Updated Blog Announcement

Hello Everyone

I just wanted to let you know that I have (temporarily) migrated the Science of Emotions blog to the Psychology Today website and it is now called Sweet Emotion (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sweet-emotion). Today’s post was on exposure and anxiety disorders (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sweet-emotion/201409/learning-face-our-fears).

As there are no options to follow bloggers on the Psychology Today website, if you would like updates on when the new posts come out, please follow me on Twitter or like the Science of Emotions Facebook Page 

Hope to see you there!

Amelia

What is heart rate variability?

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a physiological marker of how we experience and regulate our emotions. But before we discuss HRV and emotion regulation in greater detail, let’s take a quick biology refresher. Whenever we are confronted with potential dangers (e.g., walking alone at night, being chased by a rabid dog), we enact a fight-or-flight response in which our heart rate (HR) spikes up, our breathing gets shallower, our muscles tense up, and so on. This response, which is essential for survival, is mediated by the sympathetic branch of the nervous system. When we are not enacting such fight-or-flight responses, our bodies are in the process of recovery. We digest, we heal, and we grow. These responses are mediated by the parasympathetic branch.

So what does this mean for the heart? Our HR reflects the number of heart beats that take place in a given minute – by the way, the average resting HR is between 60 and 90. When activity in the sympathetic branch increases, HR goes up. When this activity decreases, HR goes down. Conversely, when parasympathetic activity decreases, HR goes up (because there is less inhibition). When it increases, HR goes down (because there is more inhibition). You can think of the sympathetic branch as the gas pedal and the parasympathetic branch as the brake.

From MattysFlicks

 

Importantly, having an elevated parasympathetic influence on the HR is associated with greater flexibility when responding to the various demands posed by the environment (e.g., Thayer et al., 2012). This is because the parasympathetic branch acts faster than the sympathetic branch and it can therefore increase and decrease the HR with greater precision. If we return to the gas pedal/brake analogy, let’s imagine that we want our car to maintain a speed of 60 miles per hour. If we primarily use the gas pedal, we will find ourselves under- and over-shooting the speed quite frequently. However, if we “ride the brakes,” we can more easily control the speed: when our car begins to speed up, we gently press on the brakes, and when it begins to slow down, we slowly let go of the brakes.

Now, the extent to which the parasympathetic branch influences the HR is reflected in HRV. Importantly, HRV is relatively easy to measure. Rather than calculating the number of beats per minute (i.e., HR), we measure the number of seconds that elapse between one heart beat and the next one. This is called the interbeat interval, or IBI. So, for example, if someone has an HR of 60 beats per minute, the average time that elapses between each heart beat is 1 second (or 1000 milliseconds). In other words, their average IBI is 1000. However, when we calculate HRV, we don’t care about the average IBI, but rather about its variability. We are interested in how much the IBI fluctuates from each heart beat to the next. Remember that the parasympathetic branch is super fast, so sudden changes in IBI can only be mediated by this branch! Thus, greater HRV equals more parasympathetic influences on the heart, and thus, more flexible emotional responding.

In case you’re wondering about the math behind these calculations, worry not! Fortunately there are a number of commercially available exercise watches that record HR and can calculate HRV for you. Perhaps you already have one of these. Perhaps a friend or family member does. So, if you’re interested in tracking your physiological flexibility, you can buy/borrow one of these watches and do a little test! Have fun!

For more info, follow me on Twitter (@DrAmeliaAldao) or Facebook. I am also cross-posting in the Psychology Today website – the blog is called Sweet Emotion.

Depression And Its Broken Emotional Compass

Depression is a debilitating disorder that affects about 15 million Americans each year. It is also the leading cause of disability in the United States for people aged 15-44. Its primary symptoms include low mood, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, difficulties concentrating, disturbances in sleep and/or appetite, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. In addition, depression has been associated with a wide range of deficits experiencing and regulating emotions (which is not surprising, given that it is the quintessential mood disorder). I discussed in an earlier post that depressed individuals tend to get stuck in a vicious cycle of rumination about their mistakes and shortcomings. Today, I would like to go over another type of affective disturbance in depression: blunted reactivity to changing emotional contexts.

