We not only experience emotions, but we can also control them. Thus, John Milton wrote that emotions can be “mastered,” and Oscar Wilde’s hero Dorian Gray wanted to “use them, enjoy them and dominate them.” It is true that Vincent Van Gogh spoke of “submission” to emotions as the captains of our lives. Which one is right?
What is “emotion regulation”?
When we lack genuine emotional experience—the heavy burden of sadness, maddening anger, soothing serenity, overwhelming gratitude—we spend a lot of resources creating emotional storylines.
We choose a favorite (for example, joy) and take every opportunity to experience that emotion. We also avoid unpleasant emotions (for example, fear) at all costs. As soon as “enemies” appear on the threshold, we try not to let them in, resist them, deny them, try to negotiate with them, redirect and modify them. Eventually they disappear.
When an emotion is on its way, you can change your reaction: for example, smile when feeling fear
The processes by which we influence emotions can be automatic (we close our eyes when we watch a scary movie) or conscious (we force ourselves to smile when we are nervous). All methods of managing emotions have common features. First of all, there is the presence of a goal (we watch a comedy to cope with sadness), as well as the desire to influence the dynamics and trajectory of the emotion (we reduce the intensity of anxiety by being distracted by some activity).
Sometimes we think that emotions appear suddenly, but in fact they develop over time, and with the help of different strategies we can intervene in emotional processes at different stages of their development. For example, before an emotional response is activated, we may purposefully avoid unpleasant situations, modify them, not take them seriously, and downplay their significance. When an emotion is already “on the way,” you can change the behavioral or physiological reaction (for example, smile when experiencing fear).
Emotion regulation strategies
Most often we use one of the two most popular strategies: reappraisal and suppression. They have different effects on emotional balance.
Revaluation – cognitive strategy. It has to do with how we perceive a situation. You can consider it scary and hopeless, or you can perceive it as a difficult but rewarding experience. This is a positive type of emotional regulation that allows you to transform the entire emotion, and not just part of it. Overestimation is associated with low levels of anxiety and high levels of emotional balance.
Suppression – experiencing an emotion with suppression of its manifestation in behavior. We are tired, we feel bad, but we show everyone that everything is fine with us. This is a negative type of emotional regulation. This strategy creates an asymmetry between what we feel and what other people see and can lead to negative social processes.
Research has shown that people who use the reappraisal strategy are able to “reframe” stressful situations. They reinterpret the meaning of negative emotional stimuli. These people cope with challenging situations by being proactive and, as a reward for their efforts, experience more positive emotions, as well as psychological resilience, better social connections, higher self-esteem and overall life satisfaction.
Suppression, on the other hand, only affects the behavioral expression of an emotion, but has little effect on how we feel. Controlling and suppressing emotions for a long time is cognitively and socially costly and unnatural. According to research, people who practice suppression cope worse with bad moods and only mask their real feelings. They experience fewer positive emotions and more negative ones, are less satisfied with life and suffer from low self-esteem.
Emotional acceptance - awareness of an emotion without doing anything about it
Training the skills to effectively regulate emotions is not easy - it is not enough to learn a couple of techniques and use them to change circumstances. The choice of strategy depends on various factors, including cultural ones. Attitudes regarding emotions also have a huge influence. Do you think you are able to control your emotions? If yes, then you are more likely to use strategies based on reappraisal than a person who answers “no.”
However, in addition to revaluation and suppression, there is a third strategy for regulating emotions.
Emotional acceptance – awareness of an emotion without taking any action towards it. We may acknowledge that we are experiencing an emotion, but we may not want to let it go. Paradoxically, acceptance leads to a decrease in negative emotions and an increase in psychological resilience.
It turns out that it is the lack of emotional regulation that best regulates emotions. By accepting our negative emotions under stress, we feel better than someone who does not accept these emotions. On the one hand, we are aware of our emotional and psychological state, on the other, we practice non-reactivity and acceptance. Perhaps this is exactly what we need to find true wisdom - “harmony of reason and passions.”
About the author
Marianna Pogosyan– linguist, psychologist, advises top managers of international companies and their families on issues related to adaptation to life away from home.
In everyday life, conflict situations often occur between people due to differences in temperament. This is due, first of all, to a person’s excessive emotionality and lack of self-control. emotions? How to “get the upper hand” over your own feelings and thoughts during a conflict? Psychology provides answers to these questions.
Why do you need self-control?
Restraint and self-control are something that many people lack. This is achieved over time, constantly training and improving skills. Self-control helps to achieve a lot, and the least of this list is inner peace of mind. How to learn to control your emotions and at the same time prevent intrapersonal conflict? Understand that this is necessary and gain agreement with your own “I”.
Control over emotions prevents the conflict situation from worsening and allows you to find someone with completely opposite personalities. To a greater extent, self-control is necessary to establish relationships with people, no matter business partners or relatives, children, lovers.
The influence of negative emotions on life
Breakdowns and scandals, in which negative energy is released, have a detrimental effect not only on the people around them, but also on the instigator of conflict situations. your negative emotions? Try to avoid conflicts and not succumb to provocations from other people.
Negative emotions destroy harmonious relationships in the family and interfere with normal personal development and career growth. After all, few people want to cooperate/communicate/live with a person who does not control himself and starts a large-scale scandal at every opportunity. For example, if a woman cannot control herself and constantly finds fault with her man, which leads to serious quarrels, then he will soon leave her.
In raising children, it is also important to restrain yourself and not give free rein to negative emotions. The child will feel every word spoken by the parent in the heat of anger, and will subsequently remember this moment for the rest of his life. Psychology helps to understand how to learn to restrain emotions and prevent their manifestation in communication with children and loved ones.
Negative emotions also have a great impact on business and work activities. A team always consists of people of different temperaments, therefore self-control plays an important role here: negativity can spill out at any moment when a person is put under pressure and required to do overwhelming work. And instead of the usual dialogue, where the parties can come to a consensus, a scandal develops. How to learn to control your emotions in the workplace? Do not react to employee provocations, try to start a casual conversation, agree with your superiors in everything, even if the assigned tasks are difficult to complete.
Suppression of emotions
Constantly restraining yourself within certain limits and preventing the release of negativity is not a panacea. Suppressing accumulates negativity, and therefore increases the risk of developing psychological diseases. Negativity must be periodically “thrown out” somewhere, but in such a way that the feelings of other people are not harmed. How to learn to restrain emotions, but without harm to your inner world? Go in for sports, because during training a person spends all his internal resources, and the negativity quickly goes away.
