Your Emotions Will Not Drown You; They Will Save You

a post by Brianna Johnson for the Tiny Buddha blog



“You weren’t built to be calm, cool, and collected all the time. If you were, it wouldn’t feel so exhausting.”~Ryan O’Connell 

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about “highly sensitive people” and “empaths” It can be difficult for people who don’t relate to these labels to understand, or even believe what more sensitive folks experience. As a culture, we’re just beginning to grasp what sensitivity is and how to manage our energy.

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How to Better Understand Your Emotions When You've Been Numb Too Long

a post by Patrick Williams for YourTango.com [via World of Psychology blog]



Your emotions are a part of you, and they shouldn’t be ignored.

So much is written about emotions — how to understand them, how to control them, or how they can help or hinder you. Just look at the self-help section of a bookstore or the cover of the multitude of grab mags at the checkout counter of your frequented food store. All can be helpful, but they are not always the truth, and are not personalized for you.

So, what are emotions, really, and why do we have them in the first place? Emotions can best be viewed as essential reactions to being human and a clue of what you experience from the inside out. Emotions are really energy in motion.

If you ignore or suppress a challenging emotion like sadness or anger or guilt (and all the associated reactions), you actually feed the dragon. It is crucial to recognize a feeling, take a moment to assess where it came from, and in a safe place, really notice and feel those feelings.

6 Things We Do Instead of Expressing Our Real Emotions (and How It Affects Our Health)

Continue reading and maybe find out what it is that you are hiding from (or trying to). Good luck.

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Feeling our way to machine minds: People's emotions when perceiving mind in artificial intelligence

an article by Daniel B. Shank, Christopher Graves, Alexander Gott, Patrick Gamez and Sophia Rodriguez (Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, USA) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 98 (September 2019)

Highlights

• Participants reported personal encounters with minded AIs.
• Over half reported experiencing emotions in these interactions.
• Emotions included surprised, amazed, happy, sad, amused, unease, and confused.
• AIs produced extraordinary outcomes, human-like actions, and inhabit social roles.

Abstract

It is now common for people to encounter artificial intelligence (AI) across many areas of their personal and professional lives. Interactions with AI agents may range from the routine use of information technology tools to encounters where people perceive an artificial agent as exhibiting mind.

Combining two studies (useable N = 266), we explore people's qualitative descriptions of a personal encounter with an AI in which it exhibits characteristics of mind. Across a range of situations reported, a clear pattern emerged in the responses: the majority of people report their own emotions including surprise, amazement, happiness, disappointment, amusement, unease, and confusion in their encounter with a minded AI.

We argue that emotional reactions occur as part of mind perception as people negotiate between the disparate concepts of programmed electronic devices and actions indicative of human-like minds. Specifically, emotions are often tied to AIs that produce extraordinary outcomes, inhabit crucial social roles, and engage in human-like actions.

We conclude with future directions and the implications for ethics, the psychology of mind perception, the philosophy of mind, and the nature of social interactions in a world of increasingly sophisticated AIs.

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Use This 4 Step Technique to Decide if You Can Trust Your Feelings or Not

a post by Jonice Webb for the Childhood Emotional Neglect blog [via World of Psychology]



Whether you realize it or not, every minute of every day, you are experiencing feelings.

Whether it’s a burst of frustration when you realize you forgot your keys, a second of peaceful calm as you recall your day at the beach last month, or a pang of painful helplessness when you think of a family member who is struggling with addiction, emotions come and go, one after another, constantly.

Just as your physical feelings reside in your body, so do your emotions. Many people describe feeling sadness in their belly, anxiety in their throat, anger in their chest or arms, for example. Where you feel your feelings is unique to you, but rest assured that you have feelings, and if you focus in on a feeling, you can locate it in your body.

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Political polarization is about feelings, not facts

posted by S. Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Robert B. Talisse in The Conversation

Politicians and pundits from all quarters often lament democracy's polarized condition.

Similarly, citizens frustrated with polarized politics also demand greater flexibility from the other side.

Decrying polarization has become a way of impugning adversaries. Meanwhile, the political deadlock and resentment that polarization produces goes unaddressed. Ironic, right?

