[Procyona]

Because learning psychology can help us to understand how the mind works

I recently watched an online lecture about how people can conrol their emotions. Usually the regulation is done on negative emotions, but it works also on positive ones.

In short it claimed that emotions, and situations that they are connected to, can be handled in four ways:

1) Natural reaction, no regulation. Means that when you get scared, you cry, and when happy, you laugh.

2) Handle the emotion, for instance: Supressing the emotion on the outside, erasing the emotions fromt the visible surface. This can happen for instance when you try not to show a discust toward a way too salty home-made ham you are kindly offered.

3) Change the way we react to the emotion, for isntance: Reappraisal, modifying the meaning of the situation. You can think that the too salty ham makes you stronger for salt.

4) Change the situation into something different, for instance running away from a bear or finally taking out the trash that have smelled in the coridor for way too long.

For emotion control in the mind, suppression and reappraisal are issued with more detail, and when compared, these two work totally differently:
Suppression is cognitively demanding, and while in that state, the memory works less accurately, and at the same time it consumes more energy than acting normally. Suprression also lifts the blood pressure not only form the one supressing the feeling, but from the people around them, too.

With reappraisal, you already start thinking differently, but you also start to feel differently. It decreases the work of the body, making it calm down. Reappraisal needs a bit time to built, but the new idea does not affect the brain as much, so the memory actually works as well as without any regulation.

It also argued, that reappraisal is useful for both social activity, positive attitude toward other people, and for effectiveness. Usually people mental disorders have problems to regulate emotions, and don't know how to reappraisal, and suppress the emotions more.

What do you think?

For those wanting to listen to the lecture, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fm5fSBqAs   

[Haveunique]

Interesting points, Milla, thanks!

From experience, I've learned these ways:

1) Emotions mean expectations and reality that didn't fit those expectations, or fit very very well. In both cases I want to change what I can change, for what I think it even better, by action. In order to act, it is better to be relaxed and calm.

2) If I cannot change the situation, I see what I can get out of it the way it is. Again, with any emotions it is hard to make sober decisions, so I need to prevent too much emotion or calm down in the end in any case.

3) Eating salty ham out of politeness is a personal choice I prefer finding an honest answer for myself instead of making up explanations of why I am doing something....

What are the opinions of other forum members? Thanks!   

[Procyona]

[Haveunique]

Milla, emotions are our reactions to reality. When a person gets upset you can see they expected something different to happen at that particular moment. When he or she gets overly excited, it can be a sign things happened even better than they expected.

The fact is, reality just is, and we either give it emotional evaluation - or take it as it is.   

[Procyona]

Good point, but it depends how do we define emotions. I see a certain difference between 1) acknowledging ones likes and dislikes and acting according to them, and 2) acting on emotions that rise from the liking or disliking.

I see emotions as shift projectors of ones dislikes and likes. Anger is a good example; if there is something I want to protect, anger hepls me to react to it sooner than any calculation in my mind can yet do.

To control the emotions, however, one can learn to see the need before it rises for example to anger. The other way is to not evaluate the reality, as you said, Tetyana, and therefore the will be no likes and dislikes. I don't yet which one should be better way. The likes and dislikes are the projectors of ones will, so is ceasing liking and disliking preventing the will to do what one wants?

How do you see this, Tetyana and other forummates?   

[Procyona]

More about emotions.

There are a list of different emotions, depending on how profoundly you want to differiate them, it may consist of just the basics, or even tens of emotions. These emotions sometimes have an materialize object (I can feel affection to my neighbour), or be just about the situation (I can be sad about lonelyness).

Emotions do not rise out of nowhere, even though they might seem so. There is always a reason behind the reaction. In brain level, this happens in a sturcture called amygdala, a cluster of cells in middle part of the brain. It is the strorage of feeling associated memories, and it gathers invormation from the environment to process and forward this information to feelings and reactions to them. It is also the part that holds the learned patterns to emotions.

Some sources state that emotions have counterparts, and in this regard fear is usually combined with bravery. I disagree with this, because bravery means acting even when afraid. To fears counterpart I would rather name interest toward the thing: When you are interested of a matter, you just cannot be afraid of it, and vice versa.   

[Haveunique]

[Procyona]