I have started a project to construct an online dictionary of fear and anxiety. This is a growing work in action and will develop over time. It will include a full list of definitions of phobias, anxiety and fear related terms as well as phrases and words used in fear and anxiety / emotion regulation, emotional resilience research. Like The Fear Course References and The Fear Course Phobia List, The Fear Course Dictionary of Fear and Anxiety should be seen as work in progress. I hope you find them useful. Have a look here. Enjoy.
Archive for the ‘Emotional Resilience Research’ Category
The Fear Course Dictionary of Fear / Anxiety & Emotional Regulation
Monday, September 13th, 2010Sex is good for anxiety: New research
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010Does sex reduce anxiety? New research suggests that having sex might not only reduce anxiety but also reverse the effects of long term stress.
It is well established in anxiety research circles that people who suffered a trauma or are under adverse stress for any extended period of time are more likely to suffer from anxiety and mood disorders as well. It is also fairly well established that negative stress reduces the replacement and regrowth of cells in the areas of the brain connected to the regulation of anxiety (emotional regulation) and reduces the normal functioning of those areas (hippocampus and amygdala). In other words long term negative stress physically changes our brain and the way it functions making anxiety more prevalent and harder to control.
It has long been thought by neuro-scientists that the key to this appears to be a hormone called glucocorticoids also known as the stress hormone. Glucocorticoids or GC’s bind to glucocorticoids receptor which are present in just about every cell in the human (and indeed every vertebrate animals) body. GC’s are a major part of our immune system. When we are under stress the body produces more GC’s. Over production of GC’s have been linked to problems like Heart disease, depression, diabetes, obesity, immune dysfunction, learning disorders, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome to name but a few.
A new study published last month* looked at whether sexual activity
- reduced GC levels in rats,
- changed the functioning of the areas of the brain associated with anxiety regulation, and
- reduced anxiety driven behaviour in anyway .
The researchers from The Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University found that having sexual activity once a day for 14 consecutive days did not reduce the GC levels significantly. However it did significantly increase the neuronal functioning of the hippocampus and amygdala and considerably reduced anxiety driven behaviour in the subjects. So whilst it doesn’t reduce the CG level sexual activity does appear to stop many of the negative effects of increased GC’s in the system. In short sex reduces anxiety and minimises the effects of stress on us. But why if the GC levels aren’t reduced?
Exercise often has a positive effect on anxiety and stress as well, but only if the individual gets satisfaction from the exercise. In other words if we think something is enjoyable it will help, if not it won’t. GC’s work in a very complex way in some instances make things worse and in others make them better. It would appear that engaging in what an individual considers to be hedonistic or enjoyable may change the effect stress hormones has on us. It may be that we can reduce many of the effects of stress has on by engaging in things we find enjoyable, like sex.
Stressed? Anxious? Take sex once a day for 14 days. Come back and see me if the symptoms persist, we might have to increase the dose.
*Leuner B, Glasper ER, & Gould E (2010) Sexual Experience Promotes Adult Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus Despite an Initial Elevation in Stress Hormones. PLoS ONE 5(7): e11597. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011597
The Fear Course: References
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010I am often asked for a list of references of the theory and research underpinning The Fear Course, especially when I am running the course in universities or with medical doctors or dentists. I have always provided these on a paper based individual basis on request. I have decided to keep the list online from now on. You can find the list at http://www.fearcourse.com/articles-and-notes/276-fear-course-references.html. This is the list I will keep up-to-date. 
The link between negative thoughts, emotional resilience and the level of anxiety people feel
Thursday, July 1st, 2010A fascinating research study just published* has found a relationship between what is known as Negative Affectivity (NA) or negative thinking and general levels of anxiety felt by an individual and the effectiveness of their emotional regulation (how emotionally resilient they are).
In short the researchers from the Department of Psychology, and University Research Institute on Health Sciences, in Mallorca, Spain, found that in a large sample (1441) of 12 - 17 year olds there was a relationship between the amount of negative thinking a person engages in and how much anxiety they feel on a daily basis as well as their perceived ability to regulate their emotions.
Now the study is not saying that people who do think negatively can not regulate their emotions or learn to be more emotionally resilient as one reviewer asserted. It is just showing that people who think negatively, for example see the downside of things more than the average person or tend to catastrophise more - make things appear worse than they really are, tend to report both that they feel or experience more anxiety than the average person. Additionally these people find it harder to regulate their feelings, so for example make negative feelings like anxiety go away. They can do this of course, it’s just they report that it is harder to do for them to do this when compared to the average person in the sample.
This link between negative views on life, the experience of anxiety and the ability to be emotionally resilient at will is very important, and one that we explore and tackle on The Fear Course. I find that once people learn the tools that make them more emotionally resilient they obviously feel less anxiety, but their view of life and thinking change in a positive way. Not only that but many people who have been on the course report that they generally feel happier and more confident.
