Theoretical background of research of ER are multiple and those processes have been under scrutinized analyses for a very long time now. Emotion regulation was defined as the set of processes whereby people seek to redirect the spontaneous flow of their emotions. In a broad sense, emotion regulation refers to the set of processes whereby people manage all of their emotionally charged states, including specific emotions, affect, mood, and stress. Emotion regulation determines how easily people can leave a given emotional state. It can thus be distinguished from emotional sensitivity, which determines how easily people can enter an emotional state. Emotional regulation acts as a modifier; it helps us filter the most important pieces of information and motivates us to attend to it in a way that wouldn’t evoke stress or fear [9;5;4].
Emotions have multiple components, consisting of a more or less coherent cluster of positive or negative behavioural and physiological responses that are accompanied by specific thoughts and feelings [5]. Because emotion regulation operates on people’s emotions, it follows that the effects of emotion regulation can be observed across all modalities of emotional responding, including behaviour, physiology, thoughts, and feelings [9]. Emotional regulation is the ability to respond to what is happening with a range of emotions that is socially acceptable and flexible enough; it is also the ability to postpone spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as the operation of external and internal processes responsible for observing, evaluating and changing emotional reactions. Despite the fact that the term itself and its description may seem complicated, everything is really simple: in a broad sense, emotional regulation is the ability to master oneself when it is needed.
Modern emotion theories emphasize the adaptive value of emotions. Emotions often must be and should be regulated. The study of emotion regulation has its origins in the psychoanalytic and stress and coping traditions [9,10]. Recently, increased interest in emotion regulation has led to crucial boundary ambiguities that now threaten progress in this domain. It is argued that distinctions need to be made between regulation of emotion and regulation by emotion; emotion regulation in self and emotion regulation in others; and conscious and non-conscious emotion regulation [5].
According to scientific definitions emotional regulation is a kind of process that involves a whole range of things among which are initiating, inhibiting and emotionally related behaviour as well as the capacity to modulate a person’s state. Functionally, emotion regulation can also be described as a process “to focus one's attention to a task and the ability to suppress inappropriate behaviour under instruction”. Emotion regulation is a highly significant function in human life [7].
Firstly when we talk about ER, we have to understand clearly, that at the same time we are keeping in mind the crucial value and recognition of the basic regulatory role of emotions in those interactions of a complex matter of people and what is around them aka human environment.
When we are able to respond to what is around us, what is happening to us and all those ranges of emotions we may feel overloaded with - that’s when we are talking about an emotional regulation as a coping mechanism which may or may not be flexible but definitely has to be socially acceptable.
James Gross’s model of emotion regulation emphasizes that people can act to control their emotions at different points in time - including before they feel an emotion (“antecedent-focused emotion regulation”) and after they have already begun to react emotionally (“response-focused emotion regulation”) [2].
In everyday life, people are continually exposed to potentially emotion arousing stimuli, ranging from internal sensations like an upset stomach to external events such as juicy gossip about a colleague or music played in supermarkets. We know that these kinds of situations do not happen on a regular basis but still people engage in different forms of emotional regulation almost on a daily basis [9].
Jeremy Burman, Christopher D. Green and Sturart Shanker present the concept of ER by describing the closeness in meaning of ER and self-regulation. To give the definitions scientists examined different systems of controlled specifically used vocabulary and associated terms and came up with the following conceptual clusters: self-control, self-management, self-observation, learning, social behaviour, and the personality constructs related to self-monitoring. It is fascinating how similar ideas are interacted and intercorrelated [7].
Rachel Eddins, states that emotion regulation involves moderating the experience of emotions which can include the ability to alter the intensity or duration of an emotion rather than changing it completely [3]. Facing hundreds of emotion-provoking stimuli it’s “natural for the mind to get hooked into some negative contemplation or unmindfully ignore emotions after getting bombarded with so many stimuli every day” and most of them require some action or response from our end [3].
From the fact that these kinds of stimuli only occasionally trigger a whole range of emotions, one could infer that people engage in some form of emotion regulation almost all of the time. But ER has also been used in manifesting the shift of the attention off traumatic and threatening experiences.
The emotional sphere is one of the most basic systems for regulating behaviour, since it makes it possible to understand the relationship among people and to be able to construct the interaction with the environment. ER is the process of emotional control which is based on different levels of activities. The capacity to react emotionally, to reserve or on the contrary to demonstrate the emotions is something people’s social life depends on. In overcoming the longevity of emotions of a person with the outside world, to build interaction within and outside the environment. Major part of the process of containing and keeping the needed level of activity demands general regulation of emotional interaction. Social character of a human’s life needs an ability to react emotionally to the feelings of other people and demonstrate or reserve emotions according to the situation and circumstances, maybe even to overcome one's emotions in order to keep the balance. All these peculiarities of people’s capacity to interact constitute the part of a human psycho which is called emotional regulation.
Emotion regulation consists of people’s active attempts to manage their emotional states. In its broadest sense, emotion regulation subsumes the regulation of all states that are emotionally charged, including moods, stress, and positive or negative affect. Emotion regulation determines the offset of an emotional response, and can thus be distinguished from emotional sensitivity, which determines the onset of an emotional response. Emotional sensitivity and emotion regulation follow different developmental paths and are functionally distinct throughout the lifespan the prototype of emotion regulation is a deliberate, effortful process that seeks to override people’s spontaneous emotional responses [9].
The problem of ER is a part of many others, general psychological issues and tasks and has an inevitable connection with them. The theory of ER and methods of working depend first of all on what methodological grounds we stand on, on what direction the work with problems with emotions, personal disorders and correlation between intellectual and emotional abilities is built on. First of all we must keep in mind that the ER takes its beginning and roots in the complexity of forms of interconnection of a person with what they are surrounded by. ‘Emotional regulation refers to the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express their feelings. Emotional regulation can be automatic or controlled, conscious or unconscious, and may have effects at one or more points in the emotion producing process.’’ [3]
Studies on emotional regulation indicate that there is a significant positive correlation between emotion regulation and depression management. And the more we study and research how to deal with our emotions the healthier e become
References:
1. Gross, J. J. Emotion regulation: Past, present, future. Cognition and Emotion.
2. Gross, J. J. Emotion regulation in adulthood: Timing is everything. Current Directions in Psychological Science
3. https://eddinscounseling.com/emotion-regulation-coping-skills/
4. https://epdf.pub/cognition-amp-emotion-reviews-of-current-research-and-theories.ht
5. Koole, S. L., & Coenen, L. H. M. Implicit self and affect regulation: Effects of action orientation and subliminal self-priming in an affective priming task. Self and Identity, 6, 118 136.
6. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotion-regulation
7. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26234744/
8. https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/the-psychology-of-emotion-regulation-an-integrative-review
9. https://research.vu.nl/ws/files/2599118/Koole%20Cognition%20and%20Emotion%2023(1)%202009%20u.pdf
10. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/026999399379186?src=recsys
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