Behavior under the influence of emotions

Imagine that you are invited to a meeting with your boss. You do not know what it will be devoted to, and you do not know its agenda. The secretary of your boss, setting a meeting time, told you that "it is very important." How you will respond: whether you will look scared, angry or sad; whether you are excited or indifferent; what you say and how you behave - all of this will be essential for the final result. Will you rely on your emotional reactions or, if necessary, on your ability to control emotional behavior; Will you take something for courage before the meeting, or will you swallow a diazepam tablet?
It is hard not to behave emotionally when the stakes are high, and this behavior is often observed in cases where we experience strong emotions. Our emotions usually turn out to be our best guides, directing our actions and indicating what exactly is suitable for a given situation; however, this is not always the case with everyone. Sometimes there are moments in which we do not want to act or speak under the influence of our emotions.
But if we could turn off our emotions for a while, then our affairs would have gone worse, because the people around us might think that we are isolated or even heartless. ^{[63] To} experience the fullness of our emotions, to sincerely worry about what is happening around us and at the same time behave in a way that we and other people do not consider too emotional, sometimes it is very difficult. And some people face a completely opposite problem: they experience emotions, but they do not express them as other people expect, or they do not express them at all, with the result that people around them think that they are overly controlling themselves.
It does not depend on us how we look and what sounds we make or what we find ourselves forced to do and say when we become a little more emotional than we would like to be. But we can learn to curb our emotional behavior, which we would later regret, in such a way as to restrain or soften our expressions, to prevent or limit our actions and words. We can also learn not to be too restrained, not to look unemotional if this is our problem. It would be even better if we could learn to choose how we should experience and express our emotions in a constructive manner.
We can turn to ancient antiquity and use the description of a reserved person, made by Aristotle, as a standard of what is constructive emotional behavior. ^[64] Our emotions must be manifested in the proper amount, be proportionate to the event that caused them; they must manifest themselves at an appropriate time and in a way that corresponds to the emotional trigger and the circumstances of its occurrence; they must be expressed in the right way, so as not to cause harm. ^[65] Admittedly, these are very abstract ideas, but they do explain the reasons for which we later regret our behavior. The previous page explained what gives impetus to emotions and how to loosen the hot triggers of emotions, so that they do not always cause us emotional excitement. But suppose that this failed and the emotion has already arisen. Then the question arises: can we ourselves choose what we say and do? When we experience a period of immunity — a period during which we do not have access to information that would change it, how we feel — we do not want to suppress our emotions. Everything that our emotions make us do and say seems to us justified and necessary.
If we try to control our actions and words, then a struggle will begin between our deliberate, conscious efforts and our involuntary, emotional behavior. This struggle will be most acute among those of us who experience emotions much faster and much stronger than others. Sometimes all we can do is leave the stage. But even this in some emotional episodes may require tremendous effort of will from some people. With the accumulation of practical experience, it becomes easier and easier to soften our emotional behavior, but still it takes time, concentration of forces and understanding of the situation. Just as there are factors that determine how and when a hot trigger can be weakened, there is also a set of related factors that determine when we are most likely to succeed in mitigating our emotional behavior. When we fail to achieve such mitigation, and from time to time each of us fails, then we can take a series of measures to take advantage of this failure, which will reduce the likelihood of a second fiasco.
Before I address these two questions - how to soften our emotional behavior and, if we don’t succeed, how we can learn from the mistakes made, - we need to figure out what we are trying to soften: what is emotional behavior and with what signals, actions and by internal change it is associated.
We also need to understand how various emotional behaviors arise and how we can influence this process. We will start with signals, with expressions of emotions.
Emotion signals from other people often determine how we interpret their words and actions. Their expressions of emotions also cause our emotional response in response, and she, in turn, colors our interpretation of what a person says and how we imagine his motives, attitudes and intentions.
Earlier, we met Helene, who was annoyed by her husband Jim, who said that in the evening he could not pick up their daughter from school. Helen exclaimed: “Why didn't you warn me in advance?” Jim might not have been angry with her in turn if he had not noticed signs of irritation in her voice and on her face. But her words alone might be enough. A milder way of expressing the same claim would look like this: “I would like you to warn me about such things in advance” or “What prevented you from telling me about it not at the very last moment?” The second option would indicate that Helen realizes that there must be some reason that has forced Jim to create this inconvenience to her. But even her softer exclamation would not ease the tension if she pronounced it with irritation in her voice and face.
Even if Helen didn’t say anything, her expression would have prompted Jim that she was angry, because emotions are not something personal. Most of our emotions have special signals that tell other people how we feel. Thoughts, on the contrary, are completely private. No one knows whether you think about your mother, about what you see on a television show, or about changing your investment portfolio, unless emotions are mixed with your thoughts, as is often the case in reality. There is no external signal telling people about the very fact of our thinking, not to mention their content. It is different with emotions. Although people vary in their expressiveness, emotions are not invisible or silent. People who look at us and listen to what we say can say that we feel, unless we make concerted efforts to hide the expressions of our emotions. But even in this case, some traces of emotions can still be saved and be discovered by other people. ^[66]
We do not always like what others may know, what we feel; for even the most open people from time to time prefer to keep their feelings in themselves. Perhaps Helen did not want to let Jim know that she was angry, but her face would have betrayed her, even if she could force herself to remain silent. The fact that we are giving signals of emerging emotions is one of the manifestations of our evolutionary heritage. Apparently, throughout the history of man as a biological species, it was more useful for other people to know what emotions we experience, regardless of our desire or unwillingness to tell them about it. In the case of Helene, her irritated eyes could have prompted Jim to explain the reason he did not warn his wife in advance: “Honey, I know that I will create problems for you, but I have no choice: when you were in the bathroom, the boss called me and ordered to be present at the emergency meeting. " Now that Helene knows that Jim has not ignored her interests, her anger subsides. But her anger might not completely disappear, if, as I mentioned earlier, she had other reasons for outrage or if they imported their anger into this situation, due to her childhood experiences of relationships with her powerful older brother.
Another characteristic of the signal system of emotions is that it is always in the on state. She is ready to instantly broadcast any emotion that we experience. Imagine what our life would be like if this system had a “switch” that we could, in our own discretion, put in the “on” or “off” position. In this case, we could not, for example, normally take care of our small children. After all, if the switch were in the “off” position, how would we know what and when we should do? Having grown old, would we want to be forced to beg our adult children to turn their emotional signals to us? In love, friendship and even in the workplace, the most important question would be: “Are your emotions signals turned on or off?” Who would like to spend time on us, except for those with whom we perform trivial exchange operations, such as morning newspapers, would others know that we prefer to deprive them of information about how we feel?