In previous posts, I have frequently discussed how emotions provide us with information about the ever-changing environment. They signal rewards and dangers. They tell us which situations and people to approach and which ones to avoid. They serve as a compass. However, for them to be able to serve this function, they need to be in sync with the environment. In other words, if we feel happy and excited about lots of things, we might fail to say no when we should and this might lead to trouble. Similarly, if we respond to most environmental changes with anxiety, we might avoid too many things and consequently miss out on important opportunities.

This is exactly what happens in depression: the emotional compass falls apart.

From Calsidyrose

Two burgeoning lines of research suggest that when we get depressed, we respond to all kinds of environmental triggers with the same amount of emotion. That is, we fail to modulate our emotional reactivity in line with changes in the environment. This inflexibility primarily happens at the emotion generation phase, that is, before any regulatory mechanisms (such as cognitive reappraisal, distraction, or rumination) can be enacted.

Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg at the University of South Florida has proposed the emotion context insensitivity theory of depression (by the way, he has just published a great book on the evolutionary origins of depression). According to his theory, depressed individuals experience consistently high negative affect (e.g., sadness, anxiety, anger) and low positive affect (e.g., happiness, elation) in response to a wide range of contexts. In one study, his team recruited depressed, non-depressed, and formerly depressed participants and asked them to watch emotionally evocative stimuli, such as sad and happy film clips. Depressed participants reported higher levels of sadness than the healthy controls across all film clips. That is, their sadness did not abate when they were watching the happy film clips. Interestingly, formerly depressed participants reacted like the controls: they showed contextual modulation of their sadness. This suggests that the context insensitivity that characterizes depression might disappear following recovery.

The second line of evidence comes from the work of Peter Kuppens and his colleagues at Leuven University in Belgium. In their studies, they have sampled participants’ emotions repeatedly over the course of hours, days, or even weeks. Such an approach has produced a massive amount of data that has facilitated the modeling of trajectories over time. In particular, it has allowed the investigators to estimate the autocorrelation of an emotion over time. In a nutshell, these autocorrelations reflect the extent to which the intensity of an emotion at time 1 is correlated with its intensity at time 2, then the extent to which its intensity at time 2 is correlated with its intensity at time 3, and so on. A larger autocorrelation suggests that, as time goes by and a person encounters different situations in the environment, his/her emotions do not change very much. A smaller autocorrelation indicates greater variability in his/her emotions. Thus, having a high autocorrelation of emotions across contexts indicates greater emotional inertia – that is, insensitivity to context.

In one study, Kuppens and colleagues videotaped conversations between healthy adolescents and their parents and then coded these interactions for verbal and nonverbal behaviors that reflected anger, sadness, and happiness. Then, they calculated the autocorrelation of each of these emotions over the course of the interaction. Interestingly, they found that greater emotional inertia for each of the three emotions predicted the onset of depressive episodes 2.5 years later. In other words, adolescents who showed less modulation of their anger, sadness, and happiness while conversing with their parents were more likely to become depressed over time! In another study, Kuppens and colleagues utilized an experience sampling methodology (ESM), which consists of contacting participants several times throughout the day and asking them to provide reports of their experiences. Adult participants carried a palmtop computer and were prompted to rate their anxiety and stress levels 60 times per day. Paralleling the findings from the adolescent-parent interaction, greater emotional inertia was associated with greater depression and sensitivity to threat.

Although these studies used sophisticated statistics to assess sensitivity to emotional contexts, you can do this at home fairly easily. Remember the emotion rating scale? Pick an emotion (e.g. sadness, anxiety, happiness) and see how much your rating changes as you encounter different situations throughout the day. Give it a shot!

 

 

How are fear and disgust different?