Wrestling, boxing, and hand-to-hand combat are suitable for releasing negative energy. It is important here that a person mentally wants to give vent to his emotions, then he will feel relief and he will not want to take it out on anyone. However, it is worth considering that everything should be in moderation, and overwork during training can provoke a new influx of negativity.
Two ways to control your emotions:
- Do you dislike a person so much that you are ready to destroy him? Do this, but, of course, not in the literal sense of the word. At the moment when you feel uncomfortable communicating with him, mentally do whatever you want with this person.
- Draw a person you hate and write down on a piece of paper next to the image the problems that appeared in your life thanks to him. Burn the sheet and mentally put an end to your relationship with this person.
Prevention
How to learn to restrain emotions? Psychology gives the following answer to this question: to control your feelings and emotions, prevention is necessary, in other words - emotional hygiene. Like the human body, his soul also needs hygiene and disease prevention. To do this, you need to protect yourself from communicating with people who cause hostility, and also, if possible, avoid conflicts.
Prevention is the most gentle and optimal way to control emotions. It does not require additional human training or specialist intervention. Preventive measures allow you to protect yourself from negativity and nervous breakdowns for a long time.
The main thing is that it helps you gain control over your emotions - over your own life. When a person is satisfied with everything in his home, work, relationships, and he understands that at any moment he can influence all this and adjust it to himself, then it is easier for him to restrain the manifestation of negative emotions. There are a number of preventive rules that help manage your own feelings and thoughts. How to learn to control your emotions and manage yourself? Follow simple rules.
Unfinished business and debts
Complete all planned tasks in a short time, do not leave the work unfinished - this can cause delays in terms of deadlines, causing negative emotions. Also, “tails” can be reproached, pointing out your incompetence.
In financial terms, try to avoid late payments and debts - this is exhausting and prevents you from achieving your goal. Understanding that you have not repaid a debt to someone causes negativity and helplessness in the face of current circumstances.
The absence of debts, both financial and other, allows you to fully spend your own energy resources and strength, directing them to the realization of desires. A sense of duty, on the contrary, is an obstacle to mastering self-control and achieving success. How to learn to restrain emotions and control yourself? Eliminate debts in a timely manner.
Cosiness
Create a comfortable workplace for yourself, equip your home to your own taste. Both at work and at home, with your family, you should feel comfortable - nothing should cause irritation or any other negative emotions.
Time planning
Try to make smart plans for the day, strive to ensure that you have a little more time and resources to complete your tasks than you need. This will avoid the negativity associated with a constant lack of time and worries about the lack of finances, energy and strength for work.
Communication and Workflow
Avoid contacts with unpleasant people who waste your personal time. Especially with individuals who are called “energy vampires” - they take up not only your time, but also your energy. If possible, try not to interact with overly temperamental people, since any incorrect remark directed in their direction can provoke a scandal. How to restrain your emotions in relationships with other people? Be polite, do not exceed your authority, and do not overreact to criticism.
If your job brings you nothing but negative emotions, then you should think about changing your job. Earning money to the detriment of your soul and feelings, sooner or later, will lead to a breakdown and disorder of mental balance.
Marking boundaries
Mentally create a list of things and actions that cause you negative emotions. Draw an invisible line, a line that no one, even the closest person, should cross. Create a set of rules that restrict people from communicating with you. Those who truly love, appreciate and respect you will accept such demands, and those who resist these attitudes should not be in your environment. To communicate with strangers, develop a special system that will avoid violating your boundaries and creating conflict situations.
Physical activity and self-reflection
Playing sports will bring not only physical health, but also mental balance. Spend 30 minutes to 1 hour a day on sports, and your body will quickly cope with negative emotions.
At the same time, analyze everything that happens to you during the day. Ask yourself questions about whether you acted correctly in a given situation, whether you communicated with the right people, whether you had enough time to complete the work. This will help not only to understand yourself, but also in the future to eradicate communication with unnecessary people who cause negativity. your own emotions, thoughts and goals allows you to fully develop self-control.
Positive emotions and prioritization
Develop the ability to switch from negative emotions to positive ones, try to see the positive sides in any situation. How to learn to control emotions in relationships with family and strangers? Be more positive, and this will help you overcome your own temper.
The right goal is a great help in achieving self-control. When you are on the verge of a surge of negative emotions, imagine that as soon as you stop being nervous and paying attention to provocations, your dreams will begin to come true. You should choose only realistic, achievable goals.
Environment
Take a close look at the people around you. Is there any benefit from communicating with them? Do they bring you happiness, warmth and kindness, do they make you happy? If not, then the answer is obvious, you urgently need to change your social circle, switch to individuals who bring positive emotions. Of course, it is impossible to do this in the workplace, but at least limit yourself from communicating with such people outside the work space.
In addition to changing your environment, expanding your social circle will help you develop self-control. This will give you new opportunities, knowledge and a positive charge for a long time.
You can not hold back your emotions, get angry, scream, laugh, cry bitterly and be loudly indignant. Do you think anyone likes such sincerity? Only your enemies enjoy watching this performance. Learning to manage emotions!
Sometimes, succumbing to emotions or allowing ourselves to be led by false feelings, we commit actions that we later repent of. At the same time, we make excuses that we have lost control over ourselves, so emotions have prevailed over reason. That is, we did not control our emotions, but they controlled us.
Is it really that bad? Perhaps there is nothing good in the lack of self-control. People who do not know how to control themselves, maintain self-control and subordinate their feelings to their will, as a rule, do not achieve success either in their personal lives or in the professional sphere.
They do not think about tomorrow, and their expenses often far exceed their income.
Incontinent people flare up like a match during any quarrel, unable to stop in time and compromise, which earns them the reputation of a conflict person. At the same time, they also destroy their health: doctors claim that many diseases have a direct connection with such negative emotions as anger, etc. People who value their own peace and nerves prefer to avoid them.
People who are not used to limiting themselves spend too much free time in empty entertainment and useless conversations. If they make promises, they themselves are not sure whether they can fulfill them. It is not surprising that no matter what field they work in, they are rarely professionals in their field. And the reason for it all is lack of self-control.
A developed sense of self-control allows you to maintain a cool head, sober thoughts and understanding in any situation that feelings may turn out to be false and lead to a dead end.
There are also situations when we need to hide our emotions in our own interests. “Sometimes I am a fox, sometimes I am a lion,” said the French commander. “The secret... is to understand when to be one and when to be another!”