Fortunately, we do not have such an opportunity, and although we may try to weaken our emotional signals, such attempts rarely end in success. Of course, some people are better than others are able to weaken and even eliminate any manifestation of emotions that they experience. But it is impossible to say with certainty whether this is due to the fact that such people experience emotions less intensively, or whether they have extraordinary abilities to suppress any manifestations of the emotions they experience. John Gottman and Robert Levenson found that men who try to hide their feelings while their wives express anger, from a physiological point of view, are in a state corresponding to intense emotional experience. ^[67] In and of itself, such “blocking off with a stone wall” can be viewed as an emotional signal about the possession of dominant power, the inability or unwillingness to engage in minor everyday problems. Although I did not participate in this work, I believe that a thorough investigation would have revealed signs of fear or anger in subtle changes in voice or facial expressions before or during such “blocking out”.
Signals about emotions arise almost simultaneously with the emotions themselves. For example, when we are saddened, our voice automatically becomes softer and quieter, and the inner corners of our eyebrows rise. If the emotion arises slowly, within a few seconds, the signal may become stronger or a quick sequence of signals may occur. Signals make it clear when emotions start, and to a lesser extent when emotions end. As long as the emotion has not disappeared, it paints the voice, but it cannot be argued with the same confidence that it will cause a change in facial expression. We can say when a person ceases to be in the power of an emotion, because we hear the absence of this emotion in his voice or do not see its expression on his face or because we hear and see expressions of another emotion, which replaced the first one.
It is important to remember that the signals of emotions do not tell us about their source. We may know that someone is angry, but not know why. His anger could cause us, or he himself, or the memory of something that has nothing to do with us. Sometimes we can guess the source of the emotion due to the knowledge of the current context. Suppose you say to your son: “Johnny, you cannot go to the cinema with friends tonight because you have to sit at home with your little brother. You know that his nanny has fallen ill, and my mother and I have to go on an anniversary to our friends. ” If Johnny looks angry, he is probably angry with you because you violated his plans and found your obligations to your friends more important than his obligations to his friends. But Johnny may also be angry with himself for taking the matter to heart and experiencing too much disappointment. Not very likely, but quite possible.
We need to avoid Othello's mistake . ^[68] Recall how in the play of Shakespeare, Othello accuses his wife Desdemona of loving Cassio. He tells her to confess everything, because he is going to kill her for treason. Desdemona asks Othello to call Cassio to confirm her innocence. But Othello declares that he has already killed Cassio. Then Desdemona realizes that she cannot prove her innocence and that Othello will kill her.

Desdemona Trouble He is falsely slandered, I died. Othello Minx, how dare you to cry for him with me? Desdemona They drove me into exile, but leave me to live! Othello Cheater, die! (Translated by B. Pasternak)

Othello's mistake was that he could not understand how Desdemona felt; he only knew that she experienced torment and fear. He unreasonably believed that her emotions were the only source: that the cause of grief was the news of the death of her beloved, and the cause of fear was the threat of exposing her infidelity. He kills Desdemona without thinking that the sources of her suffering and fear were completely different: that her emotions were the reaction of her faithful wife to the news that her overly jealous husband was going to kill her and that she had no way to prove her innocence.
If we want to avoid the error of Othello, we must resist the temptation to draw fast conclusions and seek to consider other causes besides that which seems to us the most obvious cause of the appearance of emotion. There are many sources of fear. The fear of a criminal who fears being caught looks just like the fear of an innocent person over the inability to prove his alibi. ^[69] Emotion signals provide important information about what a person feels and what he can do in the next moment, but there is almost always more than one opportunity. A person who is afraid may prefer to fight rather than hide or flee.
Let's start with facial expressions, the shortest of all emotional signals. Section 1 describes my research, which established that the seven following emotions have their own characteristic universal facial expressions: sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, scorn and joy. I do not need to clarify the meaning of these words describing emotions, perhaps with the exception of “contempt”, since the word “contempt” is not very often used in English. Contempt is experienced by a person who feels superior, usually moral, over another person, but contempt can also be experienced for someone who is weaker intellectually, physically, and so on. Contempt can be a rather pleasant emotion.
Each of these names of emotions - sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, contempt and joy - denotes a family of related emotions. For example, anger can vary in strength (from irritation to rage) and in type (gloomy anger, offended anger, indignant anger, cold anger, etc.). Changes in intensity within each family of emotions are clearly reflected on the face, but scientists have not yet conducted rigorous research to determine whether different members of the same family of emotions have their characteristic facial expressions.
In modern science, it is customary to combine anger, fear, disgust, sadness and contempt into a group of negative emotions and oppose it to a group of positive emotions. Since a surprise can be either positive or negative, it is usually excluded from this classification. There are two problems associated with using such a simple dichotomy. First, it ignores the very important differences between the so-called negative emotions: the differences in what drives each of these emotions into action, how these emotions are felt, what they force us to say and do, what signals they give with the help of face and voice and how people usually react to us. Another problem is that even the so-called negative emotions are not always felt as unpleasant. For some, there is nothing more pleasant than a fierce argument, and someone cries with pleasure when watching sad movies. On the other hand, fun, considered a positive feeling, can be cruel if it is caused by rude jokes. I am sure that we must study the characteristics of each emotional episode before asserting whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for a person who is experiencing it.
The use of the term “joy” is problematic because, like the term “unhappiness”, it is not specific enough. As we will see on the corresponding page, there are many joyful emotions. For example, fun and deliverance are very different forms of joy, differing from each other, no less a degree than fear and anger. Emotions of joy do not have the reflection of different facial expressions, they are all equally expressed through a smile. Different types of joy can be associated with different temporal characteristics of smiles, but the main signal system for the emotions of joy is the voice, not the face.
Voice is another signal system of emotions, equal in importance to facial expressions, but having several interesting differences. ^[70] A person is always observable, unless a person leaves the zone of visibility or if the characteristics of his culture do not force him to wear a mask or veil, which is quite rare. The voice is not a continuous signaling system and can be switched off at the request of a person. We cannot completely hide our face, although the desire to do this in some way explains why people often prefer a telephone conversation to face-to-face conversation. (Of course, the phone also provides other benefits: the ability to dress at your own discretion, quietly engage in other tasks during a conversation, etc.) E-mail allows even more: not to hear and not to be heard, which eliminates the possibility of your emotion in your voice and do not give an immediate answer. Some people try to secure such benefits by making calls at a time when, in their opinion, the subscriber they need is not in place, which allows them to leave a message on their answering machine, but the possibility that the subscriber answers the call can never be ruled out.
Although I truly believe in the rightness of Sylvan Tomkins, who asserted that whenever an emotion is generated, an impulse necessarily arises to develop a characteristic sound for her, usually such sounds can be easily suppressed by people. However, as soon as someone starts speaking, it is difficult to recognize the signs of the feeling in the voice.
Only a few of us are able to simulate the sounds of emotions that we do not experience. This requires acting skills, and often the actors achieve a convincing voice when they force themselves to experience the desired emotion, recalling an event from their past. On the other hand, it is much easier to give a person a disingenuous expression, and the results of my research show that such expressions deceive most of those people who have not learned to identify facial expressions. ^{[71] A} voice rarely sends a false emotional message and does not spread any messages at all if a person is silent. A person sends false emotional messages more often than a voice, but it cannot be completely “turned off”. Even when a person listens, but does not speak, you can see light expressions of emotions on his face.
