About emotions

What are emotions?

Emotions are a way to describe a whole of thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

What are positive and negative emotions?

Positive emotions are emotions associated with happiness and wellbeing.

Negative emotions are emotions associated with suffering.

Why do we experience emotions?

Because is one of the ways our brain works to decide how behaves in our life.

Why can’t we simply ignore emotions?

• Various researches suggest that:
  • simply ignore emotions can have negative effects in the long term from the psychological point of view.
  • allow greater well-being:
    • acknowledge emotions and what they want to tell us
    • evaluating emotions and situations with reasoning
    • let them pass when they are negative

Why can’t we simply follow pleasure and avoid suffering?

Because this will lead to hedonic happiness and not true eudaimonic happiness.

What are some emotions regulation strategies?

The emotion regulation strategies can be divided in two parts:

• Antecedent-focused: when the regulation happens before the emotion is generated.
• Response-focused: influence the emotion when it has been generated.

There are 5 emotion regulation strategies:

• Antecedent-focused
  • Situation selection: choose which situation avoid or not to avoid to experience particular emotions. Avoiding situation can provide short-term benefit but a long-term cost.
  • Situation modification: modify the situation to change the impact of the emotion.
  • Attentional deployment: shift the attention to different aspects of the situation or to different situations or activities.
  • Cognitive change: change the meaning we assign to a particular situation. See also Cognitive reframing.
  • Response-focused
    • Positive
      • Relaxation exercises
      • Physical exercises
      • Engage in different crafting activities
    • Negative (to avoid)
      • Drugs
      • Dependencies (food, alcohol, drugs)
      • Suppression

How to choose how to react to emotions?

• To choose how to react to emotions:
  1. Ask yourself: what emotion am I feeling?
  2. Try to give a name to the emotion
  3. Ask yourself:
     • why am I feeling this emotion?
     • what this emotion want to tell me?
  4. Ask yourself: what are my goals relative to the experience I am living?
  5. If you are feeling a negative emotions that are warning you about a risk related to a particular behaviour, ask yourself:
     • what is the likelihood that this risk really happens? If you think again that the risk is really too high, try to find another behaviour that reduces the risk but allows you to reach your goals.
  6. Act towards your goals

My current Conclusions about Emotions

• Emotions condition our behaviour.
• Behaviour defines our actions.
• Our actions define what results we obtain.
• The difference between what we want and what we obtain defines happiness.
• Therefore emotions contribute to define our happiness.
• To be happy, we have to learn:
  • why we are experiencing a particular emotion. What is the signal that triggers a particular emotion?
  • to stop and think clearly and rationally how to react and manage particular emotions.
• Techniques like Mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can help to accept and manage emotions.
• I think that emotions are related with values. Understanding our values can help us to understand why we experience particular emotions and in which contexts.

References

• Individual Differences in Two Emotion Regulation Processes: Implications for Affect, Relationships, and Well-Being | Gross, J. J., Oliver P.J. | 2003
• The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review | Gross, J. J. | 1998
• Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: Personality processes, individual differences, and life span development | John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. | 2004
• Creiamo cultura insieme | Facheris I. | 2018
• The Happiness Trap | Harris R. | 2008
• The Telomere Effect | Elizabeth Blackburn, Elissa Epel | 2018