Embracing Emotion in the Workplace: A Jungian Perspective on Emotional Intelligence

“You need to take the emotion out of it.”

How many times have you heard that at work? It sounds reasonable. Professional. Mature. But from a Jungian standpoint, it’s terrible advice.

You’re not removing emotion when you “take the emotion out of it.” You’re burying it. And buried emotions don’t decompose. They ferment.

Jung understood that emotions aren’t inconveniences to be managed. They’re signals from the unconscious—expressions of something deeper that deserves attention. When your colleague’s remark makes your blood boil, that anger isn’t a malfunction. It’s information. The question isn’t how to shut it down. The question is what it’s telling you.

Here’s what actual emotional intelligence looks like: you feel the frustration rise. You don’t suppress it. You don’t explode either. You notice it. You might even say, “The way you phrased that was frustrating for me.” That’s honest. That’s direct. And it opens a real conversation instead of a performance of professionalism.

There’s this other corporate favorite: “No one can make you feel a certain way. You choose how you feel.” Half true. You don’t choose your initial emotional reaction—that comes from the unconscious before your rational mind even wakes up. But you do choose what you do with it. You can notice it, sit with it, understand where it came from, and respond intentionally. That’s different from pretending it doesn’t exist.

Emotions are fleeting. They rise, they peak, they pass. When you actually let yourself feel them without either clinging to them or shoving them down, they move through. It’s the suppression that makes them stick around, that turns a moment of irritation into a chronic resentment.

A workplace where people can be honest about what they’re feeling isn’t weak. It’s the only kind of workplace where real trust can exist. Everything else is performance.