The final difference between the signals given by the voice and the face is that the voice attracts our attention, even when we do not see the person giving the signal, while we must constantly look at the person to notice his facial expressions. If there were no voice emotional signals, if only his face would signal the emotions experienced by a person, then the nurses would be at serious risk whenever they lose sight of the children entrusted to them. How inconvenient it would be to test the emotional state of children only by the expressions of their faces. But, fortunately, a cry of joy, pain, anger or fear emanating from a child can attract the attention of a nanny who does not see the baby, and thus allows her to do different things at different ends of the room, as long as she can hear the voice of the child.
It is regrettable that, given the importance of the voice, we know so little about how it signals human emotions. My colleague, and often research partner, Klaus Scherer is a leading voice and emotion specialist. His work showed that voice signals of emotions, like face signals, are universal. ^[72] Scherer was also engaged in refining what changes each voice in the voice signal. I can provide less reliable information about the voice than about the face, in part because voice studies were much less frequent. It is also quite difficult to describe the sound of the manifestation of different emotions in a way that could be of practical use. To do this, you may need to listen to your voice, just as you need to view photos, film and video to explore the expressions of emotions on your face. In addition, it is easier for most people to imagine what a face looks like from the verbal descriptions of a signal given by a face than to imagine a sound from the verbal descriptions of a voice manifestation of emotion. Next, I will tell you what scientists have learned about the voice signals of emotions, and show photos with different facial expressions for each emotion.
In addition to the signals about the emotions given by the voice and face, there are also emotional impulses to physical action that can also be recognized. I am sure that they are as universal as the expressions of emotions by face and voice, although quite a bit of research has been devoted to their study. I will briefly describe them in this chapter, because they are not as familiar to us as expressions of emotions with the help of face and voice. With anger and with some kinds of pleasure, there is an impulse to move towards the trigger of emotion. With fear, an impulse arises that causes numbness, if such a state allows to avoid detection, or an impulse to escape from a potential source of harm. A similar impulse occurs with disgust, but I think it is not so strong; the goal here is not to be saved from an object that causes antipathy, but to simply avoid contact with it. For example, people can turn to the side, seeing the object that causes them to dislike; they may choke or feel an attack of vomiting if such an object has an unpleasant taste or smell.
In the case of sadness, but not grief, a general decrease in muscle tone occurs; the person is hunched down and stays in a fixed position for a long time. In the case of contempt, an impulse arises, forcing a person to look down on the one who caused this feeling in him. In case of surprise, attention is fixed on the seemingly unusual object. In the event of deliverance, general body relaxation occurs; upon receipt of tactile sensory pleasure, movement occurs in the direction of the source of stimulation, while in receiving other types of sensory pleasure, there is a reorientation towards the source of stimulation, although there may be no movement other than changing the direction of gaze. Athletes who score an important goal appear to have an impulse to action, often with the help of their hands, allowing them to demonstrate that a person is proud of achieving a result. Laughter, often accompanied by intense fun, causes repetitive body movements along with characteristic spasmodic phenomena.
None of these impulses to action ^{[73] will} formally be considered as a signal, because it was not developed during our evolution specifically for the purpose of transmitting information. I described them here because they can provide us with information about the emerging emotion. They are involuntary, like signals of emotions given by the voice and face, but perhaps it is much easier to suppress them. Like the signals given by the voice and the face, they are universal and given initially - in the sense that we do not need to assimilate them.
Everything else that we do when we experience emotions is assimilated, and not set in advance, and probably turns out to be specific for a particular culture or a particular individual. These learned actions, which include physical movements and spoken words, are the product of the continuous acquisition by us (and our ancestors) of experience that allows us to successfully deal with the source of emotion and events unfolding during the episode associated with this emotion. It is easier and faster for us to assimilate actions that are consistent with our pre-set automatic emotional actions. For example, in the case of fear, we would have easier learned a model of behavior that implies our literal or metaphorical flight, than a model that implies an attack. But any pattern of behavior can become established for any emotion. Once learned, these behaviors work automatically, just as if they had been set in advance.
We can carry out deliberate intervention, suppressing our reflexes and impulses by completely different actions or our complete inaction. Intervention can also occur automatically and be guided by our well-established habits, not arbitrary desires. The husband, who is fenced off from his angry wife by a “stone wall”, does this automatically, without any conscious choice. In any case, with the help of a conscious choice or a learned habit, interfering with the expression of emotions or emotional actions will be difficult when the emotion is very strong. It will be easier for most people to prevent the action than to completely eliminate any manifestation of emotion on the face or in the voice. I am sure that this is so because we can perfectly exercise the conscious control of our muscles, without which we could not perform all the complex actions that we need to survive. Indeed, we can control body muscles and our words much better than face muscles or the tuning of our vocal apparatus.
The fact that we perform some actions involuntarily, under the influence of automatic assessments and without conscious analysis does not mean that these actions are the result of our evolution and are universal. Our habits are assimilated and used by us automatically, often without the knowledge of our consciousness. To understand the sequence of changes that occur during an emotional episode, we must remember that in the first one or two seconds, initially expressed expressions of emotion with the help of a face and voice, originally defined and learned actions, as well as other invisible and inaudible changes occur. .
So far I have been talking about what can be observed, heard or seen when someone starts to experience emotional arousal. At the same time, certain physiological changes occur, which also give rise to visible and audible symptoms of what is happening to this person. Robert Levenson and I studied some changes in the autonomic nervous system (ANS), emotions that arise during the period of action, such as sweating, which we can sometimes see or smell; the change in breathing rate that we can hear; and changes in heart activity and skin temperature, which are invisible to us. The various patterns of ANS behavior that we discovered for each of the emotions also reinforce what I previously called the initially defined actions. For example, with anger and fear, the heart rate rises, preparing a person to make a move. In a person experiencing anger, the blood rushes to his hands, warming and preparing them for some action against the object of anger. In case of fear, blood rushes to the legs, which causes cooling of the arms and prepares the muscles of the legs for escape. ^[74] Sweating increases with both fear and anger, especially when the intensity of these emotions is high. Breathing quickens with fear, and with anger, and with suffering, and a person experiencing relief usually takes a deep breath. (Redness from embarrassment is another visible sign, but I will look at it at the very end of this book.)
Now let's move from external manifestations of behavior — signals, actions, symptoms of changes in the ANS — to consideration of internal changes that cannot be seen or heard. Unfortunately, there is little research to change our way of thinking throughout the entire emotional episode, but I have little doubt that our interpretation of the surrounding world changes significantly. In one study, it was shown that the memories associated with the emotion we are experiencing are quickly restored to our memory, and even those that are difficult to access for us when we do not experience this emotion. ^[75] Most importantly, we evaluate what is happening in a way that corresponds to the emotion we experience, and therefore justifies and supports it. Our expectations and our assessments usually contribute to preserving, rather than weakening, the emotion being experienced.