People who control themselves deserve respect and enjoy authority. On the other hand, many people think they are callous, heartless, “insensitive blockheads” and...incomprehensible. Much more understandable to us are those who from time to time “go all out,” “break down,” lose control of themselves and commit unpredictable acts! Looking at them, we also seem to ourselves not so weak. Moreover, becoming restrained and strong-willed is not so easy. So we reassure ourselves that the life of people who are guided by reason and not by feelings is joyless, and therefore unhappy.
That this is not the case is evidenced by an experiment conducted by psychologists, as a result of which they came to the conclusion: people who can overcome themselves and resist momentary temptation are more successful and happy than those who are unable to cope with emotions.
The experiment is named after Michel Walter, a psychologist from Stanford University. It is also known as the “marshmallow test” because one of its main “heroes” is an ordinary marshmallow.
The experiment, conducted in the 60s of the last century, involved 653 4-year-old children. They were taken one by one into a room where one marshmallow lay in a plate on the table. Each child was told that he could eat it now, but if he waited 15 minutes, he would get another one, and then he could eat both. Michel Walter would leave the child alone for a few minutes and then return. 70% of children ate one marshmallow before he returned, and only 30 waited for it and received a second one. It is curious that the same percentage was observed during a similar experiment in two other countries where it was conducted.
Michel Walter followed the fate of his students and after 15 years came to the conclusion that those who at one time did not succumb to the temptation to get “everything now”, but were able to control themselves, turned out to be more learnable and successful in their chosen areas of knowledge and interests. Thus, it was concluded that the ability to self-control significantly improves a person’s quality of life.
Isaac Pintosevich, who is called the “success coach,” argues that those who have no control over themselves and their actions should forget about efficiency forever.
How to learn to manage yourself
1. Let's remember the “marshmallow test”
30% of 4-year-old children already knew how. This character trait was inherited from them “by nature,” or this skill was brought up in them by their parents.
Someone said: “Don’t raise your children, they will still be like you. Educate yourself." Indeed, we want to see our children restrained, but we ourselves throw tantrums in front of their eyes. We tell them that they must cultivate willpower, but we ourselves show weakness. We remind them that they must be punctual, and every morning we are late for work.
Therefore, we begin to learn to control ourselves by carefully analyzing our behavior and identifying “weak spots” - where exactly we allow ourselves to “unravel.”
2. Components of control
The aforementioned Yitzhak Pintosevich believes that in order for control to be effective, it must include 3 components:
- Be honest with yourself and have no illusions about yourself;
- You should control yourself systematically, and not occasionally;
- Control should be not only internal (when we control ourselves), but also external. For example, we promised to solve a problem within such and such a period. And, in order not to leave ourselves a loophole for retreat, we announce this among our colleagues. If we do not meet the stated time, we pay them a fine. The danger of losing a decent amount of money will serve as a good incentive not to be distracted by extraneous matters.
3. We write down the main goals facing us on a sheet of paper and put (or hang) it in a visible place
Every day we monitor how far we have managed to move towards their implementation.
4. Putting our financial affairs in order
We keep our loans under control, remember whether we have any debts that urgently need to be repaid, and balance debits with credits. Our emotional state is quite dependent on the state of our finances. Therefore, the less confusion and problems there are in this area, the less reason we will have to “lose our temper.”
5. Observe our reaction to events that evoke strong emotions in us, and analyze whether they are worth our worries
We imagine the worst case scenario and understand that it is not as terrible as the consequences of our inadequate and thoughtless behavior.
6. We do everything the other way around
We are angry with a colleague, and we are tempted to say “a few kind words” to him. Instead, we smile welcomingly and give a compliment. If we were offended that another employee was sent to the conference instead of us, we should not be angry, but would be happy for him and wish him a happy journey.
Since the very morning we have been overcome by laziness, so we turn on the music and get down to some business. In a word, we act contrary to what our emotions tell us.
7. A famous phrase says: we cannot change our circumstances, but we can change our attitude towards them.
We are surrounded by different people, and not all of them are friendly and fair to us. We cannot be upset and indignant every time we encounter someone else's envy, anger, or rudeness. We need to come to terms with what we cannot influence.
8. The best assistant in mastering the science of self-control is meditation.
Just as physical exercise develops the body, meditation trains the mind. Through daily meditation sessions, you can learn to avoid negative emotions and not give in to passions that interfere with a sober view of circumstances and can destroy your life. With the help of meditation, a person immerses himself in a state of calm and achieves harmony with himself.
In most cases, emotions arise in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Therefore, if you do not learn to manage them, you can easily destroy mutual understanding with the people around you. At the same time, managing emotions is significantly different from suppressing them. After all, hidden anger, old grievances, unshed tears are the causes of many diseases.
Managing emotions: 3 ways
1. Changing the object of concentration
As a rule, the emotions experienced change from one to another object. Even if there is nothing to switch to, it is worth trying to evoke good memories. Remember that when you think about pleasant events, you involuntarily resurrect the sensations you experienced.
2. Changing Beliefs
Any information passes through the filter of our beliefs. Therefore, if you cannot change circumstances, you need to change your attitude towards them. This, in turn, will contribute to a change in emotions.
3. Managing the state of your body
Emotions greatly influence the state of the body: breathing and pulse quicken, blood pressure rises, but there is also so-called facial feedback. Its essence is that voluntary facial expressions, just like involuntary ones, can evoke emotions. In particular, portraying a certain one may soon begin to experience it. Often, to remove an unnecessary experience, it is enough to remove the “wrong face”. True, this needs to be done immediately, before the emotion has time to unwind.
Managing Emotions: Exercises
"Rewind"
Often unpleasant pictures or words get stuck in our brain for a long time. You can replay a certain event in your head for the hundredth time, while experiencing a lot of negative emotions. However, everyone is capable of controlling everything that is in his thoughts. Therefore, you can start a kind of “fast forward”. Thanks to it, inner voices will sound faster, become childish, squeaky... It will be impossible to take them seriously. Negative pictures can also be replaced with any funny song.
"Time Machine"
Everyone knows that time heals everything. This life axiom can help you learn to control your experiences. Thus, many will agree that most school tragedies now seem funny. Why not try to move into the future and take a sober look at the present situation, which causes a storm of emotions in us? In this case, managing emotions means experiencing difficult moments not “now,” but in your future.