In previous posts, I have discussed how difficulties regulating fear play a central role in the anxiety disorders. In a nutshell, when we become focused on avoiding situations that elicit fear, we miss out on the opportunity to learn that we could probably tolerate that fear quite well. As a result, we grow progressively more avoidant of those situations and this can lead to lots of difficulties navigating the world. Interestingly, there is another emotion that has been gaining recognition as being critical for the anxiety disorders: disgust. So, today, I would like to go over some of the main similarities and differences between fear and disgust.

Both fear and disgust are negatively valenced emotions (other members of this category include sadness, anger, and shame) and they are associated with a strong motivation to avoid a particular object or situation. Although they are quite unpleasant, it is also the case that we tend to think that they will be much more difficult to tolerate then they actually are (see post on anticipatory anxiety). This means that if we do push ourselves to experience these emotions, we quickly learn that they are not as bad as we had thought. Also, with each passing second, we habituate to them, so they become progressively less intense.

Now, fear and disgust do differ in their target. We experience fear when we perceive a situation as being threatening. For example, if we were walking on the streets late at night and we noticed that a huge dog was furiously running towards us, it would be sensible to feel afraid. Our muscles would tense up, our heart rate would spike, our breathing would get shallower, our blood would rush to our extremities, and our attention would zero in on the threatening canine. These physiological changes would be quite useful in helping us run away from the dog or try to subdue it. In other words, they would help us produce an adaptive fight-or-flight response.

From renee_mcgurk

Disgust, on the other hand, is elicited when we come across a potential contaminant. For example, we might experience it when we see a huge pile of trash, smell excrement, or touch a dirty surface. In these instances, our physiological reactions differ from the ones that characterize our frightened states. In particular, we experience a heart rate deceleration (see Woody & Teachman, 2000). This is because we no longer need to fight or flee, but rather, we need to reject the potential contaminant (see Cisler et al., 2009). We also make a distinct facial expression, whereby we wrinkle our nose and raise our lips.

 

From Editor B

Beyond their functional similarities and differences, disgust and fear can, and frequently do, co-occur. For example, some people might be afraid of spiders and also feel disgusted by them. This coupling of disgust and fear can pose an extra challenge when conducting exposure exercises in the context of CBT. This is because practitioners have to target threat-related cognitive distortions (e.g., “that spider might be poisonous”) as well as disgust-related ones (e.g., “if a spider crawls on me that would be super gross and I would lose control”). Fortunately, as I mentioned above, both emotions are highly susceptible to habituation.

So what about you? What kinds of objects and situations make you feel disgust versus fear? Do you notice the tendency to avoid them? Next time this happens, see if you can stay in that situation. Give your body – and mind – a few moments to habituate. What made you feel super disgusted or afraid a few moments ago might not be so bad right now…

 

 

 

Labeling Emotions

Let’s begin today’s post with a quick emotion experiment:

How are you feeling right now?(take a few seconds to answer it)

Which emotions have you felt today/in the past few days? (take a few seconds to answer it)

Most of you probably answered the first question by thinking of “fine,” “great,” “ok,” or “not great.” When answering the second question, you likely came up with a relatively small number of emotions, something in the order of two to five.

I know this because there is growing evidence suggesting that it is difficult to properly identify and label the myriad of emotions we experience on a regular basis (see Gratz & Roemer, 2004). To draw an analogy, we are constantly taking black and white photographs of the very colorful scenes of our lives.

Importantly, some people experience greater difficulties labeling their emotions than others. No matter how complex their emotions might be, they still come up with only a few labels to describe them. This impoverish emotional labeling is, in turn, associated with deficits regulating those emotions (see Vine & Aldao, 2014). In other words, the less aware we are of our emotions, the less likely we are to figure out how to best regulate them. To turn to an example, if my coworker messed something up and I’m only aware of the anger this makes me feel, I might think that I’m justified in lashing out at him. But if I happen to be aware that my emotional response also includes anxiety about having to fix this mistake by myself, I might be more motivated to downregulate my anger so that I can recruit his help. In this second scenario, our relationship remains strong and we effectively work together to solve problems. Thus, making an effort to understand our emotions in non-judgmental ways can be quite valuable in terms of helping us regulate them better, and consequently, navigate our environments more smoothly.