Another group of internal changes that occur with emotion is an attempt to regulate emotional behavior. Traditionally, we believe that the regulation of emotion begins after it arises, and not simultaneously with it.Of course, conscious attempts to control emotions actually occur after emotion arises and is recorded by consciousness, but my colleague Richard Davidson, with whom we have repeatedly conducted joint research, believes that regulation also occurs simultaneously with all other emotional changes - signals, changes in thinking and impulses to action. ^[76] Although this fact has not yet been fully proven, I think Davidson is right that there is an initial stage of unconscious regulation that begins when all other emotional changes occur. However, Davidson was not clear enough about what the regulatory processes are and how they arise. ^[77] In the coming decade, we can learn much more about it.
I believe that the model of initial regulation is based on learning, perhaps early social learning, and can potentially change. It can take into account such factors as how quickly a person realizes the emotion he experiences, how easily he can identify the state he is experiencing and whether the “brakes” immediately activate or, conversely, the person indulges in his impulsive actions. According to the general opinion, we know little about this model of initial regulation, but apparently, with the advent of learning, emotions cannot arise completely without any regulation, and learning begins in early childhood. Such regulatory models are likely to be so well understood that they work automatically and resist change. How much they resist, we do not knowbut if they are amenable to transformation, then this makes it possible to change our emotional life.
Imagine an extremely unemotional person, so limited in his emotional reactions, that he begins to experience dissatisfaction with his life and wants to become emotionally more responsive. Temperament, i.e. a genetically defined emotional state, is one of the explanations for his dull emotional life. But if the regulation of emotions is assimilated at a very early age, then perhaps this person had an experience in childhood that still causes him to over-control his emotions. Perhaps he was punished, tamed or ignored for any manifestation of emotions. If his behavior is formed under the influence of the learned regulation, then he probably can change his reactions. If the behavior is formed under the influence of the natural inclinations of his character, then attempts at change will have little chance of success.The presence of such models of initial regulation indicates the great importance of the child’s interactions with other people in shaping the subsequent emotional life of this individual, and this conclusion is in full agreement with the results of many studies on this topic.^[78] and the fundamental principles of psychoanalysis.
When we are at the mercy of emotions, for a fraction of a second there is a sequence of changes that we have no influence on and about which we do not even know: changes in the signals of emotions given by face and voice; in the initially specified actions; in learned actions; in the activity of the autonomic nervous system that regulates the state of our body; regulatory models that continuously modify our behavior; in the emerging relevant memories and expectations; and in the way we interpret what is happening inside us and in the outside world. ^[79] These changes are unintended; we do not choose them. Psychologist Robert Zayonk calls them inevitable . ^[80]Learning about them, which usually happens at some point before the end of an emotional episode, we get a chance to make our choice, that is, if we have a corresponding desire, then try to prevent them. Before explaining what such knowledge entails and what measures can be taken to improve it, we need to consider another aspect of the process of the emergence of emotion — what rules the ball, that is, what generates this sequence of inevitable emotional changes.
Having so many quick responses — different for all emotions and, to a certain extent, the same for all people — tells us something about the central mechanisms of the brain that organize and direct our emotional responses. The central mechanisms that direct our emotional reactions are triggered by an automatic assessment, which we considered earlier. These central mechanisms should contain instructions that guide what we do, instructions that reflect what was learned during our long evolution. Understanding my theory about what these central mechanisms are and how they work is key to our expectations thatwhat people can achieve in regulating their emotional behavior after receiving information about their short-term emotional experience.
Tomkins proposed the term program of emotional reactions to refer to the innate central mechanisms that guide our emotional behavior. The word “program” ( program ) is formed from the prefix pro , meaning “before”, and the root graphein , meaning “write”; Thus, the program has in mind the mechanisms that store information previously recorded or inherited, as in our case. Apparently, there should be many such programs, different for each emotion.
The term “program of emotional reactions” as well as the term “database of emotions” is a metaphor, since I don’t think that there is something in the brain that resembles a computer program, and besides, I don’t presume to say that only one person controls emotions. brain area. We already know that many areas of the brain are involved in managing emotional behavior, but until we know more about the brain and emotions, this metaphor can also be used to study our emotions. ^[81]
Since emotional response programs control our emotional behavior, improving our understanding of how they work can help us solve this problem. The zoologist Ernst Meir made a distinction between open and closed programs. In a closed program, nothing can be included through experience, while a genetically open program "allows for the introduction of additional information during the life of an individual." ^[82]Meir noted that those who are under parental care for a long time and, therefore, have a long period of learning, have the selective advantage of getting an open, not closed, genetic program. (This is consistent with Meir’s statement that all animals exhibiting emotions have open programs of emotional reactions. Such openness underlies the nature of emotions.) For example, compare people who have many years of helplessness in childhood with small birds of maleoliving in the north of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Maleo male buries eggs deep into the warm volcanic sand and flies away. When the nestling maleo hatch out of the shell and how it will get out of the sand upwards is his business. He should immediately know what he needs for survival, since he does not have any “period of independence” during which he could receive training from his parents. In humans, a completely opposite picture is observed: a child left to himself after birth is killed. Our programs of emotional reactions are so open that we can learn what will work in the specific current conditions in which we live, and accumulate this information in a certain way, allowing it to control our behavior automatically.
Data on the presence of universal characteristics in our signals of emotions and in some changes in the activity of the autonomic nervous system suggests that although the programs of emotional reactions are open to new information, assimilated through experience, the programs do not start from scratch without any initial information. Some chains already exist, and they unfold in the process of our development, they are influenced by experience, but they are not created entirely on its basis. There must be different chains for different reactions that characterize each of the emotions. Evolution originally introduced some instructions or chaining principles into our open emotional reaction programs that generate emotional signals,emotional impulses to action and initial changes in the activity of the autonomic nervous system and establishing a period of immunity so that we interpret the world in a way that is consistent with the emotion we experience.^[83]
In addition, data on the presence of universal characteristics in the signals of emotions and the physiology of the autonomic nervous system suggests that usually the instructions for making such changes are produced in the same way for each individual, unless they are modified under the influence of unusual experience. Although there is little evidence of how this experience can alter facial expressions, the results of a survey of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that the threshold levels for autonomous activity may be significantly altered. For example, when people were asked to speak to an audience (a task that puts many in a difficult position), it turned out that women who had been subjected to violence in the past were more stressed than women,who did not have to endure such traumatic events.^[84]
Emotional reaction programs contain not only what is written in them by our evolutionary past on the grounds that it benefited our ancestors. They also contain what we think is useful in our own life for making our most important interactions with other people, namely emotional interactions. The model of initial regulation associated with each of the emotions varies from individual to individual, depending on what each of them had to learn over the years. It is also introduced into the program of emotional reactions and immediately after its introduction to this program begins to work automatically - as if it was originally introduced there as a result of evolutionary experience - and resists attempts to change it. Besides,Behavioral models are introduced into the program of emotional reactions, which we learn throughout our life to interact with various triggers of emotions that may be similar or completely different from those that were originally established. As noted above, these models, once learned, also begin to act automatically.