In some cases, managing emotions requires an “explosion.” What is it expressed in? If you don’t have the strength to hold back your tears, cry; if anger is boiling inside, smack the pillow. But the release of emotions must still remain manageable. So, it is better to cry not at work, but at home, to throw out aggression not on people, but on inanimate objects. The main thing is not to bring yourself to a state where it is no longer possible to control anything.
Controlling emotions will be difficult without the ability to control your attention, gestures, facial expressions and breathing, as well as in the absence of a developed imagination. By working on the skills listed above, you are sure to achieve success.
Overcoming barriers to mutual understanding that arise in various communication situations is not easy. To do this, you need to have a good understanding of the nuances of human psychology, including your own. Another thing that is much simpler is not to create these barriers yourself. In order not to be the main obstacle to mutual understanding with others, a person needs to know the psychological rules of communication, and first of all, learn to manage his emotions, which most often become a source of interpersonal conflicts.
Our attitude towards emotions is very similar to our attitude towards old age, which, according to Cicero’s witty remark, everyone wants to achieve, but having achieved it, they blame it. The mind constantly rebels against the unlimited power of emotions in human relationships. But his protest can most often be heard “after a fight,” when it becomes crystal clear that fear, anger, or excessive joy were not the best advisors in communication. “There was no need to get excited,” prompts the mind, which was rightly called “rear,” “first you should have weighed everything, and then revealed your attitude towards your interlocutor.” All that remains is to agree with the wise arbiter, so that next time we can act no less recklessly, reacting to others with all our inherent emotionality.
The easiest way would be to recognize emotions as a harmful legacy of the past, inherited from our “lesser brothers,” who, due to their evolutionary immaturity, could not use reason for the best adaptation to the environment and were forced to be content with such primitive adaptation mechanisms as fear, which forced them to run away from danger; a rage that, without any hesitation, mobilized its muscles to fight for survival; pleasure, the pursuit of which did not know fatigue and indulgence. This point of view was held by the famous Swiss psychologist E. Claparède, who with increased emotionality rejected the right of emotions to participate in the regulation of human activity: “The uselessness or even harmfulness of emotions is known to everyone. Let us imagine, for example, a person who has to cross the street; if he is afraid of cars, he will lose his cool and run.
Sadness, joy, anger, weakening attention and common sense, often force us to perform unwanted actions. In short, an individual, caught in the grip of emotion, “loses his head.” Of course, a person crossing the street calmly has all the advantages over an emotionally excited one. And if our whole life consisted of a continuous intersection of tense highways, then emotions would hardly find a worthy place in it. However, life, fortunately, is designed in such a way that crossing streets in it most often turns out not to be a goal, but a means of achieving more interesting goals that could not exist without emotions. One of these goals is human understanding. It is no coincidence that many science fiction writers associate the worst prospects for the development of the human race with the loss of the wealth of emotional experiences, with communication built according to strictly verified logical schemes. The gloomy specter of a future world in which intelligent automata triumph, or rather, rule (since triumph is a state not devoid of emotionality), worries not only writers, but also many scientists who study the influence of scientific and technological progress on the development of society and the individual.
Modern culture is actively invading the emotional world of man. In this case, two, at first glance, opposite, but essentially interconnected processes are observed - an increase in emotional excitability and the spread of apathy. These processes have been discovered recently in connection with the massive penetration of computers into all spheres of life. For example, according to Japanese psychologists, fifty out of a hundred children who are fond of computer games; suffer from emotional disorders. For some, this manifests itself in increased aggressiveness, while in others it manifests itself in deep apathy, loss of the ability to react emotionally to real events. Such phenomena, when a person’s emotional states begin to approach the poles, when control over emotions is lost and their moderate manifestations are increasingly replaced by extremes, are evidence of obvious trouble in the emotional sphere. As a result, tension in human relationships increases. According to sociologists, three-quarters of families are subject to constant conflicts that arise for various reasons, but usually manifest themselves in one thing - uncontrollable emotional outbursts, which most participants subsequently regret.
Emotional outbursts are not always detrimental to relationships. Sometimes, as we noted, they bring some benefit if they do not drag on for a long time and are not accompanied by mutual, and especially public, insults. But emotional coldness will never benefit relationships, which in social-role and business communication is unpleasant, as a demonstration of an indifferent attitude to what is happening, and in intimate-personal communication it is simply unacceptable, since it destroys the very possibility of mutual understanding between close people. The polarization of emotional manifestations, characteristic of modern civilization, stimulates an active search for rational methods of regulating emotions, the release of which out of control threatens both the internal psychological stability of a person and the stability of his social connections. It cannot be said that the problem of managing emotions is characteristic only of modern society. The ability to resist passions and not succumb to immediate impulses that are inconsistent with the demands of reason has been considered the most important characteristic of wisdom in all centuries. Many thinkers of the past elevated it to the rank of the highest virtue. For example, Marcus Aurelius considered non-passion, which manifests itself in a person’s experience of exclusively rational emotions, as an ideal state of mind.
And although some philosophers, like the Stoic Marcus Aurelius, called for subordinating emotions to reason, and others advised not to enter into a hopeless struggle with natural impulses and submit to their arbitrariness, not a single thinker of the past was indifferent to this problem. And if it were possible to hold a referendum among them on the question of the relationship between the rational and the emotional in people’s lives, then, in our opinion, the majority of votes would accept the opinion expressed by the great humanist of the Renaissance Erasmus of Rotterdam, who argued that “there is one and only the path to happiness: the main thing is to know yourself; then do everything not depending on passions, but according to the decision of reason.”
