Archive for the ‘Fear’ Category
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
Some interesting if not bizarre research just published shows how we readily regulate our emotions by having unconscious goals. The researchers examined people’s revulsion to pooing babies and found that women who wanted children (with no previous experience of pooing babies) were able to down regulate their emotional responses to poo better than women who had no wish to have children. They were also able to up regulate other emotions surrounding the yukky bits of childhood better than a control group.
We certainly find that people who really want to achieve something like public speaking or flying, tend to move faster through our processes tan those that are doing the course for some goal beyond the fear, for example, getting promoted or going on a particular holiday. If the holiday is important for the person learning to regulate their emotions they tend to find the process easier. However if the individual is learning to regulate their emotions because of the fear of the flight but doesn’t really want to go on the trip anyway this can take longer.
Reference:
Shidlovski, D., & Hassin, R. (2011). When Pooping Babies Become More Appealing: The Effects of Nonconscious Goal Pursuit on Experienced Emotions Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417135
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotion, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, Fear of flying, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience, overcome fear | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
Is humour a good strategy for coping with emotional events like anxiety and fear?
Are all types of humour equally effective methods of emotion regulation?
I was a police officer for many years before my academic career, and one of the things I always found striking with emergency service workers and later when I was doing research with disaster managers around the world, was their sense and recourse to humour, particularly in stressful situations. Occupations like the military, the police, fire and medical staff are renowned for their humour. This, most clinicians and researchers will tell you, is a coping mechanism for dealing with the stress and regulating their emotions and is a vital strategy in terms of emotional resilience.
However is the use of humour really an effective method for dealing with fear and anxiety and emotion regulation?
It would appear so, however not all forms of humour is effective. An interesting study to be published later this year in the Journal Cognition & Emotion by colleagues at the Department of Psychology , Stanford University looked into the use of humour (or humor if you are American) as an emotion regulation strategy.
They found that positive or good natured humour has an automatic, what is called ‘down regulating effect’ on negative emotions. In other words, appropriate good natured positive humour, funny stories and jokes do all reduce anxiety and fear and is a viable emotion regulation strategy.
They also found that negative mean spirited humour, such as laughing at someone or disparaging jokes at another’s expense for example have no effect in helping people in coping with negative situations, in reducing anxiety and fear and cannot be considered to be effective strategies for emotion regulation.
So if you are stressed, get funny!
Reference
Samson, A.C., & Gross, J.J. (2011) Humour as emotion regulation: The differential consequences of negative versus positive humour. Cognition & Emotion (To be published August/Sept 2011)
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotion, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience, humor, humour, overcome fear | No Comments »
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
I have been doing some research at a couple of the universities I teach at (Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Cardiff and Liverpool Universities), around the area of fear of failure and procrastination. They are both often linked and procrastination is usually, (but not always) driven by a fear of failure. Approximately 80-90% of the procrastination I have looked at appears to stem from a very simple fear driven basis. For example:
Beth is a writer, or more accurately she would like to be an author but at the moment she just writes. She is a member a couple of writing clubs and is a bit of a writing course junkie. Her bookshelves are full of books on writing and being an author, but 9 years on she hasn’t published very much and certainly hasn’t published the book she always wanted to. Firstly she hasn’t actually written the book. She has started a million times, but never quite seems to turn it into a book. Secondly she has never approached a publisher. Why? “Well I don’t really have much to give them”.
So why after all this time hasn’t she produced at least 5 or 6 books? A fear of failure.
What I discovered in just about every case where an individual is procrastinating, is they have played a scenario in their mind of being rejected or failing in some way. Beth for example was very quickly able to identify that she had a particular movie she plays in her imagination of reading the rejection slips from publishers. Every time she does this so the older part of her brain reacts emotionally, as if she has actually been rejected in reality. Her brain then thinks ‘whats the point? I keep getting rejected’.
Her brain now has a history of failure, even though she has never even submitted anything to a publisher. This in turn reduces her confidence and motivation to even try.