Commentators rarely say what they mean by polarization. But if Americans are to figure out how to combat it, they need to begin from a clear understanding of what polarization is.

My forthcoming book, “Overdoing Democracy,” argues that polarization isn’t about where you get your news or how politicians are divided – it’s about how a person’s political identity is wrapped up with almost everything they do.

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Hazel’s comment
Yes, this item is all about the USA but there are parrallels with the UK. I don’t know about Talisse’s book but this article uses a vocabulary I can understand. Not just the words but the words expressing ideas.

Facts Aren't Enough: The Psychology Of False Beliefs

an article for Hidden Brain published on npr [via Library Link of the Day]

The belief that vaccines cause autism has persisted, even though the facts paint an entirely different story.

Renee Klahr#

In 2012, as a new mom, Maranda Dynda heard a story from her midwife that she couldn't get out of her head. The midwife told her that years earlier, something bad had happened after she vaccinated her son. One minute he was fine, and the next, he was autistic. It was like "the light had left his eyes," Maranda recalled her saying. The midwife implored Maranda to go online and do her own research. So she did.

She started on Google. It led her to Facebook groups, where other moms echoed what the midwife had said.

"And they were just practically bombarding me with information," says Maranda. "Telling me, 'Your midwife's right. This is why I don't vaccinate. This is what happened to my child who I did vaccinate versus my child who I didn't vaccinate.' Things like that."

Maranda trusted them. She says it wasn't long before she had decided she wasn't going to vaccinate her child, either.

Eventually, she did more research and realized that the purported link between vaccines and autism wasn't real. She changed her mind, and vaccinated her daughter. But looking back, she can't believe how easy it was to embrace beliefs that were false.

"It is so, so easy to Google 'What if this happens' and find something that's probably not true," Maranda says. "Don't do that."

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How to Feel Your Feelings When You Were Never Really Taught

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the Weightless blog [via World of Psychology]



Many of us never really learned how to feel our feelings. But we learned other things about emotions instead.

Maybe we learned that certain emotions were acceptable, while others were not. That is, we learned that happiness and excitement were fine, while anxiety, and even more so, anger were forbidden. And so, maybe you learned to swallow your rage, and shove it down further and further, deeper and deeper, to plaster a smile onto your face.

Maybe we learned that crying is for weak people who can’t hold it together, and holding it together is a virtue we must uphold.

Maybe we learned that emotions are to be ignored, neglected, and glossed over. Maybe we learned that emotions are useless or downright dumb. Maybe we learned to judge and criticize ourselves for certain emotions.

We’ve likely learned many things about emotions—and maybe those things are steering us in the wrong direction, namely away from our emotions.

But the key in dealing with our feelings is, of course, to steer toward them. This is where creative activities come in. Writing and drawing are powerful tools to quietly and gently reconnect to ourselves, to listen, to acknowledge, and to explore.

As such, here are seven prompts to help you notice and name what you’re feeling in a (hopefully) helpful and accessible way.

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Hazel&tsquo;s comment:
What I am feeling right now is sad. My husband was not only told he was weak for crying as a child but was beaten. Now coming up for 70 years old he still has nightmares about his childhood and difficulty in expressing his feelings.

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Shame, When You're Too Ashamed to Talk About It

a post by Kurt Smith for the World of Psychology blog



Daily we all experience a variety of emotions. Certain things make us happy, others sad. We may see certain people and feel love, or see other people who make us angry. And although most of us don’t go around discussing each emotion we are feeling, we aren’t really thinking about hiding them either. There is, however, one emotion that people sometimes feel and go to great lengths to avoid discussing, showing or admitting. Shame.

Shame is a painful emotion that causes us to feel inadequate, unworthy and as though we have failed at, well, likely everything. It’s often confused with embarrassment or guilt, but it’s actually very different than either one. Although there are similarities between the three emotions, shame is a much deeper and damaging emotion than the others.

Embarrassment is generally a short-lived and fairly superficial emotion. It certainly can cause distress, and we would all rather avoid feeling embarrassed than embrace it. But typically embarrassment occurs over relatively small events and is gotten over fairly quickly.