In a recent study from Dr. Michelle Craske‘s lab at UCLA, the researchers recruited participants who had a spider phobia and asked them to participate in a behavioral approach task (BAT). In this BAT, participants were told that they would have to take 8 steps to get progressively closer to the spider. They could stop at any time. In fact, the number of steps completed is one of the main dependent variables (the other ones being physiological arousal and subjective ratings of anxiety). The BAT is a laboratory analogue of the CBT process of exposure, and as such, it allows researchers to experimentally manipulate various aspects of exposure in order to evaluate their effectiveness. In this particular case, they assigned each participant to one of four experimental conditions that differed in their instructions for what to do with the anxiety: 1) label the anxiety, 2) think differently of the spider so that it feels less threatening (reappraisal), 3) distract from the anxiety, 4) no specific instruction (control condition). Participants then came back for a second BAT session so that the investigators could test the long-term effects of their emotion manipulation. Interestingly, they found that participants who had been assigned to label their emotions had lower physiological reactivity to the spiders, as indexed by fewer skin conductance responses. In addition, the authors found that, within the affect labeling condition, participants who verbalized a larger number of fear and anxiety words had even fewer skin conductance responses! Thus, developing greater emotional clarity about their anxiety was associated with a subsequent reduction in the physiological manifestation of their fear.

I think these findings are super exciting and I’m looking forward to reading about extensions of this work. In the meantime, however, I would like to encourage you to take a few moments each day and practice the exercise from the beginning of this post. How many words can you use to describe  your emotional experiences? How nuanced are your descriptions? Do you find that your ability to do so varies as a function of the situation?  Here’s a list of emotions: amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, concern, contentment, disappointment, disgust, elation, embarrassment, excitement, fear, guilt, happiness, irritation, joy, pride, revolted, shame, surprise, unhappiness. It’s non-exhaustive, but it’s certainly a good place to start…

 

 

Having an obsessive mind

We all have thoughts, such as, “I’m going to lose my keys and get locked out of my house” or “I touched something that is dirty and I’m going to get sick.” Although such thoughts are common, when we persevere on them, they turn into obsessions.

Obsessions belong to the same class of perseverative cognition as worry and rumination. However, obsessions are different in that we perceive them as intrusive, that is, we do not want to have them. When we freak out about the possibility of losing our keys or getting sick, it does not feel right: we tense up, our breathing gets shallower, and we start to sweat. It becomes difficult to focus on anything else. Our minds become plagued with racing thoughts.

So, it makes perfect sense that we go to great lengths to try to get rid of our obsessions. The problem, however, is that more often that not, we end up resorting to techniques that paradoxically increase the frequency and intensity of these thoughts. For example, one common way of dealing with obsessive thoughts is by trying to not think about them. However, the more we try to not have a thought, the more it comes back, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle of feeling out of control and having more intrusive thoughts (see review by Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000). One classic way of illustrating this phenomenon is by asking you to think of anything but a white bear. Wait a few seconds. Now, what are you thinking about?

Most people will answer” a white bear” or “a bear” or perhaps even “something white.” This is because the more we tell ourselves “don’t think of a white bear,” the more we are activating the notion of a white bear in our minds. You can see how this applies to our obsessions: the more we tell ourselves “don’t worry about the keys,” the more we obsess about the keys.

