You and your friend have to take a Friday test to avoid summer classes, and after a week of studying, you both believe you've nailed it. But when you get your grades back, they're much lower than you both expected. You are destroyed.
However, your friend doesn't seem too bothered, and it's making you wonder why you can't pull it off like they can. But are you really trying to look on the bright side?
And is it possible to control your emotions before? The answer to the last question is a definite "yes". There are a number of strategies for controlling our emotions, and a framework for understanding these techniques is called the process model.
Psychologists use this tool to identify where and how to intervene in the processes that form our emotions. This process has four stages: First, we enter a real or imagined situation, and it captures our attention.
Then we evaluate,
or evaluate, the situation and whether it helps or hinders our goals. Ultimately, this appraisal leads to a set of changes in the way we feel, think, and behave, known as emotional responses.
Each stage of this process provides an opportunity to consciously intervene and change our emotions, and the process model outlines what strategies we can try at each stage. To put this into practice, let's imagine you're invited to the same party as your least favorite ex and their new partner.
Your first strategy might be to avoid the situation altogether by leaving the party. But if you attend, you can also try to change the situation by choosing not to communicate with your ex.
If this is proving difficult,
you may want to distract yourself, perhaps by playing a game with your friends instead of focusing on your ex's new partner. Another option would be to reevaluate how you think about the situation.
After seriously reevaluating things, you may realize that you don't care who your ex-dates are. If none of these strategies work, you can always try to reduce your emotional response after the fact. But it can be difficult.
Many of the simpler ways to do this, such as hiding your emotions or trying to replace them with recreational drugs, usually lead to more negative feelings and health concerns in the long term.
More sustainable strategies here include taking long walks, taking slow, deep breaths, or talking to someone in your support system. While using all of these strategies takes practice, learning to feel your emotions and consider where they're coming from is half the battle.
And once you truly accept that you can control your emotions, it becomes much easier to do so. But should you be using these techniques to maintain a consistently good mood?
The answer depends on how you define what makes a mod "good." It is tempting to think that we should always try to avoid sadness and despair, but no emotion is inherently good or bad—they are helpful or unhelpful depending on the situation.
For example, if a friend is telling you about the loss of a loved one, it's not okay to feel sad and express it, it can help you empathize with them and help them. Is. Conversely, while it's unhealthy to regularly ignore your emotions, it's perfectly fine to force a smile to get through a one-time tantrum.
We hear a lot of mixed messages about emotions.
Some pressure us to be upbeat while others tell us to take our emotions as they come. But in reality, each person has to find their own balance. So if the question is: "Should you always try to be happy?"
The answer is no. Studies show that people who dwell on happiness often experience secondary negative emotions, such as guilt, or frustration for being upset, and frustration that they don't feel very happy. This does not mean that you should let sadness or anger take over.
But strategies like reappraisal can help you reevaluate your thoughts about a situation, allowing you to accept that you're feeling sad and build hope that Things will improve.
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