Guilt is the feeling of remorse over actions or behaviors that have caused harm to ourselves or someone else. The feeling pertains to the action and not ourselves. We may feel shame at the same time, but they are two different emotions. In short, guilt is how you feel about what you did and shame is how you feel about yourself.

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Trauma Informed Care: How CBT & Mindful Awareness Are Key Factors in Repairing the Brain

a post by Maria Bogdanos for the World of Psychology blog



We’ve come a long way since therapists prescribed to their clients to punch their pillows when angry as a cathartic way to release negative emotions. While it helped bring up the emotion, they left out a critical piece in recovery: connecting that emotion to the logical side of our brains. What the person felt was not relief but disassociation.

What we know today in neuroscience and psychotherapy research is that when a traumatic event occurs, the brain goes into dysregulation. That is, the body and the mind become disconnected. Our survival or emotional part of our brain kicks in and calls the shots while our logical or thinking part goes silent. It’s an acute physical reality just like when someone might get their shoulder disconnected in a sports accident.

The person who experienced trauma is said to be stuck in “trauma time” and may also be emotionally reactionary when something triggers them, which is called a “trauma response.” When a person continues to feel trauma, the brain stays in a disassociated state until they are able to re-integrate the two parts of the brain again. Sometimes this can take years… as with chronic stress or continually being in unsafe situations including financial insecurity, and domestic abuse or neglect.

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Controlling Emotions: Is it Possible?

a post by S Ashley Carr for the World of Psychology blog



When struggling with anxiety or depression it’s common to feel like you don’t have control over your emotions. Emotions can feel like they come out of nowhere, and they can be confusing if they are stronger than you think they should be in light of the current situation. For example, if you start crying when you see a prescription drug commercial because it felt so moving. Or when you feel enraged just because you partner didn’t do the dishes, but then again they did them last night.

All people have had those moments, where you feel a strong emotion and aren’t sure why. Emotions are the minds automatic response to stimuli.

When you see an abandoned puppy on a commercial your brain is processing those images on a subconscious level and the feeling of sadness may start to emerge whether you want them to or not. Depending on your past experiences with puppies your emotional response may be stronger or weaker. If you volunteer in a dog shelter once a week, your mind may be used to the situation and you may feel less reactive. If you lost a dog recently, you may feel a flood of emotions. All of these emotions are normal, and they are a signal that you are human.

In a popular therapy called dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), the emotional response is labeled the “emotional mind” and the intellectual or thinking response is labeled the “rational mind.” Either one by itself is not sufficient because it doesn’t really give you the full picture. The combination of the emotional and rational minds is what results in the “wise mind” which is a more balanced response.

When we routinely ignore our mind’s emotional responses we are stifling the mind’s natural way of processing these situations and we miss out on the wise mind approach. It’s only when you accept and notice what your emotional mind is telling you that you can you find the balance of the wise mind.

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Looking for the Light When There's Darkness

a post by Diana Raab for the World of Psychology blog

“There is mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Over the past few years, many of us in the helping professions have noticed an emotional shift that feels like a sense of gloom hanging over much of our universe. Many factors have no doubt contributed to these feelings, such as personal, political, environmental, and global issues.

Some people have found themselves harboring a deep sense of darkness or negativity, but the fact is, there is no darkness without light. That is, we would not be able to understand the concept of dark feelings if, at some point, we had not seen the light. In most cases, for happiness to ensue, there needs to be a balance of lightness and darkness or, as the Taoists call it, the yin and the yang.

It’s true that sometimes the darkness overshadows the light, and for some people, it can be difficult to focus on positive thoughts. For very sensitive individuals, watching or listening to news broadcasts can be overwhelming and unbearable. As such, many have simply chosen to completely shut themselves off from this type of negative information overload.

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Why It's Okay to Cry in Public

a post by Therese J Borchard for the World of Psychology blog



I waited three months after I was discharged from the hospital for suicidal depression to make contact with the professional world again. I wanted to be sure I didn’t “crack,” like I had done in a group therapy session. A publishing conference seemed like an ideal, safe place to meet. A crowded room of book editors would certainly prevent any emotional outbursts on my part. So I reached out to colleague who had been feeding me assignments pre-nervous breakdown and invited her for a cup of coffee.