It is difficult to judge how true such a statement is. Since emotions arise primarily as reactions to real life events that are far from the ideal of a rational structure of the world, the call for their coordination with reason rarely finds fertile ground. Modern psychologists, based on many years of experience in the scientific study of human emotions, as a rule, recognize the need for their rational regulation. Polish scientist J. Reikowski emphasizes: “In an effort to more and more effectively control the world around him, a person does not want to put up with the fact that something may exist in himself that nullifies his efforts and interferes with the implementation of his intentions. And when emotions take over, very often. everything happens just like that.” As we can see, according to Reikowski, emotions should not take precedence over reason. But let’s see how he assesses this situation from the point of view of the ability of the mind to change the state of affairs: “Up until now, people were only able to state the discrepancy between the “voice of the heart and the voice of reason,” but could neither understand nor eliminate it.” Behind this authoritative judgment are the results of numerous studies, psychological observations and experiments that reveal the contradictory nature of the relationship between “unreasonable” emotions and the “non-emotional” mind. We only have to agree with J. Reikovsky that we have not yet learned to manage our emotions wisely. And how to manage when there are many emotions, but, at best, only one mind. Not having the logic inherent in reason in solving problem situations, emotions take over others - a kind of everyday resourcefulness that allows you to turn a problematic situation into a problem-free one. Psychologists have found that emotions disorganize the activity in connection with which they arose. For example, fear that arises with the need to overcome a dangerous section of the path disrupts or even paralyzes the movement towards the goal, and intense joy about success in creative activity reduces creative potential. This shows the irrationality of emotions. And it is unlikely that they would have survived the competition with reason if they had not learned to win by “cunning.” By disrupting the original form of activity, emotions significantly facilitate the transition to a new one, which allows one to solve a problem without hesitation or doubt, which turned out to be a “tough nut to crack” for the mind. Thus, fear stops you in front of an elusive goal, but gives you strength and energy to escape from the dangers that lie in wait on the way to it; anger allows you to sweep away obstacles that cannot be rationally circumvented; joy makes it possible to be satisfied with what you already have, keeping you from the endless race for everything that does not yet exist.
Emotions are an evolutionarily earlier mechanism for regulating behavior than reason. Therefore, they choose simpler ways to solve life situations. To those who follow their “advice,” emotions add energy, since they are directly related to physiological processes, in contrast to the mind, to which not all systems of the body obey. Under the strong influence of emotions, a mobilization of forces occurs in the body that the mind cannot evoke either by orders, requests, or prodding.
A person’s need to intelligently manage his emotions does not arise because he is dissatisfied with the very fact of the appearance of emotional states. Normal activity and communication are equally hampered by violent, uncontrollable experiences, as well as indifference and lack of emotional involvement. It is unpleasant to communicate with someone who is “terrible in anger” or “violent in joy,” and with someone whose dull gaze indicates complete indifference to what is happening. Intuitively, people have a good sense of the “golden mean”, which provides the most favorable atmosphere in various communication situations. All our worldly wisdom is directed against emotional extremes. If grief means “don’t worry too much,” if joy means “don’t be too happy so you don’t cry later,” if disgust means “don’t be too picky,” if apathy means “shake yourself up!”
We generously share such recommendations with each other, because we are well aware that uncontrolled emotions can cause damage to both the person himself and his relationships with others. Alas, wise advice rarely resonates. People are much more likely to infect each other with out-of-control emotions than to achieve the beneficial effects of their recommendations for their wise management.
It is difficult to expect that a person will listen to someone else's voice of reason when his own turns out to be powerless. And these voices say the same thing: “You need to control yourself,” “you shouldn’t give in to weakness,” etc. By suppressing emotions “by command,” we most often achieve the opposite effect - excitement increases, and weakness becomes intolerable. Unable to cope with experiences, a person tries to suppress at least the external manifestations of emotions. However, external well-being in the presence of internal discord comes at too high a price: raging passions fall upon one’s own body, inflicting blows on it from which it cannot recover for a long time. And if a person gets used to remaining calm in the presence of other people at any cost, he risks becoming seriously ill.
American psychologist R. Holt proved that the inability to express anger leads to a subsequent deterioration in well-being and health. Constantly holding back expressions of anger (in facial expressions, gestures, words) can contribute to the development of diseases such as hypertension, stomach ulcers, migraines, etc. Therefore, Holt suggests expressing anger, but doing it constructively, which, in his opinion, is possible if a person overcome by anger, wants to “establish, restore, or maintain positive relationships with others. He acts and speaks in such a way as to express his feelings directly and sincerely, while maintaining sufficient control over their intensity, which is no more than necessary to convince others of the truth of his experiences.
But how can you maintain control over the intensity of the feeling if the first thing you lose in anger is the ability to control your state? That’s why we don’t give free rein to our emotions because we’re not sure of the ability to maintain control over them and direct them in a constructive direction. There is another reason for excessive restraint - traditions regulating emotional manifestations. For example, in Japanese culture it is customary to even report one’s misfortunes with a polite smile, so as not to cause embarrassment to a stranger. The traditional Japanese restraint in public expression of feelings is now perceived by them as a possible source of increasing emotional tension. It is no coincidence that they came up with the idea of creating robots that perform the functions of a “scapegoat”. In the presence of a person violently expressing his anger, such a robot humbly bows and asks for forgiveness, which is provided by a special program embedded in its electronic brain. Although the price of these robots is quite high, they are in great demand.
In European culture, men's tears are not encouraged. A real man “shouldn’t” cry. A stingy male tear is considered acceptable only in tragic circumstances, when others understand that grief is unbearable. In other situations, a crying man is perceived with condemnation or disgusted sympathy. But crying, as scientists have established, performs an important function, promoting emotional release, helping to survive grief, and get rid of sadness. By suppressing the natural manifestations of these emotions, men appear to be less protected than women from the effects of severe stress. Unable to publicly display their tears, some men cry in secret. According to American researcher W. Frey, 36% of men cry over films, television shows and books, while only 27% of women cry about the same thing. The same study found that overall, women cry four times more often than men.
As we see, a person too often has to suppress emotions both for individual reasons and following traditions. Using such a mechanism for controlling emotions, he acts reasonably to the extent that he needs to maintain normal relationships with others, and at the same time his actions are unreasonable, since they damage his health and psychological state. Doesn’t managing emotions generally fall into that category of conscious actions that cannot be called reasonable, and isn’t it wiser to leave emotions to themselves without interfering with their natural course?
But as studies by psychologists show, the emotional element is contraindicated even for actors who, by the nature of their work, must be immersed in a stream of emotions on stage in order to completely merge with their characters. However, the success of acting is higher, the more effectively the actor is able to control the dynamics of emotional states, the better his consciousness regulates the intensity of experiences.
Convinced that the fight against emotions brings the winner more thorns than laurels, people tried to find ways to influence their emotional world that would allow them to penetrate into the deep mechanisms of experiences and use these mechanisms more wisely than nature had disposed of. This is a system of emotion regulation based on yogic gymnastics. Observant members of that Indian sect noticed that with unpleasant emotions, breathing becomes constrained, shallow or intermittent, and an excited person assumes postures with excessively increased muscle tone. Having established the connection between posture, breathing and experiences, yogis have developed a number of physical and breathing exercises, mastery of which allows one to get rid of emotional tension and, to some extent, overcome unpleasant experiences. However, the philosophical concept of yogis is such that the goal of constant exercise is not rational control over emotions, getting rid of them in an effort to achieve complete serenity of spirit. Certain elements of the yoga system were used to create a modern method of psychological self-regulation - autogenic training.
