In the emotion regulation section, we’re going to be learning how to: accept emotions as they are, reduce negative emotion and increase positive emotion. The concept of emotion as a normal reaction to situations (either external or internal) was discussed.
We covered a lot of ground in group, going over handouts 1 through 5. The highlights of these handouts are listed below:
- Handout 5: The functions of emotion.
- To communicate to yourself or others. Emotions help your “mind” get its point across. When you experience emotion, your being sent a message.
- To motivate action. Emotions can help get you motived to make a change or do something!
- To self-validate. Emotions can help you make sense of your world.
- Handout 3: The cycle of emotion. See handout 3. This handout describes the cycle through which emotion can be generated. And re-generated.
- Handout 2: Some myths and challenges for emotion.
- Handout 4: The major emotions, the things that can lead to them (e.g., prompting events, interpretations) and their consequences (e.g., secondary emotions, after-effects)
Homework for this week was to complete identification of the emotion you experience. From the prompting event through the after-effects. If you’re having trouble figuring out what emotion you’re experiencing, make use of the extensive descriptions on handout 4 to help you figure out what you’re feeling. Martha also passed out an additional handout (Biopsychosocial Model of Emotion) about emotion regulation.
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[...] In this week’s class, we continued our discussion of emotion regulation. Before we talk about changing your emotion, remember that emotions are normal reactions to stimuli. Once you’ve decided that you’d like to change the emotion you’re experiencing, you’ve got to figure out whether it’s justified; that is, is the emotion something that’s important to have to, say, keep you out of danger? For example, if you’re scared to go into a room because you know that there’s a snake in there and your life is in danger, you probably ought to leave that emotion alone. [...]