“How are you?” she asked me.

I stood there frozen, trying my best to mimic the natural smile I had practiced in front of the bathroom mirror that would accompany the words, “Fine! Thank you. How are you?”

Instead I burst into tears. Not a cute little whimper. A loud and ugly bawling — pig snorts included — the kind of sobbing widows do behind closed doors when the funeral is done.

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A Panic Attack, the Wrestle Within

a post by Annabella Hagen for the World of Psychology blog

Samantha felt overwhelmed by her school assignments, her relationships, and her job. She often felt like she was walking a tightrope while holding a pole that contained all of her “should” and “must” type of thoughts. “It’s not a matter of if, but when I’ll fall and crash!” she’d repeat.

She would imagine placing her thoughts and feelings in a bottle and shutting the lid tightly. “I place them there so I can cope,” she would declare.

She recognized her panic attack cycle: stress, anxiety, tension build up, and suppress until it shatters. Then starting all over again. She hated her panic attacks, but said she always felt better after experiencing one.

• Do Samantha’s struggles sound familiar?
• Do you wish you could extinguish anxiety from your life?#
• Do you believe you can “control” what happens in your body?
• Is suppressing, stopping, ignoring, or fighting your emotions and sensations giving you temporary relief but not the long-lasting results you want?

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Researchers say humor is a powerful tool against depression

a post by Matt Davis for the Big Think blog


Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

They say laughter is the best medicine; you might not be able to laugh a broken leg away, but it might help your depression.

• A new study examined 55 individuals recovering from major depression to see how well humor worked as a coping mechanism against stress.
• Individuals at risk for depression often fall into depressive episodes because of faulty coping mechanisms.
• Research indicates that humor works as a powerful defense against depression.

In 1894, Mark Twain had good reason to feel depressed. He owed $100,000 due to some poor investments, the equivalent of about $2.9 million today. To get out from under this debt, Twain did what he did best; he wrote a book called Traveling the Equator, a non-fiction account of his travels in the British Empire. In it, he noted, "The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."

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Youth, class, and happiness

an article by Avihu Shoshana (University of Haifa, Israel) published in Children and Youth Services Review Volume 99 (April 2019)

Highlights

• This study emphasizes that qualitative and phenomenological research about happiness is required, especially among children and adolescents.
• A complex understanding of the influence of cultural repertoires related to socio-economic status is also required for subjective definitions of happiness.
• Youth from different economic classes define happiness, and work towards achieving it, differently.

Abstract

Through in-depth interviews with youth from different socioeconomic (SES) classes, this article examines how they talk about happiness, how they experience and act in relation to it, and whether and how class-related cultural repertoires affect subjective definitions of happiness.

The study's findings reveal significant differences between the various classes with regard to the definition of the concept of happiness, specific characteristics of happiness, the orders of discourse that support happiness-talk, and practices for achieving happiness. Ways in which SES-related cultural repertoires influence the differences in the youths' descriptions are discussed, as well as the implications of these findings for therapeutic and educational work with youth.

One of the key findings is the relative absence of use of psychological discourse among low SES youth and its hyper-use among upper SES youth. These findings thus highlight a need for culture-sensitive therapy and education to enhance the daily experiences of schoolchildren.

Hazel’s comment:
This seems to me to be stating the obvious. It is difficult to be happy when you are hungry, cold, tired and those conditions are more likely to be experienced by people in lower socio-economic groups. Happiness is expressed as having a roof over my head, a secure income etc. Once that is achieved then we can start to think about less concrete ambitions.

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Dancing in the Rain: On Becoming More Emotionally Resilient

a post by Therese J Borchard for the World of Psychology blog



During the first half of my life, I tried to find THE solution to my depression and anxiety — a cure that would forever eradicate my symptoms. I was a gullible consumer of dogmatic books and advice promising Nirvana: by balancing my gut bacteria, by committing to a daily meditation practice, by taking fish oil and vitamin D, or by sweating out my toxins through hot yoga six times a week.

