Professional Doesn’t Mean Emotionless

There is a persistent misconception embedded in modern definitions of professionalism: that credibility requires emotional detachment.

That to be taken seriously, you must appear unaffected. Calm, but distant. Measured, but unmoved.

Over time, emotional regulation has been misinterpreted as emotional absence. In practice, many professionals are not learning how to manage emotion; they are learning how to suppress it (Newman et al., 2020; Zhang & Xu, 2024).

This distinction matters.