When I talk to failing business people I often find similar pattern. A history of imagined failure even before they have tried new things.
Oh and the other 10-20% of cases of procrastination? It’s still fear and it’s still fear of failure - sort of… more in my next post.
We have a whole host of new course dates around the country. Go to http://www.fearcourse.com/location-a-price.html. We cover how to kill this once and for all.
Posted in Emotion, Fear, Fear Course News, Fear of failure | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
This has been a central question for psychologists for a long time. Why is it that some people are able to influence what emotions they have, choose when to have them and change how they experience their emotions with relative ease and others find it more difficult ot even next to impossible? Why do some people have a pile of fears and others very few and can cope better?
There are many explanations for this phenomena, usually revolving around childhood experiences, however colleagues at the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University in Nijmegen in Holland have just published a paper putting forward some interesting research and conclusions.
They have found that an individual’s ability to self-regulate their emotions is correlated with their attachment style in their adult relationships.
According to Attachment Theory there are two forms of attachment in our relationships: Secure and Insecure. Insecure Attachment has three sub-categories:
- Anxious-preoccupied attachment. These people usually have less than positive views about themselves, are anxious about getting the love and closeness they want and as such are preoccupied about the closeness of their relationship. This often comes across as clinginess to others.
- Dismissive-avoidant attachment. These adults see themselves as self-sufficient, and almost the opposite to anxious-preoccupied attachment people in that they value their independence and can often deny they need or want close intimate relationships.
- Fearful-avoidant attachment. These people are in a more confusing place in that they want close relationships but at the same time feel uncomfortable when they are in a close or intimate relationship. Usually this discomfort comes from a lack of trust about the motives of any partner.
The researchers found that there are three forms of attachment that appear to have a correlation or an effect on individuals’ ability to regulate their emotions as adults:
- Securely attached adults normally deal with and regulate both positive and negative emotions more easily than others.
- Dismissively attached people, tend to suppress or deactivate negative emotions, as a way of regulating their negative emotions but have few strategies for increasing or regulating positive emotions.
- Preoccupied attachment and fearful-avoidant attachment adults both hyperativate, exaggerate or heighten their negative emotions, so they can increase negative feelings but find it hard (without tuition and help) to reduce such emotions. They also find it difficult and rarely have strategies for increasing positive emotions.
The founders of Attachment Theory, Bowlby and Ainsworth and a legion of researchers after them, speculate that our attachment style as an adult is directly related to how we learn to have relationships as a young child, particularly with our main caregivers (parents) and in the family units we grow up in. This would suggest that we either learn strategies for emotional regulation directly from those around us when we are children, or as a reaction to how secure we feel those relationships are as a young child. The theory at the moment is that those who feel secure in their relationships as a child are more likely to have a better range of emotional regulation strategies than those that don’t feel secure in their relationships as a child.
Maas, A., Laan, A., Vingerhoets, A. (2011) Attachment, Emotion Regulation and Adult Crying. Journal of Emotion Regulation and Well-Being. Pp 181-195. Part 2. 2011.
Posted in Anxiety research, Fear, emotion regulation | No Comments »
Friday, November 19th, 2010
I had a new client come to me a little while ago who was in ‘a bit of a state’. It transpired that she had tried an anxiety reduction programme she had got off the internet and the very first bits of advice she was given was, and I quote from the manual she was provided:
“YOU DON’T NEED TO VISIT THE DOCTOR!
STOP THIS ANXIOUS HABIT NOW!”
and
“Chances are that apart from giving you medication or passing you on to someone else such as a psychologist or psychiatrist, all the doctor did was reassure you that you are not ‘ill’ (some doctors don’t even do that!). OK so if that is all you are going to get from a doctor…why go? I mean, logically now, haven’t you had enough reassurance? You could go to the doctor a million times and get the same treatment every time…what’s the point?”
and
“Decide to come off your anti-anxiety medication” -
“the doctor cannot make you take medication”
And
“Stop researching your condition, doing so will only distract you from
the truth and the solution which can be found right here. The only
information about the physiology of anxiety you will need is
contained in this programme.”
and
“From this point on:
Don’t surf the web for information
Don’t buy books or visit libraries
Don’t ask people questions about your condition”
and
“ONLY FOLLOW THIS METHOD”
“This is very important. You MUST concentrate on this method and this one alone.”