I do not believe that we can rewrite the originally given instructions in our programs of emotional reactions, this has yet to be proved. We can try to prevent such instructions from working, but it will be very difficult just because we are not able to delete them or rewrite them. If we could rewrite the instructions, then we would meet people whose emotions are completely different from our emotions — with different signals, with different impulses to action, with other changes in heart rate and respiration, etc. We would need translators not only for words, but also for emotions.
This does not mean that the instructions originally given generate identical changes in each person. The instructions control the different systems of the body, and in addition, there are differences between individuals and cultures in which these individuals learn about controlling their emotional behavior. Even with the same initial instructions, there will be observed both individual differences and similarities in emotional experience.
Instructions in programs of emotional reactions, entered into action through automatic evaluation, begin to operate until they are fully executed; in other words, their execution cannot be interrupted. How long changes occur due to the action of instructions depend on the specific system of emotional reaction. I believe that for facial expressions and impulses to action this time is less than a second. I make such an assumption on the basis of observing how quickly people can remove the expression from their face, reducing the duration of its presence or masking it with another expression. Listening to what people say when they try to hide their feelings, I noticed that such control over the sound of a voice takes longer, but it still lasts a few seconds, or at least a few minutes,if the emotion is not very strong or if something new is not happening that supports it. Changes in our breathing, sweating, and cardiac activity also last longer, about 10 to 15 seconds. The reader should note that this idea that the execution of instructions cannot be interrupted is not based on strict scientific facts. However, it really agrees with the results of my observations of how people behave, experiencing various emotions.However, it really agrees with the results of my observations of how people behave, experiencing various emotions.However, it really agrees with the results of my observations of how people behave, experiencing various emotions.
Remember the example of Helene, who became terribly angry when her husband Jim said that he was not, and she would have to pick up her daughter from school today? An expression of anger flashed on her face; the sharpness of the voice she asked why Jim did not tell her about it beforehand; easy tilt of her body forward; An increase in the temperature of her skin, blood pressure, and heart rate are all initially defined changes generated by an emotional reaction program. Most of them could disappear the next moment, when Helen would know from Jim why he could not warn her in advance (changes in skin temperature, heart rate and blood pressure will last a little longer before these figures return to their original values before the episode). But the episode can be continued;Helene can maintain her anger if the period of immunity is not over. Perhaps there will be accumulated irritation here, or she can import the older brother's dominance scenario, or Jim is really a complete egoist, and this case is just another example of his inattention to his wife. If Helen does not accept Jim's apology, interpreting them as another example of the fact that he puts his interests above hers, her anger will flare up with a new force. In my opinion, the initially specified changes caused by the program of emotional reactions (when emotion arises due to automatic evaluation) are short-term and should not be saved. Sometimes they correspond to the situation and are necessary for participation in it: Jim is really an egoist and can neglect the interests of his wife if she does not oppose it.But sometimes they turn out to be inappropriate: Jim could not warn Helen beforehand; this is not his domination model - it’s just that Helen slept badly that night and woke up in a bad mood.
When we say that we are not able to interrupt our reactions, this is not a statement that we cannot control them. We just want to say that we have no opportunity to choose the option of instantaneous and complete shutdown of reactions. Even if we reassess what is happening, the previously activated emotional responses cannot end instantly. Instead, new emotional responses may be imposed on previously generated emotions or mixed with them. Suppose that Helen’s anger at Jim is based on importing a scenario about a dominant older brother. As soon as Helene learns that Jim really had no choice, that he did not ignore her interests, she realizes that maintaining anger about this is unreasonable; but if the scenario of the dominant older brother is played out, then her anger persists, or she can rememberthat she did not wake up in spirit, and that it was her mood that fed her inappropriate anger. Helene may feel guilty for continuing to be irritated. We know from the results of scientific research that two emotions can arise in quick succession over and over again. Two emotions can also merge, forming a mixture of emotions, but in conducting my research I was convinced that this happens less often than the occurrence of repetitive fast sequences.but in doing my research, I was convinced that this occurred less frequently than the occurrence of repetitive fast sequences.but in doing my research, I was convinced that this occurred less frequently than the occurrence of repetitive fast sequences.
Repeated assessments are not the only way we can temporarily switch from one emotional reaction to another. Tomkins pointed out that we often show an emotional reaction to the emotion that we initially experienced. We may be angry because we are afraid, afraid because of excessive anger. We can be afraid of what we can do when we are deeply sad. This connection of the second emotion with the first can arise for any pair of emotions. Sylvan Tomkins argued that one way of understanding the uniqueness of an individual is to determine whether a given person usually exhibits a particular emotional response to another emotional response. He also claimedthat sometimes we do not know about our initial emotional reaction and that we only know about our second emotional reaction to the first emotion. We may not understand that at first we were afraid, and only know about our anger, which arose in response to our initial fear. Unfortunately, no one has yet conducted research to determine the merits of these very interesting ideas.
But what is important to remember is that emotions rarely occur alone or in pure form. What we react to in the external environment is changing; what we remember and what we think about a particular situation is changing; our estimates change; Finally, we may have a reaction to the reaction. People usually experience a mix of different emotional reactions. Sometimes each emotion can be separated from the next in just a few seconds, so some emotional reactions end before new ones begin, and sometimes emotions overlap each other, forming a mixture of emotions.
There is another important issue that requires further consideration. As I said before, emotional reaction programs are open, not closed. New types of emotional behavior are constantly acquired throughout life and are added to the initially defined types of behavior. This feature of our programs of emotional reactions allows us to adapt to any circumstances in which we find ourselves. That is why our emotional reactions are associated not only with our evolutionary past, but also with our own past and present. Cars are not part of our evolutionary past, but those complex actions that were learned not in childhood, but in early adulthood, were incorporated into the fear response.The learned reactions of fear - a sharp turn of the steering wheel and pressing the brake - appear involuntarily and without preliminary reflection, when there is a threat on the road.
Being assimilated and included in the program of emotional reactions, these newly acquired emotional reactions become involuntary, as involuntary as reactions developed in the process of evolution. One surprising feature of emotional reaction programs is that both learned and innate behaviors become closely related to each other and begin to be activated quickly and involuntarily. However, the presence of an open system of emotional reactions has its drawback. These acquired or added behaviors become difficult to restrain after they are entered into emotional reaction programs. They occur even when they are not working or when their occurrence seems undesirable.
Recall the example from the previous page about how the passenger's foot tries to press a non-existent brake pedal when another car suddenly appears on the path of the car in which this passenger is traveling. The passenger cannot hold back the movement of the leg, because she starts to move before he understands what she is doing, just as he cannot stop the expression of fear appearing on his face. Are these emotional reactions permanent, just as unchanged as those that were originally given and not assimilated? I do not think so. I am sure that we can forget our acquired emotional reactions, and not just manage them. Acquired emotional reactions are easier to forget than others.
