Archive for the ‘emotional resilience’ Category
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
I was asked yesterday what emotional resilience has got to do with honesty. Try this…
You know when you have said something in the privacy of your own home about someone and the kids have overheard you? For example you say that Mrs. Goggins from No 43 is a mean old git or something similar.
Then when you are with your young child in the street and you meet Mrs. Goggins, What is the one thing you pray your child doesn’t do right now?
Yeah that’s right be honest! You may recognise the feeling of the moment your child pipes up “Hi mrs. Goggins my Mum / Dad thinks (as you leap for their mouth) you are a mean old git” and you lie by saying something like, “Oh no I think she/he must have got confused we were talking about another Mrs. Goggins.”
Then in all cringe making innocence daughter or son pipes up “No Mum/Dad you said it was her, you know, this Mrs. Goggins, from number 43, you said mum/dad, you said.” as you start to die inside, “Oh look at the time, must dash, lovely to see you Mrs. Goggins, as always.” and under your breath, just loud enough for you your son/daughter to hear, “Wait till I get you home. you really embarrassed me”.
Now we all have opinions of people that we don’t tell people. We often rationalise it as ‘Not wishing to be hurtful’ or ‘I don’t want to cause trouble’, or ‘better let sleeping dogs lye’. What we actually mean (because we are often not being honest with ourselves) is “I don’t like the feelings and don’t want the consequences of being that honest.”
Fear usually drives our lack of total honesty. It takes courage and emotional resilience to really say what we really think and face up to the fact that it is often our lack of courage (not the other excuses) that prevents us from voicing our opinions.
The other side of this coin is people being totally honest with us; being told something (feedback) about ourselves that we don’t like and we don’t want to hear, no matter how true it might be. Something that ‘hurts us’. Often we rationalise this by deflection by saying something like ‘Oh it’s ok they are just in a mood’ or something like that to shift the blame and the emotional consequences. It takes real emotional resilience to firstly hear what people are saying about us, often with their body language and then face up to it and truly and openly explore the feedback for what we can learn and change about our attitudes and behaviours.
Just a thought.
Dave
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Monday, February 22nd, 2010
On the Fear Course we often get people who find it difficult to identify and articulate the range of emotions they feel. As a result when it comes to being able to deal with their emotions and being emotionally resilient they find it a tough job. They know something is causing problems and they know it’s a fear or anxiety, but they struggle to describe what the feeling is. We do a little exercise at the start of the day where we get people to start to articulate what they are feeling and when they feel it. We ask them to decide on the level of fear or anxiety they have in certain situations. A proportion of people struggle with this task.
Often in family, schooling and work systems emotions are not discussed, identified and recognised. In fact often people are told “not to be emotional”. Frequently we find that displays of emotion are considered to the the cause of ‘discomfort’ (another emotion) and therefore need to be removed from the situation as they are ‘unhelpful’.
The reason people have such problems with emotions is that they have not been shown how to be comfortable with them. I frequently find in my research that the most emotionally resilient people are those who recognise and accept their and other people’s emotions (emotional intelligence). As a result they find it fairly easy to then regulate their emotions (emotional resilience), even in really difficult situations.
The process of getting people, particularly children comfortable with something as natural and human as emotions has become known as emotional literacy. Usually the process of developing emotional literacy has a number of elements:
- Learning to recognise an emotion as it happens,
- Being able to label and identify our emotions and the difference between them,
- Being able to express or articulate our emotions in a healthy way,
- Recognising emotions as they occur in others (empathy)
- The ability to regulate our emotions (emotional resilience) rather than our emotions driving our behaviour and thinking.
However many people have not developed these abilities and are in actual fact uncomfortable or even scared of their own emotions find it difficult to cope when others are displaying their emotions.
Some schools and parents recognise the importance of emotional resilience and have started to develop emotional literacy programmes. In the mean time what about the adults who haven’t had the benefit of developing emotional resilience? The foundation of the Fear Course is exactly that. To help people get comfortable with their emotions and learn to regulate them quickly and easily. More about emotional literacy soon…
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, emotion regulation, emotional literacy, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Friday, February 12th, 2010
One of the things we show people on the Fear Course is the research into the connection between the food they eat and feelings of anxiety, including a couple of case studies we talk about on the course. Recently we have been doing some experiments with clients on diet and cooking methods. Here is a very brief summary of what we found. I will prepare a full paper and download it to the articles and notes area soon.