As you can imagine I was a little surprised to see this advice. It is important that such therapies can work in conjunction with medical interventions where necessary. The blurb that goes along with this method states “you are not ill. You don’t need doctors or medication.” My only question is “how do they know without a proper medical diagnosis”? I agree most fear and anxiety related issues are psychological, but not all by any means. And some conditions, even psychological ones sometimes need a little medicinal kick start to re-balance things now and then, before a programme of psychological help. We frequently work with doctors and psychiatrists to help clients in this way and have a growing number of medical referrals.
If anyone tells you not to look for more information, not to visit a doctor and not to take prescribed medication and not to do anything apart from their programme, walk away. This is not safe advice.
This is one reason why we take our membership of the International Therapeutic Standards very seriously. They make rigorous checks to make sure the service is genuine, and that the qualifications and endorsements are real. If the service you are looking at isn’t a member, wonder why.
Posted in Buying a service, Fear, Staying safe, anxiety | 3 Comments »
Sunday, October 10th, 2010
You would think that if we remembered an event to which an emotion was attached (episodic memory) to it that every time we remembered that event the memory would evoke the same emotions. For example if we had a frightening, fearful or anxiety inducing experience like a car accident, you might expect that every time you recall the accident you would get similar emotional recall as well.
I am in the middle of a literary review for my next book and I came across this little gem of a paper which turns the assumption that emotions evoked during recall will be similar whenever we recall that particular memory. However a couple of studies conducted at University of Utah, USA by Pasupathi show that the emotion evoked during recall will differ depending on the context within which it is being recalled.
The two main factors that appear to have an effect on the emotions evoked during memory recall are the gender of the person / people listening and even more importantly the reactions of the listeners. If the listeners respond in a way that is in line with the original emotion (say fear or fright) then the individual recalling the event will experience that emotion. However if the listeners are in agreement with each other but at odds with the original emotion of the event then this will have an impact on the emotion experienced by the talker.
For example if the person recalls a frightening event and the listeners all respond with laughter, the individual recalling the memory is very likely to report humorous emotions as opposed to the previously experienced fear related emotions. The same can happen the other way around where positive emotions become negative on recall where the listeners react with horror when told the story.
This has implications for emotional resilience in that the context, particularly the reactions of others around us, is quite likely to determine the reaction of the individual to any situation particularly resilience in situations that involve elements of recall of previous or past situations.
Pasupathi, M. (2003) Emotion regulation during social remembering: Differences between emotions elicited during an event and emotions elicited when talking about it. Memory, Volume 11, Issue 2 2003 , pages 151 - 163
Tags: emotional regulation, emotional resilience, Fear, humor, humour, Memory, recall, Research
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, Memory, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience, humor, humour | No Comments »
Monday, September 27th, 2010
To catastrophize (catastrophise) means to perceive a situation as being much worse than it really is. There are three types of catastrophizing:
- Ruminating or going over and over a past situation and thinking that the situation or the effects of the situation or something the individual did in a past situation was much worse than it really was. Often the individual catastrophizing a past situation is the only person that remembers or thinks about the situation. This can include thinking over a situation that ended ok and getting stressed, fearful or anxious because the individual considers it could have ended much worse than it actually did.
- Considering a current situation to be worse than it really is.
- Thinking about an event that hasn’t happened (imaginary) or a possible future event this is about to occur or might happen and imagining that it could be a disaster with no real evidence that the disastrous outcome imagined will actually happen.
The problem with catastrophizing is that when an individual engages in it, it creates anxiety and fear in the individual which in turn makes catastrophizing more likely. In this way people can end up in a sharp downward spiral or cycle with ever increasing anxiety and fear caused by the catastrophizing leading to increased levels of catastrophizing.