It is easier to unlearn from any reaction containing body movements than from a reaction involving sounds of voice and facial movement. As I noted earlier, we can control the muscles that control our body (skeletal muscle) well. Driving instructors learn not to press their foot on an imaginary pedal when they sit in the passenger seat. An involuntary action performed automatically, part of the instructions added to the fear response program, may in time be modified by practice and perseverance. Some of the factors that I described on the previous page, which determine how easy it is to loosen a hot trigger of emotions, are also related to how easily we can forget the pattern of emotional behavior. Behaviors acquired in the previous stages of lifelearned through an intense and emotionally dense episode or a series of episodes, it will be more difficult to forget or modify.
At childhood we were cruel at times, although we were almost always taught to be kind. In section 6, when discussing anger, I consider whether we need to learn to be violent, whether the impulse to cause pain to another person is a built-in element of anger reaction. Most adults do not always want to be cruel, unless they need to protect themselves or others from harm. (I understand that some people want to be cruel - either as part of their criminal activities, or simply because it gives them pleasure. I will talk about such people in the discussion on violence in section 6.) Can any of us bring to a state in which we completely lose control of ourselves, act destructively and in this sense we have no choice as towhat do we say or do? Does each of us have such a limit of strength? Could each of us commit a murder? Is it possible to say that people who did not commit such a crime did not become murderers simply because they were not provoked enough to do this? I am sure that the answers to these questions should be negative, but there is no scientific evidence that this is the case. (Can you imagine an experiment in which you are trying to provoke a person into violence through actions that are increasingly provocative?)but scientific evidence that this is so is not yet available. (Can you imagine an experiment in which you are trying to provoke a person into violence through actions that are increasingly provocative?)but scientific evidence that this is so is not yet available. (Can you imagine an experiment in which you are trying to provoke a person into violence through actions that are increasingly provocative?)
Most of us have learned regulatory patterns that mitigate our emotional behavior, constrain our words and actions so that they do no harm to ourselves and those around us. We can say and do terrible things, but for us there is a barrier - we do not subject our life or the life of another person to the uncontrolled effects of peak emotional stress. Even when we experience rage, horror, or spiritual agony, we do not allow our feeling to become irreversibly destructive. We may not be able to eliminate the signs of emotion from our face or from our voice, we may not resist the desire to utter hurtful words or break a chair from anger (although it should be easier than to suppress the signs of emotion on the face or in the voice), but we we can prevent and really do not allowso that our cruelty will cause physical harm. I know that there are people who poorly control their motivations, but I consider this not as a norm, but as a deviation from it.
Assuming that most of us do not reach the ultimate form of destructive behavior that continuously harm us and other people, we must still recognize that almost all of us from time to time utter words or commit acts that harm people. This harm can be not only physical, but also moral and not necessarily permanent, but in any case, our behavior will have detrimental consequences. Harm can not be motivated by anger, and the harm itself can be done not to other people, but to ourselves. For example, uncontrollable fear can paralyze us so much that we will not be able to cope with danger, and deep sadness can cause us to isolate ourselves from the outside world. Now we have to figure outhow and when we can prevent destructive emotional episodes and who will be harmed - us, other people or us and them. One of the functions of emotions is to focus the mind on the current problem - the one that caused our emotions. Usually our emotions do not act outside our consciousness, although this sometimes happens. We all had situations in life in which we did not understand that we were acting under the influence of emotions, until someone paid our attention to this. Although this is quite possible, we usually still realize how we feel. The emotions we experience are perceived as correct and fully justified. We do not ask ourselves what we do and say. We are immersed in it.which aroused our emotions. Usually our emotions do not act outside our consciousness, although this sometimes happens. We all had situations in life in which we did not understand that we were acting under the influence of emotions, until someone paid our attention to this. Although this is quite possible, we usually still realize how we feel. The emotions we experience are perceived as correct and fully justified. We do not ask ourselves what we do and say. We are immersed in it.which aroused our emotions. Usually our emotions do not act outside our consciousness, although this sometimes happens. We all had situations in life in which we did not understand that we were acting under the influence of emotions, until someone paid our attention to this. Although this is quite possible, we usually still realize how we feel. The emotions we experience are perceived as correct and fully justified. We do not ask ourselves what we do and say. We are immersed in it.The emotions we experience are perceived as correct and fully justified. We do not ask ourselves what we do and say. We are immersed in it.The emotions we experience are perceived as correct and fully justified. We do not ask ourselves what we do and say. We are immersed in it.
If we have to slow down our emotional behavior, if we want to change what we feel, then we need to develop a different type of emotional consciousness. We need to be able to take a step back — just when we are experiencing an emotion — to ask ourselves whether we want to continue doing what the emotion forces us to do, or whether we want to choose ourselves how we will behave in view of this emotion. . It is more than the realization that we feel; it is a different, more perfect and difficult to describe form of consciousness. It recalls what Buddhist thinkers call awareness . Philosopher Allan Wallace believes that "this is a feeling of awareness of what our psyche does." ^[85]If we are attentive to our emotions, he argues, then we can choose between the following alternatives: “Do we want to act under the influence of anger, or do we just want to watch it?” ^[86] I do not use the term aware because it is an element more general philosophy, completely different from the one with which I came to understand emotions, and because the use of this term requires other practical methods that are completely different from those that I have proposed and will continue to propose.
In their book, devoted to the study of memory, psychologists Georgia Nigro and Ulrik Nayser wrote about how “in some memoirs an individual seems to take the position of a spectator or a bystander watching the situation from a comfortable external position and seeing himself from the outside” ". ^[87] They contrasted this type of memory to others, in which you are in the position of a person you remember. Very often, when we get emotional experience, we find ourselves so immersed in the current situation, so engulfed in emotion that no part of our consciousness can observe, criticize or analyze the actions that we perform. We are aware of what is happening, but according to psychologist Ellen Langer, we are doing this “unconsciously.” ^[88]
The differences between the two types of memories that Nigro and Neiser talked about are very similar to those that psychiatrist and Buddhist philosophy advocate Henry Weiner described as the difference between the flow of consciousness and what he called the observer , “consciousness that observes and responds to semantic values appearing in the stream of consciousness. " ^[89] In order for us to soften our emotional behavior, choose what we will say or do, we need to know when we are experiencing, and even better, when we begin to experience emotion.
Supposedly, we would have even more choice if we could learn about automatic evaluation when it arises, and modify it at our will, or eliminate it. But since automatic evaluators act very quickly, I doubt that anyone could do this. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, during his meeting with me, mentioned that some yogis are able to stretch time. Those few milliseconds, during which automatic assessments are made, they can stretch enough to provide themselves with the opportunity to make a conscious choice between modification and cancellation of the assessment process. But the Dalai Lama doubted that this type of evaluating consciousness was available to most people, not excluding himself.