By jessicafm – Jessica Merz

A second way of dealing with obsessions entails engaging in compulsions. In this way, when we experience obsessive thoughts about losing our keys, we might develop a ritual of reaching into our pockets and touching the keys three times with each of our fingers. Or when we obsess about germs and getting sick, we might wash our hands so frequently that our skin gets dry and begins to peel off. In addition to taking up time and mental and physical energy, these compulsions further exacerbate the vicious cycle of obsessive thinking. When we engage in a compulsive ritual and it doesn’t work (which is oftentimes the case, since they have little connection with the events we are trying to prevent), we feel anxious and out of control. We then tell ourselves that if we could only come up with a better ritual (“with the perfect ritual”), we would be able to gain control over our thoughts. And thus compulsions become exponentially more convoluted and time-consuming. And obsessions become more frequent and intense.

You might wonder, then, what is the best way of dealing with obsessions (and the ensuing compulsions). The answer is quite simple: just let these thoughts be. Intrusive thoughts, just like emotions, can be quite brief. But we usually perpetuate them by trying to suppress them or by engaging in compulsions. But, if you just watch them come and go, you will have power over them. By letting go of your need to control these thoughts, you will paradoxically be more in control of them. Of course, letting go is a very difficult thing. But, as I frequently say, it’s all about practice!!!

Now, I should also mention that when obsessions and compulsions get out of control, they turn into obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD is more than just being a bit obsessive or having some quirks. OCD is a debilitating mental disorder that affects 2-3 millions of Americans. If you’re interested in catching a glimpse at a patient’s perspective, I recommend that you check out the HBO TV show Girls (spoiler alert; skip to next paragraph). In the last two episodes of the second season (the show has just wrapped up its third season) the main character, Hannah (played by show creator Lena Dunham), is under so much stress that she re-experiences the OCD symptoms that she had as a child. She begins to count and to do most things in series of 8s. At one point, she is shown in front of the mirror compulsively cleaning her ear with a q-tip. She does so with such fury that the q-tip gets stuck and she has to go to the emergency room to get it removed. When the doctor pulls it out, it’s bloody. She’s embarrassed. When she gets home, she resumes cleaning her ears. She can’t stop.

Despite its severity, OCD is a very treatable condition. The first line of psychosocial treatment entails exposure and response prevention (ERP), which is an evidence-based form of cognitive behavioral therapy. In a nutshell, ERP entails 1) exposing patients to their obsessions (think of losing the keys, touch something dirty) and 2) preventing them from engaging in the associated compulsions (checking pockets, washing hands). By being able to stay with that anxiety, patients experience habituation, that is, a reduction in their anxiety. Once the anxiety is lower, the obsessions become less frequent and the drive to engage in compulsions, less intense.  In addition, some people benefit from psychotropic medications, primarily certain antidepressants.

As a final note, if you think that you or a close one might be suffering from OCD, here are some additional resources:

Anxiety & Depression Association of America (ADAA)

International OCD Foundation

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

(feel free to let me know of additional resources; Twitter @DrAmeliaAldao

 

 

 

 

 

Valuing the Present

In previous posts I have discussed how rumination keeps us trapped in the past and worry keeps us focused on a dangerous future that might never come. In contrast, being in the present moment can be quite liberating. I’m sure that many of you have heard about the benefits of mindfulness, that is, the ability to stay focus on the present moment, non-judgmentally. I haven’t talked much about mindfulness yet, and I won’t do much of that today either (but I will soon, don’t worry). Rather, today I would like to simply emphasize the value of the present moment.

As I was thinking of this post, I came across the work of two very different individuals who have also highlighted the importance of being in the here-and-now. These are not psychologists, but rather an Australian pop singer/songwriter (Sia) and a Danish 19th philosopher (Søren Kierkegaard). I know this might sound like a very strange combination, but that’s the point. It doesn’t get any more different than an Australian pop star and an old-timey Danish philosopher. And yet, they both talk about the same thing: the present moment matters. A lot.

So, let’s begin with Sia. A few weeks ago, she released a new single called Chandelier (see video below). The lyrics are catchy, her singing is very interesting, and the video presents a very refreshing concept (an 11-year old, Maddie Ziegler, from the TV show “Dance Moms” does a beautiful interpretive dance routine). If you pay attention to the lyrics, you will repeatedly hear the following verses:

I’m gonna swing from the chandelier

from the chandelier

I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist

Like it doesn’t exist.