In a 2003 study* it was found that there was a strong correlation between people who have a habit of catastrophizing and people who suffer from depression and depressive related issues. They also discovered such people tended also to engage in blaming themselves for things that go wrong, than people who are less likely to engage in catastrophizing.
Just a footnote, the researchers found no evidence that men or women are more likely to catastrophize more than the other. We show people how to stop catastrophizing on The Fear Course.
*Garnefski, N et al. (2003) Cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms: differences between males and females. Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 36, Issue 2, January 2004, Pages 267-276
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, anxiety | No Comments »
Friday, September 24th, 2010
I am often asked during the one-day Fear Course if there is a difference between women and men in terms of their experience of fear and anxiety; do women have more fear and anxiety than men, are women better at dealing with fear or anxiety than men, etc. There is isn’t really a lot of research evidence about these questions. However I was trawling through some Journals in the last few days and I found a 2009 research article* that looked at the differences between female and male uses of emotion regulation or emotional resilience techniques.
The researchers did a study of 819 students, 208 women and 210 men from Norway and 201 women and 200 men from Brazil, of whom 76.9% were in the 20- to 29-yr. age range to find out what techniques they used to deal with 3 negative emotions:
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Sadness
They found that only 14 techniques were used overall by the subjects. The top two techniques were talking to someone else and talking to yourself (self affirming messages).
However what were 2 really interesting sets of findings:
- The women tended to use a larger range of techniques than the men for anxiety and sadness issues (and the same number for anger), and,
- The women tended to use more collective or social techniques (like talking to other people) than the men. The men were more likely to use individual techniques that did not involve others.
Another question I am often asked is; do more women than men come on the Fear Course? The answer is it is about 50 - 50 overall. Although for some reason I find most courses have either mainly women or others that are mainly men. It is rare to get a course that is 50-50. Why this happens I have no idea.
*Vikan, A., Dias, M. & Nordvik, H. (2009) Perceived efficiency and use of strategies for emotion regulation. Psychological Reports: Volume 104, Issue , pp. 455-467.
KSR7Y3Q2ET45
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Monday, September 13th, 2010
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.
Posted in Definitions in Emotional Resilience, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, Phobia, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Last week I was working at Cardiff University and we were looking at the topic of students procrastinating, especially whilst they were meant to be writing up their doctoral thesis. I had the opportunity to interview a dozen students all with the same problem and I / we discovered something:
In every case the procrastination was caused by fear. Let me explain.
For any behaviour to be considered to be Procrastination usually has to be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.*1
Many psychologists consider that procrastination is brought about as a as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. *2 I think I can now be a little more specific about that anxiety…
About 95% of our fears are anticipatory, by which I mean they are fears of a future event but are not based on a real event that has occurred to us in the past (episodic fear). When I tested all 12 students I discovered that every one of them had played a mental movie of them failing their doctorate.
The most frequent movie of failure they had played in their own head was the moment after the Viva Voce when they are called back in. They usually saw and heard the examiner saying “Sorry but…”
Even those students who stated they had not played such a projection in their head, all stated that when they did the movie was strangely familiar, suggesting that the projection had been made a an unconscious level.
Not only was the procrastination brought about by anxiety, there is strong evidence to suggest procrastination is as a direct result of a fear of failure induced by internal mental projections / representations of the moment of failure. In other words we play a mental movie of the thing we don’t want to happen - failing. When we play a movie of failing this activates a fear response in the brain which results in our not wanting to do the thing we are putting off.
*1 Schraw, G., Wadkins, T., & Olafson, L. (2007). Doing the things we do: A grounded theory of academic procrastination [Electronic version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 99(1), 12-25.
*2 Fiore, N. A. (2006). The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt- Free Play. New York: Penguin Group.
Tags: anxiety, Fear, Fear of failure, procrastination
Posted in Fear, Fear of failure, anxiety | 2 Comments »
|
|