There are many variations of this method, first proposed by the German psychotherapist I. Schulz in 932. Schultz's classic technique included a number of self-hypnosis formulas that, after repeated exercises, made it possible to freely induce a feeling of warmth and heaviness in various parts of the body, regulate the frequency of breathing and heartbeat, and induce general relaxation. Currently, autogenic training is widely used to correct emotional states with increased neuro-emotional stress, to overcome the consequences of stressful situations that arise in extreme conditions of professional activity.
Experts in the field of autogenic training believe that the scope of application of this method will constantly expand, and autotraining can become one of the important elements of a person’s psychological culture. In our opinion, auto-training is one of the methods of suppressing emotions, although not as primitive as the call to control yourself when emotions “overflow.” With autogenic training, a person first masters those functions that were not subject to conscious regulation (thermal sensations, heart rate, etc.), and then “from the rear” he attacks his experiences, depriving them of the body’s support. If you can cope with experiences without social and moral content, then there is a great temptation to get rid of, say, remorse, causing a feeling of pleasant heaviness and warmth in the solar plexus, and from a painful feeling of compassion, feeling like a bird soaring freely in the radiant heavenly space . “I’m calm, I’m completely calm,” the character in the film “The Hitcher” repeats one of the self-hypnosis formulas every time there is a threat to his emotional well-being. His moral revival is precisely manifested in the fact that this spell gradually ceases to fulfill its regulatory function.
A person’s true psychological culture is manifested not so much in the fact that he knows self-regulation techniques, but in the ability to use these techniques to achieve psychological states that are most consistent with humanistic norms of behavior and relationships with other people. Therefore, people have always been concerned about the problem of criteria for the reasonable management of emotions. Common sense suggests that such a criterion may be the desire for pleasure. This point of view was held, for example, by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristippus, who believed that pleasure is a goal to which one must strive without fail, avoiding situations that threaten unpleasant experiences. Among subsequent generations of philosophers he had few supporters. But among people who are not inclined to philosophical understanding of reality, Aristippus has many more like-minded people. The prospect of receiving maximum pleasure without experiencing suffering seems very attractive, if we abstract from the moral assessment of the egoistic position of “living for your own pleasure.” Yet the roots of selfishness are not so deep that most people can be distracted from the principles of humanistic morality, which rejects the idea of achieving emotions of pleasure at any cost. The inconsistency of the pleasure principle is also obvious from the point of view of human adaptation to the natural and social environment.
The pursuit of pleasure is just as detrimental to people’s physical and mental health as constant troubles, suffering and loss. This is evidenced by studies by doctors and psychologists observing the behavior of people who had electrodes implanted into their brains during treatment. By stimulating various parts of the brain with electricity, the Norwegian scientist Sem-Jacobson discovered zones of experiencing pleasure, fear, disgust, and rage. If his patients were given the opportunity to independently stimulate the “happy zone,” they did it with such zeal that they forgot about food and went into convulsions, continuously closing the contact associated with electrical stimulation of the corresponding part of the brain. The creator of the stress theory, G. Selye, and his followers showed that there is a single physiological mechanism for the body’s adaptation to environmental changes; and the more intense these changes are, the higher the risk of exhaustion of a person’s adaptive capabilities, regardless of whether the changes are pleasant to him or not.
The stress caused by joyful changes can be even greater than the stress caused by troubles. For example, according to the event stress scale developed by American scientists T. Holmes and R. Ray, major personal achievements put a person’s health at risk to a greater extent than friction with a leader. And although the most stressful events turned out to be those associated with losses (death of loved ones, divorce, separation of spouses, illness, etc.), a certain stressful effect was also associated with holidays, vacations, vacations. So turning life into a “continuous holiday” can lead to exhaustion of the body rather than to a constant state of pleasure.
What was said about the inconsistency of the pleasure principle as a criterion for the rational management of emotions can sound a warning only for an optimist who knows how to discover the pleasant sides of life. As for the pessimists, they probably did not expect anything different, since the joys of life in their worldview are worth little compared to the sorrows. A similar point of view was actively defended by the pessimistic philosopher A. Schopenhauer. In support, he cited the results of rather naive experiments performed on himself. For example, he found out how many grains of sugar needed to be eaten to overcome the bitterness of one grain of quinine. He interpreted the fact that ten times more sugar was required in favor of his concept. And so that doubters could themselves emotionally feel the priority of suffering, he called for mentally comparing the pleasure received by the predator and the torment of his victim. Schopenhauer considered the avoidance of suffering to be the only reasonable criterion for managing emotions. The logic of such reasoning led him to the recognition of non-existence as the ideal state of the human race.
The philosophical concept of pessimism will evoke little sympathy from anyone. However, a passive strategy of avoiding suffering is not uncommon. Pessimistic people resign themselves to constant depression because they hope that giving up the active pursuit of success will relieve them of severe stress. However, this is a misconception. The prevailing negative emotional background, characteristic of many people, significantly impairs their productivity and vitality. Of course, it is impossible to completely avoid negative emotions, and, apparently, it is not advisable; they, to a certain extent, organize a person to fight obstacles and counteract danger. A study conducted on monkeys showed that an experienced leader, who has endured many battles, reacts to a stressful situation more favorable from a medical and biological point of view than do young monkeys. However, the constant experience of negative emotions leads to the formation of not only psychological, but also functional negative changes, which, as studies by a team of scientists led by N.P. Bekhtereva have shown, cover all areas of the brain and disrupt its activity.
According to physiologists, a person should not allow his brain to “get used” to troubles. G. Selye strongly recommends striving to forget about the “hopelessly disgusting and painful.” It is necessary, as N.P. Bekhtereva and her colleagues argue, to create for yourself as often as possible, albeit small, but joy that balances the unpleasant emotions experienced. It is necessary to focus on the positive moments of your life, often remember pleasant moments of the past, and plan actions that can improve your situation. The ability to find joy in the little things in life is inherent in centenarians. In general, it should be noted that the psychological personality type of a long-liver is characterized by such traits as goodwill, lack of feelings of irreconcilable rivalry, hostility and envy.
Currently, there are many psychotherapeutic methods for regulating emotional states. However, most of them require special individual or group lessons. One of the most accessible ways to improve emotional well-being is laughter therapy.
