How To "unfreeze" Your Feelings? - Self-development

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 20:18

Irina Solovyova, an expert at Our Psychology, a practical psychologist, a specialist in body-oriented psychotherapy, biosynthesis, bodynamics and psychosynthesis, talks about healthy emotional self-regulation

According to psychology textbooks, emotions are a subjective reflective reflection of the surrounding reality in order to achieve maximum adaptation. Otherwise, emotions are an evolutionary survival mechanism that helps to track changes in the world and adapt to them in time.

An infant is born with a set of basic senses for survival. There are four basic emotions: anger, joy, fear, and sadness. Traditionally they are abbreviated as GRSP.

Evolutionary theory of emotion

Let's dwell briefly on the so-called evolutionary theory of emotion. At first, fear appeared as a signal of a threat, because security is a guarantee of survival, which means it is necessary to track the danger in time.

Joy is a signal of well-being: everything is in order, nothing needs to be changed. Perhaps joy appeared initially along with fear, these were two polarities: fear - joy, danger - safety

Then anger arose as a defensive reaction: anger gives us the strength to survive in case of danger. Anger helps the hunter in pursuit of prey and the warrior in battle.

And sadness is the latest mechanism, the experience of irreparable loss. Fear and anger prompt us to act: to run away or to attack (freezing is a kind of runaway, running away "into oneself", into our inner world from reality). Sadness is a passive state, there is no need to act, it is too late, you need to realize the loss.

Emotions are a mechanism that provides a timely and proportionate response to changes in the world. It is necessary not only to track these very changes in time, but also to react to them

Therefore, a signal for action goes to the body. And in most cases … it slows down. After all, we - social creatures - must be adaptive not only to the natural world, but also to the social one, and therefore - we cannot be completely free in bodily manifestations of emotions and desires. Society lives according to laws different from natural ones. We have to master these laws, control our behavior.

Shame and guilt are social feelings

Therefore, the so-called social feelings are added to the natural feelings of the GRSP: shame (the experience of one's own "badness") and guilt (the experience of the "badness" of one's actions). These feelings are formed after one and a half to two years, when the child begins to present social requirements that are contrary to natural desires. He has to control his manifestations: emotions, desires, instincts - to master them, be it potty training or the prohibition to shout and bite.

Shame and guilt are not natural feelings, but they are based on a natural feeling of fear, fear of rejection, which hides … the fear of death

After all, our ancestors did not survive alone. The key to our survival is being in a group. And if the group rejects an individual, it dies. The fear of rejection by one's group and exile has been so strong since primitive times that for many millennia it has been used and sometimes is still used today: exile from one's hometown / village / country, imprisonment in solitude.

In addition to fear, shame and guilt include auto-aggression - anger directed at oneself. Rejection (or its fear), restrictions on the part of society give rise to anger at this very society and at its prohibitions. But expressing this anger directly is scary: after all, then society can certainly reject. As a result, unexpressed anger towards society turns into auto-aggression: it closes in on itself. The stronger the anger, the stronger the auto-aggression and self-blame. Guilt and shame encourage us to seek self-punishment. Probably the most striking example is the Japanese hara-kiri, which washes away "shame".

Under the influence of society, a child at the age of about one and a half years begins to form a super-ego - an internal construct, a part of the personality that is responsible for compliance with social requirements and norms

At first, the child sees this set of rules outside, then the rules are internalized and become internal laws. And we ourselves regulate our behavior in accordance with social norms, even if at the same time we are not looked at or controlled. Shame and guilt are feelings generated by the super-ego, based on the natural feelings of fear and anger.

Interiorization (French. Interiorization - "transition from outside to inside", from Latin. Interior - "internal") - the formation of internal structures of the human psyche through the assimilation of external social activity, the appropriation of life experience, the formation of mental functions and development in general

How to make friends with your feelings?

Feeling is a subjective mirror image of reality, they come to us themselves, in accordance with our perception of what is happening. We have no control over what feelings we experience: we cannot force ourselves not to be offended, not jealous, or love someone (only self-deception is possible). But we are in control of what we do, experiencing this feeling - over our behavior, the expression of feelings.

As a child grows up, he socializes, he develops an internal scheme of self-regulation of feelings, which can be guessed at from external manifestations (words, behavior). This scheme can be healthy or, alas, sub-optimal.

Healthy emotional self-regulation provides a high level of stress tolerance, adaptability (including social), healthy sleep, the ability to enjoy life, build deep and lasting personal contacts, etc.

Suboptimal emotional self-regulation can lead to low adaptability, deterioration of the nervous system, psychosomatic disorders, sleep disorders, depression, and addiction.

4 puzzles of emotional self-regulation

Healthy emotional self-regulation includes the following links:

1. Awareness of feelings. The ability to understand that you are in a certain emotional state. Otherwise, a person who is not aware of his feelings can be captured by a certain emotion (anxiety, irritation), manifest it (fiddling with objects in his hands, fidgeting, talking irritably with the interlocutor) and at the same time not even noticing it.
2. Differentiation of emotions. The ability to understand what kind of feeling you are experiencing, what its shade and to what extent. For example, a basic feeling of anger can manifest itself as irony, irritation, aggression, rabies.
3. Understanding the true reasons for their experiences. Understanding the cause is important. Awareness makes it possible to change the situation and / or change oneself, adapt, expands the image of I and contact with oneself. The "true reason" is different from the preposition. We can cite as an example a drunkard from an anecdote who takes out his bad mood on a cat: “There are people with a hangover, and she paws“boom-boom, boom-boom””.
4. Optimal expression for adaptation. Emotion is a signal for a certain reaction required for adaptation. Emotion prompts us to take one action or another. And even visible inaction in a state of sadness and sadness is an action, an inducement to tears, humility, inner acceptance of the situation.

Psychological workshop

Emotion should not "freeze" and remain in the body, this will lead to bodily tension, subsequently - to lack of strength, fatigue, even painful bodily symptoms

She must find a way out in a certain reaction. But this way out must take into account the preservation of social adaptation: there are socially acceptable and unacceptable ways of exiting emotions, and in each individual situation this border can be different.

For example, you are angry with the person you are talking to. There may be an impulse in the body to hit and scream, but these are the wrong ways for a civilized person to escape anger. And then anger can be expressed in a socially acceptable formulation: "I'm very angry with you." The remaining tension from the body can be removed through socially acceptable movement: walking, going to fitness.

We offer an exercise for psychological work with feelings. Take part in it with your friends.

Exercise-game "making up feelings"

Participants are divided into two teams. The leader gives each team one card with the feeling written on it in turn. And she shows this feeling to the other team, depicting it as a kind of bodily sculpture, that is, showing it with her bodies.

Naturally, "sculpture" implies static (motionless posture), not dynamics. "Sculpture" can be either single (shows one representative of the team), and group (shown by several people or the whole team).

The opposing team tries to guess what the sculpture means. Then the teams switch roles.