The next possible, but difficult step is to ensure that a person learns to realize what is happening in his head immediately after the automatic assessment, but before the onset of behavior caused by emotions, that is, to realize the impulses to actions and words when these impulses only arise. If a person had reached such an awareness of impulses , ^[90] then he could decide whether to allow these impulses to realize their potential. Buddhists are confident in the ability of a person to achieve awareness of impulses, but only after many years of meditative practice. Let us now consider what can be achieved with less, though still considerable efforts.
Philosopher Peter Goldie describes what he calls reflective consciousnesslike awareness of fear experienced. If a person said: “Looking back at my experience gained in the past, I see that, while receiving this experience, I was afraid, but did not experience fear,” this, according to Goldie, would be an example of the absence of reflective consciousness. ^[91] Such a consciousness is a prerequisite for what I want to concentrate on, but it is not sufficient because it does not consider whether we want to save our emotion or whether we want to try to change it or eliminate it.
Jonathan Schuler in his study of what he calls metaconsciousness, describes the situation we are familiar with when we turn the pages of a book without reading a single word, since at the moment we are only thinking about which restaurant to go to tonight. ^[92] It cannot be said that we are not conscious of anything; we are well aware of what we think about the restaurant, but at the same time we are not aware that we have stopped reading the book. If we were aware of this, then we would have developed a meta-consciousness. It is this consciousness that provides an understanding of what we are cognizing at the moment, and I would like to consider together with the question of the choice between preserving and changing the experience we are experiencing.
I could not find a single term to describe this type of consciousness; the best thing that I managed to think of myself was a close examination of our emotional feelings.. (In order not to repeat all these four words, I will use only one word instead, “attentive” or “attentiveness”, in italics.) When we are attentive (in the sense that I mean), we are able to observe ourselves throughout the emotional episode, ideally before a few seconds pass. We are aware that we are experiencing an emotion, and can consider whether our reaction is justified or not. We can reassess and, if it is unsatisfactory, begin to regulate what we say and do. This happens at a time when we experience an emotion, as soon as we become aware of our emotional feelings and actions.
Most people are rarely so attentive to their emotional feelings, but the achievement of such attention is quite possible. I believe that we can develop the ability to be attentive so that its use becomes our habit, the norm of our life. When this happens, we are more aware of what is happening and can better regulate our emotional life. There are many ways of working out this type of mindfulness .
One of the ways people can be more attentiveto your emotions, is to use knowledge of the causes of each emotion (see the following pages for emotions). By learning more about what drives our emotions, we can increase our awareness of when and why our emotions arise. The most important condition for mastering this method of enhancing mindfulness is the ability to identify one's own hot triggers of emotions and the ability to take measures to weaken them. The goal is not to be free from emotions, but to be emotionally aroused to have more choices as to how to manage this emotion.
Studying the sensations of our body that are characteristic of each emotion should also help improve our attentiveness.. Usually we consciously perceive these feelings, but we do not focus attention on them and do not use them as signals warning us about the need to be attentive to our emotional states. The following pages contain exercises to increase your awareness of how these emotions are felt, so that you can better understand these physiological changes and use them as understandable signals that cause us to be more attentive , giving us the opportunity to view, overestimate or control our emotions.
We can also become more attentive to our emotional feelings, more closely watching the emotional feelings of other people with whom we have contact. If we know how they feel, if it is recorded in our consciousness, then we can use this information to better recognize our own feelings and to send us signals about the need to be more attentive to our own emotional feelings.
Unfortunately, my research has found that most of us are not very good at determining how other people feel, unless the manifestations of these feelings are strong enough. It is unlikely that someone needs help in interpreting facial expressions when the intensity of emotion reaches its maximum. Usually, facial expressions by this time become uncontrollable and acquire characteristics that, as I have established, are typical of each emotion. But facial expressions can be subtle, for example, if they are created by the movement of the eyelids or upper lip. In addition, we are often so focused on what a person says that we completely lose sight of these weak signals. This is unfortunate, since we are a winner if we can find out what a person feels at the very beginning of a conversation with him. Check yourself outhow you can recognize weak signs of emotion, you can use the SETT simulator. The following pages provide photographs that will help you better capture unobtrusive facial expressions, and set out ideas on how to use this information in family life, in relationships with friends and work colleagues. Learn tocarefully analyze our emotional feelings is difficult, but quite possible, and over time, after regular training, it will become much easier. ^[93]
But even when mindfulness becomes a solid habit, it does not always manifest itself properly. If emotion is very strong, if we import a scenario that we have not yet identified, if the mood corresponds to the emotion we are experiencing, if we have not slept enough, or if we experience continuous physical pain, then we cannot always be attentive . We will make mistakes, but by doing them we can learn how to reduce the likelihood of their repetition.
There are several methods that we can use to mitigate our emotional behavior after we become attentive .

• We can try to reassess what is happening; if we succeed, then either the emotional behavior stops soon, or another, more appropriate emotion arises, or, if our initial reaction was correct, this fact is confirmed. The difficulty of re-evaluation is that the period of our immunity makes us resist and makes it difficult for us to gain access to information — our internal or external, which can cause doubts about the correctness of emotion. It is much easier to reevaluate after the immunity period ends.
• Даже если мы не можем заново оценить происходящее, даже если мы по–прежнему считаем, что наши чувства оправданны, мы можем прервать наши действия, прекратить нашу речь в течение нескольких секунд, или по крайней мере не позволить нашим чувствам полностью захлестнуть нас. Мы можем попытаться ослабить сигналы на нашем лице и в нашем голосе, воспротивиться любым импульсам к действию и подвергать цензуре то, что мы говорим. Осуществлять преднамеренный контроль непреднамеренного поведения, вызываемого нашими эмоциями, непросто, особенно если вы испытываете сильную эмоцию. Но вполне возможно прекратить слова или действия, и это сделать легче, чем полностью убрать любые следы эмоции с нашего лица или из нашего голоса. Именно внимательность , осознание человеком того, что он находится в состоянии эмоционального возбуждения, может удерживать его от потери контроля за тем, что он говорит или делает, либо от таких поступков, о которых он будет впоследствии сожалеть.

Let's now look at how this all happens, using an example from my own life. One day my wife, Mary – Ann, left for a four-day conference in Washington. We both adhere to the same rule: when we leave somewhere, we always call up every day. During the call made on Friday, I told my wife that on Saturday I was going to have lunch with my colleague, and then work with him in the lab until late at night. By the time I expected to come home, that is, at eleven in the evening, it was supposed to be two in the morning in Washington and, according to my calculations, Mary – Ann should have been asleep. Since we could not talk to her on Saturday evening, she said that she would call me on Sunday morning.