The French doctor G. Rubinstein substantiated the biological nature of the benefits of laughter. Laughter causes a not very sharp, but deep shake-up of the whole body, which leads to muscle relaxation and allows you to relieve tension caused by stress. When laughing, breathing deepens, the lungs absorb three times more air and the blood is enriched with oxygen, blood circulation improves, the heart rhythm calms down, and blood pressure decreases. When laughing, the release of endomorphin, a pain-soothing anti-stress substance, increases, and the body is released from the stress hormone - adrenaline. Dancing has approximately the same mechanism of influence. A certain “dose” of laughter can provide good health even in difficult situations, but an “overdose” of even such a harmless remedy as laughter can lead to a departure from rational management of emotions. Constant fun is the same escape from life as immersion in gloomy experiences. And it’s not just that emotional extremes can worsen your well-being and health. The imbalance of positive and negative emotions prevents full communication and mutual understanding.
There are two categories of people who will never be understood by others, no matter how much they want it. People will, if possible, avoid those who are constantly dejected, immersed in bitter thoughts about the imperfections of human nature, for fear of becoming infected with a gloomy mood and pessimism. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the difference between the painful state of depression, when a person completely loses the ability to regulate emotions, and the state of “withdrawing” into unpleasant experiences, characteristic of some generally healthy people who find themselves in difficult life situations. But there is still a difference. In painful conditions, negative emotions are directed mainly inward, concentrated around one’s own personality, while “healthy” negative emotions are constantly looking for a victim among others in order to splash out in an aggressive outburst or a bitter complaint. But since most people cannot withstand prolonged exposure to a difficult emotional atmosphere, they begin to avoid communicating with a person immersed in unpleasant experiences. Gradually losing his usual contacts, he is forced to transfer negative emotions onto himself.
What if the ability to rejoice at everything that exists and that can happen is inherent in a person and he is invariably in high spirits, enjoying life in any circumstances? All that remains, it would seem, is to envy and try to follow his example. Indeed, in most neutral communication situations that do not require sympathy, help, or support, merry people evoke sympathy and approval with their ability to not take anything to heart. But only those who know how to rejoice in everything, even the grief of others, can constantly rejoice. Without sharing the suffering of other people, a person risks finding himself in a psychological vacuum when he himself needs support. Constantly being in a rosy mood, he accustoms those around him to a “problem-free” attitude towards himself. And when the time comes for serious tests of strength, a breakdown occurs. According to the observation of psychotherapist V. A. Faivishevsky, the lack of experience in overcoming unpleasant experiences caused by failures and losses can lead to “victory neurosis,” which is observed in constantly successful people at the first failure.
A gross violation of the emotional balance does not benefit anyone, even if a positive emotional background dominates. It may seem that a person who does not lose joy in the presence of suffering people is able to infect them with his mood, lift their spirits and give them cheerfulness. But this is an illusion. It’s easy to defuse situational tension with a joke or a cheerful smile, but it’s just as easy to achieve the opposite effect when faced with a deep experience. In this regard, a parallel can be drawn with the impact of music on human emotions.
It is known that music has a powerful emotional charge, sometimes more powerful than real life events. For example, psychologists who surveyed students, teachers and other employees of Stanford University found that among the factors that arouse emotions, music took first place, touching scenes in films and literary works came in second, and love came in sixth. Of course, one cannot make absolute the data obtained in one study, but one cannot help but admit that the emotional effect of music is very great. Taking this into account, psychologists use the method of music psychotherapy to correct emotional states. In case of emotional disorders of the depressive type, cheerful music only aggravates negative experiences, while melodies that cannot be classified as cheerful bring positive results. Likewise, in human communication, grief can be softened by compassion or aggravated by serene cheerfulness and routine optimism. Here we return again to empathy - the ability to tune our emotions to the “wave” of other people’s experiences. Thanks to empathy, it is possible to avoid constant immersion in one’s own joys and sorrows. The emotional world of the people around us is so rich and diverse that contact with it leaves no chance for a monopoly of positive or negative experiences. Empathy promotes balance in a person’s emotional sphere.
Some philosophers took the principle of balance literally, arguing that in the life of every person the joys exactly correspond to the sufferings and, if you subtract one from the other, the result will be zero. Polish philosopher and art critic V. Tatarkiewicz, who analyzed this kind of research, came to the conclusion that it is impossible to prove or disprove this point of view, since it is impossible to accurately measure and unambiguously compare joys and sufferings. However, Tatarkevich himself does not see any other solution to this problem other than the recognition that “human life tends to equalize pleasant and unpleasant sensations.”
In our opinion, the principle of emotional balance is important not because it can indicate the exact proportion of positive and negative experiences. It is much more important for a person to understand that stable emotional balance as an indicator of reasonable management of emotions cannot be achieved only through situational control over experiences. A person’s satisfaction with his life, activities and relationships with others is not equivalent to the sum of pleasures received at each individual moment. Like a mountain climber who experiences an incomparable feeling of satisfaction at the top precisely because success cost him many unpleasant emotions on the way to his goal, any person receives joy as a result of overcoming difficulties. The small joys of life are necessary to compensate for unpleasant experiences, but one should not expect deep satisfaction from their sum. It is known that children who lack parental affection are drawn to sweets. One candy can relieve a child’s stress for a while, but even a large number of them cannot make him happier.
Each of us is somewhat reminiscent of a child reaching for candy when trying to influence our emotions directly at the moment they arise. The short-term effect obtained through situational management of emotions cannot lead to stable emotional balance. This is due to the stability of a person’s general emotionality. What is emotionality and can it be controlled?
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the first studies of emotionality have been carried out. Since then, it has been generally accepted that emotional people are distinguished by the fact that they take everything to heart and react violently to trifles, while low-emotional people have enviable composure. Modern psychologists tend to identify emotionality with imbalance, instability, and high excitability.
Emotionality is considered as a stable personality trait associated with its temperament. The famous Soviet psychophysiologist V.D. Nebylitsyn considered emotionality to be one of the main components of human temperament and identified in it such characteristics as impressionability (sensitivity to emotional influences), impulsiveness (quickness and rashness of emotional reactions), lability (dynamism of emotional states). Depending on temperament, a person becomes emotionally involved in various situations with greater or less intensity.