* Tortella-Feliu, M, Et al (2010) Relationships between negative affectivity, emotion regulation, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in adolescents as examined through structural equation modeling. Journal of Anxiety Disorders. April 2010
Independent research: our methods are more effective than drugs!
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010A paper released this month* shows the results of an interesting study comparing the methods we use on The Fear Course (CBT/DBT) with a drug based therapy, in this case naltrexone. It was found that our methods were significantly more effective in helping drug addicted patients develop greater emotional resilience / emotional regulation, increase tolerance to distress and improve social functioning than a course of the drug. Not only that but it reduced the likely hood that the patient would return to drug abuse.
*Azizi, A. Et al (2010). The Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Training and Cognitive Therapy on the Emotional and Addictional Problems of Substance Abusers. IJoP. 2010;2(5) : 60-65
Emotional Intelligence 3: Understanding Emotion
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010Further from my last blog yesterday on the skills needed to be able to use emotions, the next factor of emotional intelligence is the ability to be able to understand emotions. Our emotions convey a lot of information about ourselves, others and the situations we find ourselves in. The ability and skill with which we can think about and decode the messages our emotions convey are vital in our day-to-day lives.
Understanding emotions require a 6 core attributes:
- Emotional Literacy - having the ability to be able to decode, think and talk about our emotions,
- Understand how emotions can combine to form other internal outcomes,
- Know how our emotions can progress from one emotion to another,
- Understand how both yourself and others are behaving due to emotional reactions,
- Predict how people are likely to feel and act in different situations,
- The ability to be able analyse emotions and their causes both in ourselves and others.
As you can see these are quite a complex series of abilities. Emotional resilience and the ability to overcome fear often relies on these skills, particularly the ability to be able to predict and decode our emotions.
Emotional Intelligence 1: Emotion Perception and fear
Monday, June 21st, 2010The first factor of emotional intelligence (EQ) is Emotion Perception which is probably the most basic of the skills involved in EQ.
Put simply emotion perception is the ability to recognise or identify emotions as they occur in both yourself and others. As you can probably well imagine an inability to be able to recognise emotions or confusing them is often a recipe for all sorts of problems. Being oblivious to something like fear can be somewhat dangerous especially in potentially hazardous situations. On the other hand mis-diagnosing emotions can be equally troublesome. On the live Fear Course we often explore the differences between fear, panic, worry, anxiety and nervousness. There is a fair percentage of the population who struggle with this and cannot distinguish between emotions for themselves or are unable to recognise them in others. Not being able to recognise fear, panic or anxiety in others, particularly in work and management situations frequently leads to a lack of empathy and a whole series of relationship issues.
Emotional Intelligence: The 4 Factors
Sunday, June 20th, 2010There is an increasing about of research interest in emotional intelligence (EQ), emotional resilience / regulation at the moment and I would just like to follow on from the last post about emotional resilience and emotional intelligence with a little snippet from some research on the the factors that are considered as elements of emotional intelligence. Mayer et al* suggested in their research that (EQ) for research purposes was largely made up 4 main factors:
- Emotion Perception
- Emotion Facilitation
- Emotion Understanding
- Emotion Regulation
I will unpack each of these a little in the next four blog posts and how they relate to overcoming fear and anxiety, whether it be job interview nerves, driving test nerves or a phobia.
*Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. (2000). Models of emotional intelligence. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), The handbook of intelligence (pp. 396-420). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Emotional Resilience: The role of empathy
Saturday, June 19th, 2010One of the points I often have to make when I am doing talks / consultancy about emotional resilience / emotional regulation is that it is not about cutting off from your emotions. People who cut off are usually damaged people and not just emotionally but also neurophysiologically. Emotional resilience requires that our empathy remains intact. I have seen the results of disaster managers and emergency service workers who have been so traumatised by their experiences that they have reacted by essentially cutting off emotionally. They make very poor managers, unable to see the situation from others points of view, they frequently don’t notice things (particularly identifying the reactions of others) in the situation they are dealing with and normally alienate people around them.
Jean Decety and his team at the University of Chicago have been conducting a series of fMRI studies looking at empathy and emotional self-regulation. In the studies they have been showing subjects (adolescent boys between 16 to 18) a series of videos depicting either accidental pain, such as someone stubbing their toe and or pain induced on purpose, for example someone being punched. The findings are fascinating. They have discovered that in boys that have been diagnosed with aggressive disorders (aggression indicates levels of a lack of empathy by definition) that the reward areas of the brain are stimulated when they see others in pain. Even more interesting is, when compared with the control group of ‘normal’ boys, those with aggressive disorders lack any activity in the areas of the brain connected to self-regulation and and moral reasoning. These together appear to inhibit the empathetic neural regions of the brain. (Decety, J., & Michalska, K.J. (2010). Neurodevelopmental changes in the circuits underlying empathy and sympathy from childhood to adulthood. Developmental Science, )
Emotional resilience does not mean cutting off from ones emotions, empathy is a core human attribute and this is no-less so for managers!
Emotional Literacy helps with Emotional Resilience
Monday, February 22nd, 2010On 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…