Mary – Ann knows that I get up early even on Sundays and when she is not at home, then by eight in the morning I always sit at the computer. She didn't call until nine and I began to worry. It was already noon in her time, so why hadn’t she called so far? By ten, I began to feel angry. Washington was already one in the afternoon, and she could call me. Why didn't she do that? Maybe she was confused by what she did last night and wanted to hide her confusion? Such thoughts were unpleasant to me, and this intensified my anger even more. If she had called, I would not feel jealous. But maybe she was sick or got into a car accident? I felt fear. Maybe I should call the Washington police? What if she just forgot about the promise to call or was so fascinated by the inspection of the museum,to which she was going to go on Sunday, that everything else flew out of her head? Her lightheadedness made me feel angry again, in addition to my fear, as I began to think that she was serenely enjoying art while I was worried about her. Why should I be jealous? Why didn't she call?
If I were more insightful, if I learned lessons from what I was discussing in this book, I could begin preventive actions on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Knowing that the loss of a dear person is a hot emotional trigger (my mother died when I was fourteen), I had to prepare myself not to feel abandoned if Mary – Ann forgot to call. I should have reminded myself that Mary – Ann hates using the telephone, especially the public one, and that she may not call me until she returns to the hotel. In addition, in the twenty years of our life together, Mary – Ann has shown herself to be an exceptionally decent person, so I was not jealous because of what. Reflecting on these arguments in advance, I could weaken my triggers as muchthat I would not interpret the absence of her morning call as a reason to feel abandoned, angry, jealous, or frightened by her possible troubles, or angry for the fact that she made me experience all these feelings. It was, of course, too late to receive the benefits of this kind of reflection, since, without making them in advance, it was useless to do them on Sunday morning. Every time, experiencing anger, fear, or jealousy, I experienced a period of immunity, when all the arguments I knew that could defuse a situation became inaccessible to me. I was embraced by emotions; each time they grew stronger as time went on, and I no longer had access to relevant information about Mary Ann and about myself. I only had access to the information that matched the emotions,which I experienced.
I was determined not to allow emotions to interfere with my work. Although I did not feel anger from eight in the morning until one o'clock in the afternoon, when at last, five hours late, I heard Mary Ann’s voice in the receiver (it was already four in the afternoon in Washington), I was annoyed every time I looked at my watch and noted to myself that she had not called. However, given the duration of the situation, I had time to try to become attentive.to my emotional feelings. Although I felt that my anger at her for not calling me, despite this promise, was justified, I decided that it would be wise not to show it during a telephone conversation and wait for my wife to return home. When we talked, I could hear the echo of anger in my voice, but I managed to hold back the words of discontent that I wanted to say. It was not a very pleasant conversation, and after a few minutes we stopped it, having previously agreed that we would call each other tomorrow evening.
I began to reflect on what happened. It became easier for me because I did not make any accusations, but I knew that from the sound of my voice she guessed about my annoyance. She had enough tact not to ask questions about the reasons for my discontent. The immunity period came to an end, and I was able to reassess the situation. I no longer experienced irritation, but I began to seem a little ridiculous to myself because of my behavior. In order not to postpone the case and take advantage of the situation when we were thousands of miles apart and could not see our faces, I called Mary – Ann myself. Probably no more than two minutes passed after the first conversation. This time our conversation was pleasant and enjoyed both of us. A few days later I asked her about this episode, which she had already forgotten. She confirmed that she felt my irritation,but since I did not show it openly, she decided not to provoke him.
This is an example of an emotional episode in which a person regrets having experienced certain emotions. There are, of course, other examples in which we are very pleased with our emotional reactions. But let's try to learn from this episode what might be applicable to other situations in which a person regrets his emotional behavior. In the first place is the importance of trying to anticipate what may happen, knowledge of the vulnerable sides of a person. I behaved incorrectly in the considered example and therefore could not cope with the situation; I could not reduce the likelihood of importing the “anger of the abandoned man” scenario to this episode and thus increased the period of immunity. Fortunately, I learned from my experience that I would hardly be angry if Mary – Anne didn’t call me again,despite her promise. Becomingattentive , I can not choose the option of the reaction of anger, but if I am already in an irritated mood or feel the influence of other negative factors of our life, then such a choice becomes likely.
To weaken the trigger emotion, which, we think, is ready to fire, it is necessary to carry out an analysis consisting of two parts. One part of the analysis is directed at ourselves, at what is inside us and can cause us to show an emotional reaction, which we will later regret. In this example, the absence of the promised phone call gave vent to my unsatisfied feeling of insult to my mother for having died, she left me alone, and I imported this insult into the current situation. The second part of the analysis is designed to expand our understanding of another person. In this example, this implied a review by me of what I knew about Mary – Ann in order to clarify the reasons why she could not call me, such as her dislike of public telephones, which had nothing to do with the intention of leaving me.
We may need to ask ourselves about too much in order to always be able to anticipate and ease emotions, especially at the initial stage. But in order to better learn to cope with our emotions, it is necessary, in particular, to develop the ability to analyze and understand what happened when this episode ended. The analysis should be performed at a time when we no longer feel the need to justify what we have done. These two types of analysis can warn us about what we need to watch out for and help us cool down the emotional trigger.
In the previous section, I recommended keeping a diary of emotional episodes that later caused regret. Studying such a diary will help you find out not only why such episodes arise, but also when they may recur, and what you can do to change yourself so that nothing like this will happen in the future. It will also be useful to describe in this diary episodes in which you reacted correctly. In addition to giving approval and support, such a diary gives us the opportunity to reflect on why we sometimes act successfully and sometimes fail.
Often the question arises: what should be done when the emotion has just arisen, and we are experiencing a period of immunity and can not re-evaluate what is happening? If we are attentive, then we can try not to fuel our emotions and at the same time hold back actions that are likely to cause the other person to respond in a certain way, with the result that our own feelings will become even stronger. If I had expressed my claims to Mary – Ann, then, defending herself, she could easily answer me with irritation, which would make me feel anger again, perhaps even stronger. I learned to approach the control of emotional behavior caused by fear or anger, as an exciting task, the process of solving which gives me almost pleasure, although it does not always turn out to be in my teeth. When I manage to cope with it, I feel like a master of my emotions, which I am very pleased. And again, I want to repeat that the practice and reflections on what should be done,and awareness of their actions during an emotional episode can help solve this problem.
It is not always possible to control emotional behavior. When an emerging emotion is very strong, when we are in a mood that predisposes us to some kind of emotion, when an event resonates with one of the emotional themes formed during the evolution, or with a previously learned emotion trigger, it will be more difficult to use my suggestions. And depending on the emotion being experienced, the style of people's emotional reactions — especially those who by their nature quickly come into strong emotional arousal — makes it even harder to control certain emotions.
The fact that we do not always succeed here does not mean that we cannot improve our efforts. Better understanding of ourselves is key. Subsequently analyzing our emotional episodes, we can develop the habit ofmindfulness . By learning to focus better on what we feel, by studying our inner cues, signaling to us what emotions we experience, we can better observe our feelings. Improving our ability to detect symptoms of how other people react to us emotionally can make us more attentive to what we do and feel, help us respond to the emotions of others in the proper way. And the study of typical triggers of each of the emotions, those that each person has, and those that are particularly important or unique to us, can help us prepare for emotional conflicts. Further on these issues will be further written.