Psychology of Human Emotions

By Iván Salvaterra

Emotional Learning is the training and development of the skills needed to manage big feelings, build relationships, gain self-awareness, solve problems, make responsible decisions, and set goals. It also focuses on open communication, social awareness, and empathy.

Through the content of this book, the reader is expected to 1) Identify and understand their own emotions (self-understanding). This includes identifying your own strengths and limitations and having reasonable self-confidence. 2) Know how to manage your emotions and manage yourself (self-management). This includes stress management, impulse control, self-motivation, and sequencing to achieve personal goals. 3) Identify and understand the emotions of others (social skills). 4) Skills to build and maintain healthy social relationships. This includes active listening, cooperation, the ability to avoid negative social influences, the skills to communicate constructively in conflict, and the knowledge of how and when to provide assistance when needed. 5) Responsible decision-making (emotional skills) Acting in a manner consistent with ethical standards, concern for safety, social norms, and a realistic assessment of the consequences of various actions, and the well-being of oneself and others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ediciones Afrodita
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215910672

Book preview

Chapter 1

What do we understand by emotions?

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To talk about emotions is to deal with a very broad topic, the study of which has been carried out in relatively recent years. In fact, although they have always permeated our daily lives and are of extraordinary importance in the field of psychological processes, only Darwin, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, described emotional expressions.

His observations pointed out the similarity between humans and animals and the universality of some of them. The core of evolutionary theory considers emotions as adaptive processes that allow us to assess danger (or other situations), act, communicate with peers, and adapt to the environment in the best possible way. So emotions are the key to providing information and ensuring the survival of the individual, assuming an extremely positive value.

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What are emotions

First of all, let's try to define them: emotions are complex phenomena that include an interaction between subjective and objective factors, mediated by neural/hormonal systems, which can give rise to affective experiences such as sensations of activation and pleasure/displeasure or can generate cognitive experiences and they lead to action that may be expressive, purposeful, adaptive, or dysfunctional.

They can be classified as primary emotions and among these, we have joy, sadness, anger, disgust, fear (or anxiety), and surprise, which are shared by people belonging to different cultures and therefore biologically rooted. In fact, according to the differential theory, the infant possesses, from birth, a certain number of fundamental and differentiated emotions, based on innate and universal programs. Some emotions, therefore, are already present at birth, while others emerge when, in the course of development, they have to perform an adaptive task. The latter are complex emotions that include: shame, guilt, remorse, and envy, which are conditioned and shaped by experience.

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What are emotions for?

The functions they perform involve organizing actions, for example, motivating our behavior and preparing us for action. The impulse to act on certain emotions is usually biologically innate because evolutionarily they allow us to act quickly in important situations, especially when we do not have time to think about things (for example, when we have to save ourselves from imminent danger).

Emotions are communicated to (and affect) others, including through facial expressions (which are innate aspects of emotions) that send messages much faster than using words. They also communicate with ourselves, since emotional reactions can give us important information about a situation, they can be signals or alarms that something is happening, such as bodily (visceral) sensations that can act as intuition (for example, increased rhythm in a dark alley). This can be helpful when our emotions later lead us to check the facts.

But beware, sometimes we treat emotions as if they were facts of the world: the stronger the emotion, the stronger the conviction that our emotion is based on a fact (if I feel insecure, I am incompetent, if I feel lonely when they leave me alone, I shouldn't stay alone, if I feel safe about something, that's fine, if I'm afraid, there must be a danger, "I love him, then he must love me too). we believe that our emotions represent reality, we can use them to explain our thoughts and actions and this can be dangerous if they push us to ignore the facts, basing the interpretation of reality only on emotional information.

Chapter 2

problem emotions

and psychotherapy

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This aspect is only one of the problems treated in therapy related to emotions. In fact, many ailments involve problems when the person assesses the danger or harm of a situation based on the emotion that he feels. But, very often, this emotion is a consequence (and not the cause) of catastrophic or terrifying thoughts that determine the emotion itself.

There are also other difficulties that arise in therapy: emotional management is a common and frequent request from patients. This lack of capacity may be due to several factors such as biological aspects that make it difficult to regulate emotions (hormonal dysfunctions), the lack of a model when no one has ever taught them to regulate them, the fact that the environment has reinforced being very emotional and mood instability. In addition, there are common myths about emotions (false beliefs) that hinder the ability to regulate emotions, such as: there is a correct way to feel in each situation, and letting others notice that I feel bad is a weakness, negative emotions are harmful and destructive, getting excited is being out of control, some emotions don't make sense.

The cognitive behavioral approach and third-generation developments (Compassion-Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, etc.) have long focused on how a good intervention on the patient's emotional regulation and arousal is essential to allow successful therapy. Evaluating and understanding each patient's familiarity with their emotions, as well as the beliefs they have developed about them, while identifying coping strategies and dysfunctional beliefs, is essential to modify them and promote more adaptive ones, increasing the patient's ability to stay with and accept their emotions.

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Emotional regulation in development

Emotional regulation competence must be acquired in early childhood when the interaction between children and caregivers is a source of learning for the knowledge of emotions and for their management. The construct of emotional regulation can be described as the set of extrinsic and intrinsic processes of an individual that govern the monitoring, evaluation, and modification of emotional reactions in accordance with the achievement of their goals. Or the process by which internal states, physiological processes, goals, and behaviors related to emotion are initiated, avoided, inhibited, maintained, and modulated in frequency, form, intensity, or duration, in order to achieve their goals.

The failure of caregivers to respond sensitively to the child's emotional needs and serve as a developmentally appropriate role model, therefore, contributes to significant disturbances in some areas of emotional development, particularly in children's ability to self-regulate emotionally. The child who experiences irregularities in the emotional reactions of the parents, unmotivated outbursts of anger, who lives in an emotionally disorganized family environment, with severe affective deficiencies, is unable to build a coherent emotional pattern during development, whose basis is security in the attachment bond necessary for adaptive growth and for the emergence of a stable emotional structure, which when lacking can cause psychological problems:

• Anxiety

• Guilty feeling

• Disgust

• Gonna

• Sadness

• Shyness

• Shameenza

• Empathy

• Envy

• Jealousy

Chapter 3

Anxiety and anxiety disorders

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What is anxiety

Anxiety is a term widely used to indicate a set of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological reactions that occur after the perception of a stimulus considered threatening and to which we do not consider ourselves sufficiently capable of reacting.

However, anxiety itself is not an abnormal phenomenon. It is a basic emotion, which implies a state of activation of the organism when a situation is subjectively perceived as dangerous.

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Anxiety symptoms:

• Cognitive symptoms of anxiety

From a cognitive point of view, the typical symptoms of anxiety are:

• the feeling of mental emptiness

• a growing sense of alarm and danger

• the induction of negative images, memories, and thoughts

• the implementation of cognitive