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Archive for the ‘Definitions in Emotional Resilience’ Category

Emotional resilience, emotional maturity, emotion regulation and impulse control

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

I have been doing a lot of research around the subject of emotional resilience, particularly from a medical / neurological perspective.
There are a couple of terms that are emerging from the literature which are very useful and really need to enter the public lexicon; emotion regulation and impulse control.

Emotional resilience is largely becoming seen as the ability to bounce back after some negative emotional event.

Emotion regulation is somewhat of a bigger concept than emotional resilience and includes the idea of ’state control’ or the ability to consciously change emotional state at will and is used extensively in the medical literature.

Both ‘emotional resilience’ and ‘emotion regulation’ are frequently used interchangeably in the literature.

Impulse control is an interesting concept that is often linked to emotional regulation. Reading the literature researchers are clearly seeing impulse control as separate (but linked) from emotion regulation. When you think about it impulses are more of a ‘knee jerk’ habit than a pure emotion. Impulses are drives towards a certain behaviour, they have an emotional basis and are either a direct response to an emotion or are behavioural or cognitive habit that has become associated to an emotion.

Emotional maturity is a catchall judgment / description or measurement of the level of emotional acuity a person has in comparison to others. Maturity is a comparative concept. It tends to be used to incorporate all of the above terms and more.

Just doing a quick literature search I found the following:

In the management / leadership literature the term emotional resilience is the most frequently used term. There is very little reference to impulse control.

In the medical literature ‘emotional resilience’ is a growing phrase used and has recently overtaken ‘emotion regulation’ and ‘impulse control’ in terms of popularity. Neurological papers tend to talk more about emotion regulation than other types of medical research articles. In total there are more articles about emotion regulation its just that the idea of emotional resilience has recently overtaken emotion regulation in terms of use.

Emotional resilience is most often used in psychological research journals with emotion regulation and impulse control following close behind.

Psychiatry journals tend to refer to emotion regulation above all other terms.

Reading the articles I do get the sense that the terms emotional resilience and emotion regulation are being used interchangeably even though they do have different meanings. In the public especially the realm of the internet when you put the terms in parenthesis the following falls out:

“Emotional Resilience” 72,000 hits

“Emotion Regulation” returns 165,000 hits

“Impulse control” brings back a whopping 603,000 hits

“Emotional maturity” has 253,000 results.

But what about terms searched for? These figures are terms searched for globally per month.

Emotional resilience has approx 1,900 searches per month

Emotion regulation has 6,600 searches per month

Emotional maturity also has about 6,600 searches per month

Impulse control has approximately 22,200 searches per month.

Interesting…

Posted in Definitions in Emotional Resilience, Emotional Resilience Research, emotion regulation, emotional maturity, emotional resilience, impulse control | No Comments »

Emotional Resilience v’s Emotional Maturity: an internal suit of armour - article II

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Jeremy was waiting to go up to the stage to do his presentation. He knew these feelings so well. They were like old friends, only the type of friends who you hide from when they turn up on your doorstep. Very familiar but unwelcome, especially when you need to impress.
The symptoms were so familiar. His hands were sweating, he was having problems hearing things, his stomach was tightening and his mouth and throat were dry. He was starting to feel sick as his moment got closer and closer.

How did the others manage to go up there without any nerves? They just looked so calm and composed, even laughing and joking. This was no joke. He hoped that someone would just call it all off, the roof to collapse, anything.
Bev, who was sat next to him on the front row could feel Jeremy’s discomfort. Not that Jeremy would have called it discomfort. Discomfort is like trapped wind or a sore elbow, this was more like total collapse, during an earthquake complete with falling masonry and trees.
“Jerry, You OK?” Bev whispered
“Yes” he managed weakly
“I can help” Bev offered
“It’s ok thanks”
“No really I can help – I will stand up and take off all my cloths then you won’t have to go on.”
Jeremy laughed.
“My nakedness isn’t that funny” she remonstrated in a playfully
“I didn’t mean…” Jeremy stammered
“Wow you have got this bad haven’t you?” She turned to look at her colleague. Jeremy turned to face her and she could see the look of someone who had just seen their first live nightmare.
“Listen” she said gently, try this…
A few moments later Jeremy’s face had gained colour, looked more animated and his posture was straighter and positive. “Wow that’s amazing, I feel a lot calmer. How did you do that?”
“Just a little trick I picked up on a course.” Bev replied. “When you go up try this. You’ll find it makes all the difference. All you need to do is…”
Jeremy calmed down and went up, not to his death but to deliver a calm and composed presentation.
Afterwards he saw Bev smiling at him. “What was that you do to me? It felt really odd being up there and being calm and able to think.”
“They are just a couple of tools I have learnt to help me be more emotionally resilient.”
“Emotionally resilient?”
“Yes it’s a bit like having your own internal suit of armour, you can put it on when you need it.”
“So does this mean that you never feel scared?” Jeremy asked

“Not at all, it just means that when you start to feel something you can control it rather than having you feelings and emotions control your mind and actions.”