When we started the test the participants had a Fear Factor (FF) average score of 8.2 with a range of 7.7 to 9.6
The group who ate normally (No dietry change) had an average FF of 8 before the test and 8.1 afterwards.
The group who cut out all fried foods had an average FF of 8.1 before the test and 7.8 afterwards
The group who stopped eating refined sugar products, sweets, chocolate and other sugary foods AND drinks went from a FF of 8.2 to 6.4
The group who only stopped fizzy drinks reduced their FF 8.1 to 7.1
The group who cut out salty snacks, crisps, slated nuts etc. had an average FF of 8.2 before the test and 7.4 afterwards
Who ate raw vegetables only went from a FF of 8 to 5.9.
There were some other conditions (like stopping alcohol, caffeine, meat etc.) in the experiment which I will cover in the paper.
You can see our up to date Fear Course dates and locations here: http://www.fearcourse.com/
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, diet and anxiety, emotional resilience, overcome fear | No Comments »
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
I was recently sent an article that was distributed to advertising copywriters. The article starts out by giving advice on how advertisers can use benefits in their advertising copy. And then it moves on to explicit instructions of how to use fear to get people to buy products. Her is the advice advertisers are given:
“Every benefit is just one side of a coin; the other side is a fear.
Because while prospects desire all these things, they also fear NOT having them in their lives. They fear poverty and dependence … illness and pain … being abandoned and left alone, and being thought little of.
And so sales copy that promises to deliver a much-desired benefit and alleviate a nagging fear can be twice as effective as copy that focuses on benefits alone.”
The article, by an advertising consultancy company then go on to give explicit instructions on how to use fear to get us to buy their products. Here are some lowlights of advice given to professional advertising copy writiers:
“If you’re going to invoke fear in your sales copy, make sure it’s a fear that’s already waking your prospects at 2:30 AM in a cold sweat.” - This advice is given so advertisers don’t waste their time and copy on trying to instill new fears. It’s easier and cheaper to use fears we already have apparently.
“If you’re going to use fear in your copy, make sure it’s an imminent fear. Something that is likely to happen in the very near future – or better yet, at virtually any moment.” it then goes on to state that people don’t act on distant fears, ‘you have to make them imminent and gives many advertising examples including “In other words, someone near you was a victim of a violent crime in his or her home yesterday. If it was your next-door neighbor, you’re many times more likely to be buy a burglar alarm today than if the victim was a mile or ten miles away.”
“Using a fear that paralyzes prospects won’t do you any good and it sure won’t help your prospects.”. The moral for advertisers here is that “I do not want him frozen into inaction by the fear”.
“Pushing your prospects’ panic buttons is pointless unless you can show how your product eliminates the cause of his fear.” - The advice here is that advertisers don’t waste time and money “invoking a fear that isn’t actionable”. In other words the fear you use must drive ‘prospects’ to a sale, “it must be actionable.”
Lastly the guide ends on a cheery little piece of advice to advertisers:
“A little fear goes a long way. It’s a powerful attention-getter. Used correctly, it can add dimension to your product’s benefits and motivate prospects to order now.”
We all know advertisers often use fear to sell. I just wasn’t aware how cynical, clinical and purposeful the practice was.
Advice: If you are about to buy anything just question your motivations for doing so and make sure you aren’t being manipulated. The more emotionally resilient you are the less likely advertisers fear inducing tactics are likely to work.
Posted in Fear, Fear Course News, emotional resilience, impulse control | No Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
 Ask a silly question. How many times have you not asked a question for fear of looking daft?
I do a lot of work in organisations as a consultant and coach. One of the things being an outsider gives you is the ability to ask ’stupid’ questions without people looking to the sky and tutting. Actually even when I was in an organisation I was always pretty good at asking stupid questions.
Anyway what I have frequently found is that it is the stupid question that unblocks things.
A recent example comes from a group I was working with who kept using the phrase “Learning Culture”. I listened for a while and then wondered what they meant. So I asked “What do you mean by learning culture?” Simple question really.
One of the group looked at me and shook his head in horror. However there was total silence. Not one of the group could answer the question even though they were engaged in trying to develop ‘a learning culture’.