While those are all pieces of my recovery program today, none of them alone provided the answer. After years of meandering down dead-end paths, I arrived at the hard realization that I would forever be with some symptoms. My mood disorder is simply complex and chronic.

So instead I attached myself to the words of Vivian Green: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” Instead of fretting the sadness and panic, the interruption in sleep and concentration, I try to manage them. I try to live AROUND them.

This critical shift in my philosophy has resulted in more emotional resilience. However, it takes work to sustain. Here are some strategies that help me to keep dancing in the rain.

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The science behind why our brains make us cooperate (or disagree)

a post by the Charles Foch Foundation for the Big Think blog

Studies from neuroscience highlight how the brain both helps with and prevents collaboration.

• Neuroscientists identify the parts of the brain that affect our social decision-making.
• Guilt has a large affect on social interactions, find the researchers.
• To find ways to cooperate, people need to let go of fear and anxiety, suggest studies

Why do we decide to work on a project or pursue a goal with someone? Or why do we treat some people like there's no way we can find any common language? Neuroscience says that the human brain contains underlying causes to all human cooperation and social decision-making.

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Wait for it: how schizophrenia illuminates the nature of pleasure

a post by Ann M Kring for the Big Think blog

Pleasure is not just about experiencing an enjoyable moment. It also involves anticipation – a connection between one's present and future selves.

Schizophrenia is one of the most widely misunderstood of human maladies. The truth of the illness is far different from popular caricatures of a sufferer muttering incoherently or lashing out violently. People with schizophrenia are, in fact, not more likely to be violent than people without schizophrenia. About one per cent of the worldwide population has schizophrenia, affecting men and women, rich and poor, and people of all races and cultures. It can be treated with medication and psychosocial treatments, though the treatments don't work well for every person and for every symptom. Most of all, it impacts everything that makes us human: the way one thinks, the way one behaves, and the way one feels – particularly the ability to experience pleasure.

Three-quarters of people with schizophrenia suffer from anhedonia: the decreased pleasure from events or activities that were once enjoyed. Friends will no longer be fun to be around, and once-tasty meals can come to taste bland. (It is also a core symptom of depression.) [my highlight] From a clinical perspective, anhedonia is assessed via an interview with a mental-health professional in which a person is asked about pleasure and enjoyment in various life activities such as socialising, eating, working or participating in hobbies.

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I have not been diagnosed with schizophrenia nor do I think I have schizoid tendencies but I can empathise with everything in this article about pleasure and anticipation. Standing in the Vatican looking at that marvellous painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and thinking, “That’s nice”.

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How Observing My Emotions Helps Me Let Go of Anger and Anxiety

a post by Jen Picicci for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Even when in the midst of disturbance, the stillness of the mind can offer sanctuary.”
~Stephen Richards

One night my four-year-old daughter woke up crying, startling both me and my husband from sleep. He rushed into her room and I came in shortly thereafter, and I immediately got annoyed with how he was handling the situation. I’ll admit this now: I can’t even remember what he did, but in that moment I knew I would have done it differently and it made me feel irritable and angry.

I left the room and went into the bathroom. While I sat there, I remembered something I’d heard to do in order to become a calmer, more mindful person: Observe myself and describe my emotions and what was going on in my body as if I was telling a doctor about medical symptoms.

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My yoga teacher always tells us at the beginning of the session to acknowledge any thoughts that come and let them go. Calm comes from accepting that it is as it is. I can’t accept all the spiritual ideas that come with the yoga practice but that one is good.

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What are we like? 10 psychology findings that reveal the worst of human nature

a post by Christian Jarrett for the Big Think blog

Are we doomed?

It's a question that's reverberated through the ages – are we humans, though imperfect, essentially kind, sensible, good-natured creatures?

Or deep down are we wired to be bad, blinkered, idle, vain, vengeful and selfish?

There are no easy answers and there's clearly a lot of variation between individuals, but this feature post aims to shine some evidence-based light on the matter. Here in the first part of a two-part feature – and deliberately side-stepping the obviously relevant but controversial and already much-discussed Milgram, Zimbardo and Asch studies – we digest 10 dispiriting findings that reveal the darker and less impressive aspects of human nature:

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