Now, the song is about partying, drinking to numb the pain, dealing with shame, and a bunch of other really sad topics. But let’s not get distracted by them. Let’s just focus on her message about being in the present as if tomorrow didn’t exist. She doesn’t say that she is living as if the future didn’t exist. Rather, she is expressing a desire to be able to do so; she is going to live like there’s no tomorrow. But will she? Can she suspend all thoughts about the future (and the past) and simply be? Can she indulge in this desire or is she confined to an existence of constant mental travel?

And now, switching gears completely, I wanted to reflect on Kierkegaard’s thoughts about the present moment. I recently came across a post from the Brain Pickings blog that goes over what Søren Kierkegaard had to say about the present moment. In a nutshell, he proposed that individuals who are stuck in the past or the future are “absent from themselves” and, consequently, unhappy and unsatisfied (by the way, I recommend you read that entire post since it has some amazing quotes). What I find to be so fascinating about his writings is that they are almost 200 years old. They predate social media, psychology bloggers, and meditation apps for your smart phone. And yet, they echo our modern-day striving for savoring the present.

In any case, as you go through your week, I encourage you to think about how truly present you are in your many activities at work, home,  school, or wherever else you happen to be. You don’t have to engage in silent meditation or do three hours of yoga. All you need is a few seconds to check in with yourself. What’s your experience like right now? Can you let yourself feel whatever you’re experiencing without thinking about the future or the past? Give it a shot! Leave your thoughts.

 

 

Getting Stuck in Ruminative Thinking

In a previous post, I discussed the emotional difficulties associated with worrying about the future. I mentioned that worrying appears to help us reduce our anxiety and uncertainty about the world, but in reality, it perpetuates a vicious cycle of the very same anxiety it’s supposed to help us manage. However, in that post, I did not get a chance to discuss worry’s close cousin: rumination. Thus, today I will provide a brief introduction to the science behind rumination.

In essence, rumination entails thinking repeatedly about one’s shortcomings and mistakes. However, unlike worry, which is focused on the future, rumination is focused on the past. Some of the items frequently used to assess this process include “why do I always react this way?” and “why can’t I handle things better”?

The process of rumination gained a considerable amount of attention in the early 1990s, when the late Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (who was my Ph.D. adviser) began documenting how engaging in this repetitive thought process perpetuated negative mood, particularly in individuals prone to depression. Over two decades of research on this process suggests that it is associated with the development and maintenance of depressive disorders (see Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Furthermore, research conducted in the past decade indicates that rumination might be a transdiagnostic factor, that is, a process that is associated with a wide range of mental disorders, such as anxiety, eating, and substance abuse disorders (see Nolen-Hoeksema & Watkins, 2011 or one of my papers, Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010).

So if rumination is so bad for us, why do we keep using it? The answer is simple. Similarly to worry, rumination gives us the illusion that it can help us understand the world better: “if only I keep asking myself a few more times why my date did not seem very excited about me, I will figure out what’s wrong with me.” Or “If I keep re-hashing my disappointing performance at work, I will be able to understand why I’m such a mess.” Asking ourselves these questions is akin to jumping into a rabbit hole of negativity. Simply by the way they are phrased, they are begging for a negative answer. How can we ever answer “what’s wrong with me” in a positive way? We can’t. In addition, once we do find that negative answer, that never seems to be enough. “It can’t just be that; there’s a lot more wrong with me.” So we keep ruminating.

