Psychiatry Newspaper | Chong-ki Kim, Specialist in Psychiatry
We must live our lives in control of our emotions. In public places, in front of your boss, in front of your parents, in front of your loveryou have to control your emotions to be with someone. People who only express their emotions as they are are bound to be lonely. We are inescapable social animals. That’s why you have to be an animal that can control your emotions.
So how can you control your emotions? Does a person who tolerates emotions well manage their emotions?? Does being good at controlling emotions mean being a person who doesn’t show emotions well? Do you need to be able to act like a robot to be a good mood controller?
Like a nursery rhyme that says, “Santa doesn’t give gifts to crying children,” we are taught from a young age that we need to be able to control our emotions. Crying is something you have to endure. I have to hold back even if tears come up without me realizing it. You have to be patient and pretend it’s okay.
like this ‘Suppression’ or ‘suppression’ of emotionsIt is said. Suppression is a method of controlling the last stage of emotional expression.It can be said that
Professor James J. Gross of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University in the United States says there are two main ways to control emotions, including suppression.
The first is ‘appraisal’. Evaluation is a method applied to the first 4 stages of emotional expression. Professor Gross has broken down the process of triggering emotions into four stages. The stages of emotional triggering, as classified by Professor Gross, are:
What situations you face (situation selection), how you can adjust them (situation modification), what aspects of the situation you focus your attention on (attention deployment), and how you perceive the situation (cognitive change) Emotions develop according to the evaluation processthat it will come alive. And if you adjust any of these steps, you’ll be able to control the overproduction of negative emotions. In other words, you can control your emotions through appraisal.
For example, if you are in a situation where you can’t stand your anger every time you see a flirtatious friend, the method to control your emotions through ‘evaluation’ can also be divided into 4 steps.
Avoiding meeting friends at all (situation selection), going to a distant place with friends at the meeting (situation modification), trying not to care if they see them (attention deployment), or showing off their friends Even if you see , you can try to think differently (cognitive change) without looking at it as a bad thing.
While the first two of these steps can be a good idea, sometimes the avoidance solution can be practically difficult. For example, conflicts with a boss at work or conflicts between family members living together cannot be completely avoided. Also, just avoiding it blindly can make the problem even worse. Because Most of the emotion regulation through ‘evaluation’ is more focused on trying to think and accept external/internal stimuli differently.and you can
Another method we are more familiar with is ‘suppression’. Inhibition is applied at a later stage in which the emotion has already occurred. The emotions that arise are manifested in a number of ways, either as a physical reaction or as an action or memory. Suppressing these responses is inhibition. We can consciously suppress and hide the expression of our emotions.
As a result, if you think of emotion as an algorithm called a ‘response’ to a ‘stimulus’, Dr. Gross thinks that there is an ‘evaluation’ method that focuses on the processing of the ‘stimulus’, and there is a method that focuses on the suppression of the ‘reaction’. no see.
So, which is more effective, ‘evaluation’ or ‘suppression’? Dr. Gross conducted several experiments to compare the two processes.
First, Dr. Gross divided the subjects into three groups and decided to observe the effects of ‘assessment’, ‘inhibition’ and ‘spontaneous response’. He asked each group in advance to ‘try to accept the situation differently’, ‘hide the emotions you feel without revealing them’ and ‘just watch and do nothing’. Then I showed them a video of the horrific amputation of the arm. It is designed to create negative emotions such as nausea and disgust.
As a result, the ‘inhibited’ group, who were instructed to hide their disgust, apparently did not show any behavioral changes, such as vomiting, but their physical response was worse than that of the silent group. Heart rate increased, skin conduction response increased, and overall sympathetic nervous system hyperactivity was shown. Also, in contrast to the successful concealment, the participants reported that their personal feelings of ‘disgust’ and ‘disgust’ remained the same in the questionnaire after the experiment.
On the other hand, the ‘evaluation’ group, who were instructed to think differently about the scenes in the video, reported little sympathetic hyperactivity and relatively less ‘disgust’ and ‘vomiting’ after the experiment.
This reaction was also observed in several other similar experiments. Inhibition only hides negative emotions and amplifies physical and psychological responses.
