Posts Tagged ‘Fear’
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 »
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 »
Friday, June 25th, 2010
The fourth factor of emotional intelligence is where emotional resilience and emotional regulation feature. Emotionally intelligent or individuals with a high level of emotional maturity are able to manage their own and other peoples emotional states.
The ability to effectively manage emotions requires the abilities to be able to:
- Monitor your own and others emotions on a continual basis,
- Differentiate between emotions,
- Identify emotions accurately,
- Have agency - the belief that you can change feelings or emotional states,
- Use strategies to change emotions, both in yourself and others,
- Assess the effectiveness of the strategies employed,
- Change strategies (if necessary) to effect the desired outcome.
The Fear Course equips people to be able to do all of these particularly in high anxiety / fear situations.
Tags: emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, emotional resilience, Fear, manage emotion, The Fear Course
Posted in Fear, emotion regulation, emotional intelligence, emotional maturity, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
 Wedding nerves and weight - the link I have just been listening to a bride-to-be talking about her struggle, both with wedding nerves and weight gain. She was saying that she has been suffering quite badly from pre-wedding nerves and fears. When I asked her what her symptoms were she said that was having panic attacks, feelings of nervousness which include jumbly feelings in her stomach, increased heart rate, an increase in blushing, feeling unwell and sleeplessness.
Whilst we were talking she also said that she was also battling to loose weight but was finding she was gaining weight, not losing it.
People suffering from wedding nerves often find either that they lose a lot of weight quite easily or like this bride-to-be, gain weight or at least struggle to lose weight. So why do some people lose weight with wedding nerves and others gain weight?
Fear is usually an appetite suppressant. What this means is that when we get scared the body loses interest in eating so we tend not to eat as much. Additionally the bodies reaction to fear is to ready the body for action as part of the flight or fight response, this normally increases the metabolic rate, or the rate at which the body burns off our food. Both of these things usually results in weight loss.
So why do some people gain weight or at least find it extremely difficult to lose weight when suffering from wedding nerves? For two main reasons. The first is because of a habit they developed to deal with fear; comfort eating. Many people have developed comfort eating as a habit during times of stress, particularly a habit of eating things with high number of calories and processed sugars in them like chocolate, cakes, breads etc. The second main reason is the sleeplessness brought on by the wedding nerves. This tends to slow down our metabolic rate, which means that we do not burn off the food we consume as fast as we normally would.
Getting your wedding nerves under control is a really important factor in stabilising and controlling your weight as is breaking the habit or association between fear and comfort eating. Our wedding guides show you how to deal with your wedding nerves, start sleeping and stop comfort eating.
Tags: Fear, wedding nerves, weight gain, weight loss
Posted in bride, wedding nerves | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
In this, the second in the series of 8 articles aimed at helping you to choose a safe service to help you deal with your fears, nerves, anxiety and even panic attacks, I will be looking at probably one of the most telling signs as to whether you can trust a service or not. In this day and age it is very easy to produce a website that looks professional, glossy and convincing. However when you analyse the content of the website you quite often find that behind the clever marketing and glossy graphics there is nothing else but clever tactics to get people to buy their product.
Probably the biggest clue that the individual or individuals responsible for the site are not suitably qualified, experienced or doing anything more than just selling a product is the fact that the website concerned only contains sales messages. If you feel across a site that is only geared towards selling a product and has no useful content, articles, blogs or preferably research then it is quite likely that at best the product is based on one solution, or at worst is a scam.
If the service being offered was produced by a professional and an expert you would expect to find considerable evidence of professional activity, and sharing that expertise freely with the community. Rather than simply showing their expertise in selling and marketing.
So if the site concerned is just about sell and there is no evidence of professional and expert activity I would suggest you look elsewhere.
Tags: Fear, safe service
Posted in Buying a service, Fear, Staying safe | No Comments »
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