But if emotionality is directly related to temperament, which is based on the properties of the nervous system, then the possibility of intelligently controlling emotionality without interfering with physiological processes seems extremely doubtful. Can a choleric person intelligently regulate the intensity of his “choleric” outbursts if his temperament is dominated by impulsiveness - a tendency to quick and rash emotional reactions? He will have time to “break the woods” over a trifle before he realizes that the most reasonable principle for managing emotions is balance. And an imperturbable phlegmatic person, organically incapable of vividly and directly demonstrating his feelings, will always be perceived by others as a person who is deeply indifferent to what is happening. If emotionality is understood only as a combination of strength, speed of occurrence and mobility of emotional reactions, then one area of application remains for the mind: to come to terms with the fact that there are emotional and unemotional people, and to take into account their natural characteristics. This mission of reason itself is extremely important for human understanding.
Features of temperament must be taken into account in various communication situations. For example, you should not be offended by the violent reaction of a choleric person, which more often indicates his impulsiveness than a conscious intention to offend his interlocutor. You can respond in kind without risking causing a long-term conflict. But even one harsh word can permanently unbalance a melancholic person - a vulnerable and impressionable person with a heightened sense of self-esteem.
To learn to relate intelligently to the peculiarities of the emotional make-up of other people, it is not enough to know these peculiarities; you also need to control yourself, maintain balance, no matter how intense your own emotional reactions. This opportunity arises if, from fruitless attempts to influence directly the intensity of emotions, a person moves on to managing situations in which emotions arise and are manifested. A person’s emotional resources are not limitless, and if in some situations they are spent too generously, then in others they begin to feel their shortage. Even hyper-emotional people who seem to others to be inexhaustible in expressing their feelings, when in a calm environment, plunge into an inhibited state to a greater extent than those who are classified as low-emotional. Emotions, as a rule, do not arise spontaneously; they are tied to situations and turn into stable states if the emotiogenic situation persists for a long time. Such emotions are usually called passion. And the more important one life situation is for a person, the higher the likelihood that one passion will crowd out all the others. Only great passion, argued the French writer Henri Petit, is capable of taming our passions. And his compatriot writer Victor Cherbullier drew attention to the possibility of the opposite effect, arguing that our passions devour each other, and often the big ones are devoured by the small ones.
One of these judgments, at first glance, contradicts the other, but this is not so. You can concentrate all emotional resources in one situation or in one area of life, or you can distribute them in many directions. In the first case, the intensity of emotions will be extreme. But the more emotional situations there are, the lower the intensity of emotions in each of them. Thanks to this dependence, it becomes possible to manage emotions more intelligently than by interfering with their physiological mechanisms and immediate manifestations. Formally, this dependence can be expressed as follows: E == Ie * Ne (where E is the general emotionality of a person, Ie is the intensity of each emotion, Ne is the number of emotional situations).
Essentially, this formula means that a person’s overall emotionality is a constant (a relatively constant value), while the strength and duration of an emotional reaction in each specific situation can vary significantly depending on the number of situations that do not leave a given person indifferent. The law of emotional constancy makes it possible to take a fresh look at established ideas about the gradual age-related decline in emotionality.
It is generally accepted that in youth a person is emotional, but with age, emotionality is largely lost. In fact, with the accumulation of life experience, a person expands the spheres of emotional involvement, more and more situations evoke emotional associations in him, and, consequently, each of them causes a less intense reaction. The general emotionality remains the same, although in every situation observed by others the person behaves more restrained than in his youth. Of course, there are cases when the ability to react violently and for a long time to certain events is not lost with age. But this is typical for people of a fanatical nature who concentrate their emotions in one area and absolutely do not pay attention to what and how is happening in others.
The expansion of the range of emotional situations is facilitated by the general cultural development of the individual. The higher a person’s cultural level, the greater restraint in the expression of emotions those around him observe when communicating with him. Conversely, uncontrollable passions and violent outbursts of emotions, called affects, are usually associated with limited areas of expression of emotions, which is typical for people with a low level of general culture. This is why the role of art in regulating human emotionality is so great. By enriching his spiritual world with aesthetic experiences, a person loses his dependence on the all-consuming passions associated with his pragmatic interests.
Taking into account the law of constancy, you can master methods of managing emotions that are aimed not at a hopeless fight against destructive manifestations of emotional extremes, but at creating conditions of life and activity that allow you not to bring yourself to extreme emotional states. We are talking about managing the extensive component of general emotionality - emotional situations.
The first way is distribution of emotions- consists in expanding the range of emotiogenic situations, which leads to a decrease in the intensity of emotions in each of them. The need for conscious distribution of emotions arises when there is an excessive concentration of a person’s experiences. The inability to distribute emotions can lead to significant deterioration in health. Thus, J. Reikowski cites data from a study of the emotional characteristics of people who have had a heart attack. They were asked to recall the most negative events that preceded the illness. It turned out that patients two months after a heart attack recalled significantly fewer stressful events than healthy people. However, the strength and duration of unpleasant experiences about each of these events in patients turned out to be much higher; They were significantly more likely to report feelings of guilt or hostility and difficulty controlling their feelings.
The distribution of emotions occurs as a result of expanding information and social circle. Information about objects new to a person is necessary for the formation of new interests that turn neutral situations into emotional ones. Expanding your social circle performs the same function, since new social and psychological contacts allow a person to find a wider sphere of manifestation of his feelings.
The second way to manage emotions is concentration- necessary in those circumstances when operating conditions require complete concentration of emotions on one thing that is of decisive importance in a certain period of life. In this case, a person consciously excludes a number of emotiogenic situations from the sphere of his activity in order to increase the intensity of emotions in those situations that are most important to him. Various everyday techniques for focusing emotions can be used. The famous film director N. Mikhalkov spoke about one of them. In order to fully concentrate his efforts on the idea of a new film, he shaved his hair and thereby lost the emotional incentive to appear in public again. Popular theater and film actor A. Dzhigarkhanyan formulated for himself the “law of conservation of emotions.” He considers it obligatory to exclude situations at least once a week in which the emotions necessary for creative activity are generously spent. The most common method of focusing emotions is to limit information from usual sources and exclude favorable conditions for activity in those situations that contribute to the “dispersion” of emotions.
The third way to manage emotions is switching- associated with the transfer of experiences from emotiogenic situations to neutral ones. With so-called destructive emotions (anger, rage, aggression), it is necessary to temporarily replace real situations with illusory or socially insignificant ones (using the “scapegoat” principle). If constructive emotions (primarily interests) are concentrated on trifles, illusory objects, then it is necessary to switch to situations that have increased social and cultural value. The use of these methods of managing emotions requires some effort, ingenuity, and imagination. The search for specific techniques depends on the individual and his level of maturity.