As it happened this question unblocked the whole discussion and moved the group on a long way.
I just wonder how often people get into conversations at work, hear phrases or ideas, wonder what they are and don’t ask for fear of looking stupid? I wonder how many projects go T.U. because people are scared to ask or to point out flaws in things at work? I wonder how many bosses don’t get the truth about what is really happening and all because of a lack of emotional resilience?
A bit of emotional resilience would help organisations in lots of ways…
Posted in Fear, emotional resilience | 1 Comment »
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 »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Some research published in April’s Journal of Affective Disorders (2009 Apr;114(1-3):286-93) by Arce et al from the Department of Psychiatry, University of California supports the hypothesis that that resilient individuals show a bias towards positive emotions when faced with uncertain or ambiguous emotional expressions.
I will write a fuller review and critique of this paper in our articles and notes section shortly. Dx
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
What goes ha ha bonk? - Someone laughing their head off. (or should that be ‘lol bonk’ these days?)
Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love get married. The ceremony wasn’t much but the reception was brilliant.
In 1979 Norman Cousins, a journalist published a book called Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. In it Cousins describes how he suffered from inflammatory arthritis, a painful and debilitating illness. He also describes how with the aid of Marx brothers films he was able to reduce the pain and the inflammation, eventually returning to work.
So can humour or humor if you are American (you missed out the most important part of humor - u!) really increase our emotional resilience?
Does laughing help us overcome fear and reduce pain? In the next few articles (in http://www.fearcourse.com/articles-and-notes.html) and blogs I will review the evidence and have a few chuckles along the way.
Knock, Knock
Who’s there?
Interupting cow
Interupti..
MOO!
So thank moo for reading this blog - more soon. Lol, he he and ha ha.
Tags: emotional resilience, humor, humour, laughter, overcome fear
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, emotional resilience, humor, humour, overcome fear | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
 What is your focus? What people focus on or their mindset makes a big difference to their level of emotional resilience.
In a study conducted by Professor Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina (published July 2009) it was found that people who consciously appreciate and positively register the times when they are happy tend to have greater emotional resilience when times are tough.
Fredrickson had 86 people keep emotional logs over a one month period. What she found was that people who recorded and were conscious of happy moments and also kept a focus on these moments as opposed to those that had a focus on when things go wrong, tended to report being happier generally. Further these people found it much easier to bounce back when things did go wrong.
Less emotionally resilient people on the other hand tended to focus on and register the unhappy events more. They have a more negatively focused mindset.
Comment: This is in line with a number of other studies which show that keeping score of happy events, remembering them and making being happy your focus is a big indicator of emotional resilience.
In my own research on disaster managers and emergency service workers, I found the emotionally resilient people tended to collect good moments and the less emotionally resilient people tended to collect and recollect the hard and difficult times more often. People who have emotional resilience tend to forget or at least focus on remembering the good times as opposed to the difficult times. Whereas people who have less emotional resilience recall the difficult times with ease, including the emotions and will play these back often.These people tend to have greater incidence of stress related illness and report felling stress more often than the people with the happy focus or mindset.
It’s like having a stamp collection in an album. Keep a happy times album is a good idea, and it is really important to leaf through the ‘happy times album’ frequently.
Tags: Add new tag, emotional resilience
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, emotional resilience | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
I was shown a course this week about emotional resilience. Basically it was stress management rebadged. Most of the participants were somewhat disappointed; they thought they were going to get something new, as the phrase emotional resilience sounds different to stress management.
So what’s the difference?
Stress management is just that, techniques for dealing with stress. Largely these tend to be relaxation techniques, which are very useful. Emotionally resilient people do tend to be less stressed, especially by critical events. However they are a bit more than good at managing stress. Some of the attributes of emotionally resilient people include:
• Able to recognise their emotional state at any moment, especially in heightened emotional situations
• Can change emotional state at will
• Able to recognise the temporary nature of feelings
• Can quickly, within seconds, work through their fears and anxieties constructively
• Remain positive, constructive and keep going in times of danger or difficulty
• Think quickly, clearly and objectively in times of difficulty or crises
• Remain calm and focussed in situations others want to run from or situations where others tend to freeze
• Able to confidently enter situations of ambiguity and uncertainty
I felt sorry for the participants as they could have gained a lot more from the day.
Posted in emotional resilience | 2 Comments »
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