Interestingly, however, responses were slightly different when suppressing negative emotions such as disgust, sadness, embarrassment, and shame versus positive emotions such as ‘joy’. When negative emotions are suppressed, even if facial expressions or actions are hidden, the intensity of subjectively experienced emotions does not decrease at all, but when positive emotions are suppressed, the degree of subjectively experienced inner pleasure also decreases.could be observed. In the experiment that tried to hide positive emotions such as the joy of watching a funny comedy movie or the feeling of refreshment or refreshment after watching a sad movie, most of the experimenters experienced a decrease in their actual inner feelings.
It is not clear why inhibition reduces positive emotions as opposed to negative emotions as well as internal experiences. However, some researchers argue that it is because our facial expression changes affect the stage in which we develop positive emotions. Just like the experiment that laughter makes you feel better even if there is nothing happy, positive facial expression changes such as laughter can affect the development of positive emotions by themselves, but suppressing them will reduce the emotions themselves.
In fact, Dr. Gross investigated the emotional regulation habits that people frequently use on a daily basis through the emotion regulation questionnaire, ‘It has also been shown that people who mainly use restraint have less positive experiences in their daily life than those who mainly use ‘assessment’. I did. If you habitually try to hide your emotions, you will inevitably hide not only negative emotions but also positive emotions, and as a result, personal negative experiences may increase while positive experiences decrease.
How you control your emotions doesn’t just depend on your mood. The mood of other people around you is bound to be affected as well. This is because emotions have the characteristic of moving from person to person. In particular, the positive emotions we experience with other people give us ‘social support’. Many studies have already shown that social support reduces both physical and psychological stress responses.
To see how how we control our emotions affects the people around us, Dr. Gross conducted another experiment with psychologists, including Butler, Egloff, and others.
The researchers paired up women who didn’t know each other, watched an upsetting movie together, and then asked them to discuss each other’s reactions. However, only one person from each paired group was given a mission to control emotions without the other person’s knowledge. Some were instructed to suppress their emotions, and others were instructed to ‘evaluate’ their emotions and look at them differently.
The researchers then measured the physical responses of those who spoke to those who asked for emotional regulation. Measured, participants who talked with people who suppressed their emotions had higher blood pressure, while partners of those who controlled their emotions by ‘assessing’ did not. Dr. Gross People who are suppressing their emotions may tend to react insensitively to the other person’s feelings and not express themselves in a positive way while having a conversation.and analyzed. As a result, the person you are talking to may also have a hard time conveying your feelings, which may increase the level of physical arousal.
Merely not showing emotions like this is not a successful emotion regulation. Because what matters is how you manage your emotions. Dr. Gross says you need to focus on the process, the stage in which you are generating the emotion, rather than trying to suppress it.
So, how can we do that? How can you successfully control your emotions through the ‘reappraisal’ that Dr. Gross described in the experiment?
Typically Cognitive Therapy attempts to interpret situations differently by focusing on the cognitive stage of emotional development.do. If there are any perceptions or thoughts that do not match reality in the process of causing excessive anxiety or anger, it is training to correct and correct them.
The point is that you need to go back to the stage in which that emotion arose, rather than just hold on to it so as not to reveal the boiling emotion in your heart.
To that end, Dr. Shauna L. Shapiro of the Department of Psychology at the University of Santa Clara We suggest naming emotions. You have to look at the emotions that are starting to heat up your body, figure out exactly what emotions are happening inside you right now, and give them a name.Says
Giving names to your emotions, such as ‘anger’, ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’. By naming it, you tell yourself, ‘I’m feeling anger right now’, ‘I’m feeling scared’, ‘What I’m feeling right now is anxiety.’
It is a very simple method, but through this process, you can rationally look at the emotions you were trying to express through your body reactions and actions. Unfortunately, the areas of our brain responsible for emotional responses are not directly connected to the areas of the rational brain for thinking and judging. Therefore, in order to view emotions rationally, I have no choice but to start with the process of looking at my physical reaction and giving it a name.
Shapiro Dr. Through the process of clearly looking at emotions and naming them, you will be able to break away from automatic emotional reactions and enter the path of more relaxed and flexible Emotion Tuning.emphasizes that.
We often say that we need to be good at managing our emotions to be a mature person. However, if we have been simply trying not to show our emotions, perhaps our bodies and minds have been carrying a greater burden on our hearts. For truly mature emotional control, you need to be able to accept and view your emotions, not get rid of them.only do. How about giving a name to the feelings in your heart and talking to them? It’s about asking my feelings calmly. Saying warm words about where you came from, how you came from, and what makes it so difficult is the first step to real emotional control.
Onan Mental Health Clinic | Director Kim Chong-ki