Bev continued “You see we often end up just reacting to our fears, like you were just before you went up to speak. Emotional resilience is just about knowing where you are emotionally at any time, and then being able to deal with your emotions in a positive way, so they don’t adversely affect your actions, reactions, thinking and decisions. So that you do what you need to and perform like you can.”

“My anxiety was certainly changing the way I was thinking and reacting, that’s for sure. That is until you er… did what you did with me, it really helped me overcome my fear”
Bev smiled.

“So is that the same as emotional maturity?” Jeremy enquired
“No not all being emotionally resilient is just part of being emotionally mature. Being emotionally mature means you are resilient. Being emotionally resilient does not necessarily mean you are emotionally mature. Resilience is a subset of maturity.”

In the third article of this series I will look at just what the attributes of emotional maturity are, compared to emotional resilience.

Posted in Decision making, Definitions in Emotional Resilience, emotional maturity, overcome fear | No Comments »

Emotional maturity / emotional resilience and the dog with one spot.

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Emotional maturity and emotional resilience are funny things. Spot the difference:

Jay (insert any other name here) wakes up and his (add your own gender) head starts to clear. Today is the day he has to xxxxx (fill in your own ugh thought here).

Breakfast is largely a silent affair. Jay’s wife, a financial consultant, and his three children know not to puncture into Jay’s world on mornings like this. They can just sense the tension and over the years they have learnt the consequences of trying to engage Jay when he is in one of his ‘moods’.

The last time Jay was in a ‘mood’ and his daughter tried to cheer him up xxxx (add your own observed response of a person in a mood when people were trying to reach out to them / you) happened. As a result they now know not to even try but to just stay quiet and make sure he doesn’t see the silent face pulling and eye rolling they amuse each other with at times like this. It is their way of breaking the tension without the consequences.

On the way to work another driver, Sally, miscalculates a junction. The Sally, who was hitherto quite happy going about her daily business ends up in one of those random events and accidentally pulls out in front of Jay, causing Jay to have to break sharply to avoid a collision. Jay swears at the other driver and blows his horn, keeping his fist on the horn for what appears to be ages. Other drivers start to look. Then the traffic slows. Jay is immediately behind the luckless Sally in the now stationary queue of traffic.

Jay cannot contain himself anymore. Sally glances in her mirror to see the tall man open his car door and stride towards her. Sally locks her doors as her pupils open wide as she looks too see if there is anyway she can move the car forward. She starts to shake. Jay reaches Sally’s door and motions for the window to be opened. Sally just stares ahead, wishing and praying for the traffic to move. She doesn’t acknowledge Jay’s gesticulations and shouting.

Suddenly there is a loud bang. Sally jumps but keeps looking ahead, her shaking becoming visible now. Keeping he head pointing forward she quickly glances sideways with just her eyes. Jay has kicked the door and is still shouting and gesticulating when finally the traffic moves forward. Sally pulls away.

It is Jay’s turn to have horns blown at him as he quickly walks back to his car.

Sally is quiet at work as she reflects on the events of the morning. She wonders what she did wrong to deserve this. As she sits in her office, Dan who has been a bit of a problem recently knocks on her door. “Sally can I just ask you about this account?”

Sally shouts back “No Dan you can’t. For crying out loud just get on with your work. Why are you only one in this office that has to keep asking stupid questions. Everyone else can do their job.” Sally is shocked at her outburst but feels justified. Dan does not appear able to learn. He keeps asking the same questions. Argh.

Dan sits quietly, aware of all the eyes in the open plan office boring into the back of his head. “What did I do to deserve that? he asks himself. He keeps himself quietly to himself for the rest of the day. When he gets home that evening, late because he had to finish his work without the help he needed, his dinner is somewhat cool. “Yuk this is cold I can’t eat cold dinner.” he complains to his partner Zoey.

“Listen buster your dinner will be warm next time alright because it will be in the dog.” Zoey marches into the kitchen muttering ‘ungrateful git’ under her breath just loud enough for Dan to hear, of course. “What did I do? I just made him dinner and he complains.” again with just enough voice that she hopes it will carry through to Dan. The dog is sleeping peacefully, curled up on the kitchen floor only. She kicks him “GETOUTOFTHEKITCHENYOUONESPOTTEDFREAK. YOUSHOULDN’TBEINHERE.” Spot yelps and runs thinking “What the hell did I do to deserve that?” when he sees a cat…

The endemic continues.

In my next post we will have a look at emotional maturity v’s emotional resilience. What they are and how they relate to each other.