The truth is that there is a lot of stuff that is wrong with us. With all of us. And reflecting upon our mistakes can certainly be a useful and productive thing to do. However, when we become fixated with finding every single thing that is wrong with us, we end up painting ourselves into a corner and it becomes very difficult to take proactive action. In fact, this is what study after study on rumination shows: the more we engage in this process, the less likely we are to actually go ahead and modify those things we don’t like about ourselves and the world (see the work of Ed Watkins from the University of Exeter in the UK & Jutta Joormann from Northwestern University)

So, as you find yourself engaging in those ruminative questions, try to take a step back and ask yourself another question, “is this the kind of thinking that is promoting taking action or is it the kind of thinking that is making me feel worse about myself and question my ability to bring about change?”

I know this is super difficult to do because rumination keeps us in a vicious cycle of negativity that makes it challenging to gain the distance we need to question it. But the more we practice, the more skilled we can become at stopping our ruminations. It all begins with trying to notice this type of thoughts…

 

 

 

Emotional Avoidance in Pop Culture

Today I thought I would combine my interests in pop culture and emotion science by writing about Ron Swanson. In case you don’t watch much television, Ron is one of the main characters in the sitcom Parks & Recreation. I find him to be super interesting because he exists in an emotional space that primarily encompasses irritation, annoyance, and anger. In addition, I like Ron because he is a classic example of someone who is extremely emotionally avoidant. He values being a non-emotional, cool-headed, stoic individual who has little, if any, emotional investment in the world around him. This avoidance is well summarized in one of the first scenes from the clip below, when he says to Tom, a coworker who is having some problems, “I’m a bit fearful that we are verging on what I call feelings territory.”

However, as I discussed previously, the more we try to avoid our emotions (and those of others), they more likely they are to come back. So, although Ron goes to great lengths to avoid experiencing emotions and having to come into contact with other people’s, he fails time and again. Given the comedic nature of the show, these failures are usually staged in such a away that they are hilarious. For example, Ron has been known to throw a chair cross the room or to punch a glass door.

So, when I came across his compilation of some of his most emotional moments, I thought I’d share it with you. What do you think?

 

 

Being Emotionally Flexible

What does it mean to be flexible?

Believe it or not, this seemingly straightforward question is actually quite difficult to answer. Some people are flexible when it comes to changing dinner plans. Others have great physical flexibility that allows them to perform incredible athletic feats (see below). And other folks can promptly switch between using different languages. And so on.

A friend of mine, whose New Year Resolution was to become more flexible.

One particular kind of flexibility that is of great interest to affective scientists is emotion regulation flexibility. In a nutshell, this flexibility captures people’s ability to use different emotion regulation strategies as the environment changes. This is important because the adaptiveness of regulation strategies changes as a function of contextual demands. For example, cognitive reappraisal might be useful in some situations (e.g., “my date is late because s/he probably got stuck at work and not because s/he doesn’t like me”) but not in others (e.g., “it’s OK for my coworker to dump all his work on me because he has been at the company for a longer time than I have”). Similarly, a strategy such as avoidance might be helpful sometimes (e.g., declining a lunch invitation from an obnoxious coworker) but not other times (e.g., procrastinating when we are in charge of finishing a time-sensitive project at work).

Importantly, there is growing evidence suggesting that the flexibility with which we implement emotion regulation strategies might be key to our mental health (review by Drs. Todd Kashdan & Jonathan Rottenberg). For example, Dr. George Bonanno of Columbia University conducted a number of laboratory studies showing that people who can follow instructions to alternate between enhancing and suppressing their facial expressions while watching emotion-evocative pictures have better mental health and social adjustment and those who have a more difficult time switching between strategies (see my previous post). In addition, in a study I published a few years ago, we found that the variability with which people used acceptance and reappraisal across a number of situations was a better predictor of mental health that the simple average extent to which participants implemented these strategies.

There are many ways of being flexible.

So, as you go through your day, do you notice that you use different regulation strategies in different situations? Examples include: accepting, reappraising, distracting, criticizing yourself, worrying about the future, ruminating about the past, getting stuck in obsessive thoughts, engaging in emotional eating, using substances, and so on…Do you find it easy or difficult to switch among strategies? Does it get easier/more difficult in certain environments (say, work versus home)? Leave your thoughts!