sticking around until you're inflamed. And peeing in that pool.

And maybe most important, no matter what opinion I ever have about something, I will never attack someone else because of theirs. We can experience high emotion opinions about something without saying unwise things about someone else in the midst of those high emotions.

Things said that I have personally found I often later regret.

Life offers enough emotional challenges in the circles we walk in without us needing to dive into emotional challenges we'll never come within a bazillion miles of. Even if social media does make them feel like they ARE our circles.

Protect yourself. Protect those around you. Protect those thousands of miles away from you.

Let's all stay rooted in the emotions that really are trying to watch over our lives, not the ones trying to destroy it.