Posted in Definitions in Emotional Resilience, emotional maturity | No Comments »

What is emotional resilience?

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

I get asked a lot about Emotional Resilience, what it is and how to do it. It is a frequently misunderstood concept.

Variously I hear Emotional Resilience (ER) being used to mean:

Without emotion
Emotionless
The ability to cut off from your emotions
Not being effected by your emotions, and several others.

People who are without any emotion are usually a) a liability to themselves and others, b) thankfully rare, c) boring and quite possibly d) dead.

Just think about what being without emotion would mean for a second or two. It would certainly mean that we would not get any feedback about what is dangerous in our environment. The emotion of fear is there to keep us safe, even if it does tend to overreact a bit. Fear is a really fast way of learning about the things that can hurt / eat us.

Just watch a child who gets burnt by something hot. You are unlikely to find that they need a formal lecture with PowerPoint slides, extra curricula classes, revision, months of study and an exam to learn not to touch it again. Just as well really as I don’t think the human race would have made it past 1st Grade. We would now probably only be found in the deep freeze section of a more emotionally intelligent dinosaur’s supermarket having been hunted and gathered ourselves.

Another thing to consider is Empathy, the ability to sense others emotions and ‘feel’ for them. Empathy and care also require some pretty decent emotions. Eating your young might prevent starvation but it is not exactly the best strategy for survival of the species (or staying out of jail) and that invitation around to a friends house for dinner could be final. Being without empathy is not a winner for deep relationships nor is it going to endear you to your friends - if you have any.

Being emotionless would also take all the fun out of…well everything actually. Imagine chocolate just being a way of not starving. It doesn’t bear thinking about really. Oh and sex would be for one purpose only. It’s not only useful for enjoying sex and chocolate. Taking an emotionless person or someone who doesn’t get affected by their emotions to share a movie, the ballet or theatre with is going to be a bit of a fruitless exercise really. They are not going to be a whole bag of laughs; weepy movies would just be stared at, horror movies wouldn’t raise their pulse one beat and even the thought of any similar event would not be seen as a treat. Without emotion the only fun will be in fundamentally boring.

You are walking down a dark lonely street at night and you start to get the feeling that something isn’t quite right … or you meet someone for the first time and you get that sense that you have known them before. Or you just ‘know’ you are about to get ‘lucky’ with the stunning chap or gal who has just walked into the room. All of these would just not be possible to ‘feel’ without emotion. Yes our intuition is also part of our emotional system.

So just say yes to emotions and yes to the causes of emotion.

OK so what is emotional resilience and why bother with it if our emotions are so damn useful and at times enjoyable?

Well sometimes we find that emotions kind of take over running our bodies and our minds just at the moment we want to be in control. I would much rather be cool, calm and collected and have my sense of humor when I am chatting someone up or doing a speech rather than being a shaking humorless geek who can’t get his words out properly and keeps missing his mouth with his food and drink. I don’t know about you but calm wins at moments like this.

Emotional resilience really comprises of two elements:

The ability of an individual to register and accurately identify our own, and often other people’s emotions in the moment (Emotional Intelligence), and
The ability and skill to change our emotional state, or reduce (or heighten) the effect of our emotions at will, if so desired.

Basically emotional resilience is the ability to be able to control our emotions rather than having them control us, or allowing them to sweep over us when we want, so let’s here it for Emotional Resilience. Rah!

Credit where credit is due. Play fair and acknowledge the authors’ work and expertise.

Tags: emotional intelligence, emotional resilience
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What is a pathological fear?

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Pathological

We use the term ‘pathological’ quite a lot. We talk about pathological liars and pathological fears for example. But what does pathological mean in these contexts?

Pathological comes from the English word pathology which is derived from the latin pathologia & the Middle French pathologie both of which, in-turn have their origins in the Greek word pathologia which originally meant the study of the emotions. Patho having a combined meaning of emotions, suffering and disease and logy meaning to study. To the ancient Greeks emotional suffering and disease (dis-ease or not being at ease) were considered to be deviations from normal good health.

Pathological therefore means anything that deviates from the normal or healthy and these days tends to mean extreme deviations, hence the connection with disease and pathology (the study of disease). So a pathological fear really means a fear that is not the norm and is considered to be unhealthy for the individual with the fear.

Tags: Pathological fear
Posted in Definitions in Emotional Resilience | No Comments »

The Emotional Resilience Blog

Archive for the ‘Definitions in Emotional Resilience’ Category

Emotional resilience, emotional maturity, emotion regulation and impulse control

Emotional Resilience v’s Emotional Maturity: an internal suit of armour - article II

Emotional maturity / emotional resilience and the dog with one spot.

What is emotional resilience?

What is a pathological fear?

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