PROJECT

THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON OUR DEVELOPMENT

LINDA BRISA COYOTL PORTADA FINAL PROJECT

WHAT ARE THE EMOTIONS?

Emotion is a complex combination of what you perceive, how your body reacts and what motivates you to act. All this produces in people a global psychological state that can be positive or negative, of little or much intensity and of short or long duration and that produces a gestural expression that can be identified by other people.

WHAT ARE THEY FOR?

Emotions play the role of adapting to our environment, they are not good or bad, they are signals and information about what surrounds us and ourselves.

WHAT ARE THEY SO IMPORTANT?

Emotions play a central role in our lives: they inform us, mobilize us to action and allow us to act in a more precise way. It is important to learn to listen to them, to take them into account in our decision-making and coping styles. In addition, being human is being in relationship with others, because we are social beings, and emotional intelligence prepares us just to establish a healthy contact with people and with the environment that surrounds us. The contact of people with themselves and with others, which is an essential basis of well-being and self-development.

There are many reasons why we can attach great importance to emotions. Although these can be classified into basic and secondary emotions the reality is that whatever emotion it is, these influence you in many areas of your daily life.

Our emotional brain is composed of the limbic system, highlighting the amygdala and the hippocampus as generating centers of emotions. The first as an alarm and processing of emotions; the second, recording and creating a short and long term memory. Both form the emotional memory (the emotional burden of experiences remain marked in the mind). Without it there is no access to emotions or emotional learning, which incapacitates the subject for decision making.

The emotional brain is more rudimentary but faster in its response (action) than the rational brain (reflection). It is designed for survival and adaptation, to respond to stimuli that pose a risk to our existence or to action in the face of changing events.

The limbic system maintains a rapid connection with the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, which explains the bodily activation when we feel an emotion. It is intimately linked with our body (therefore, when feeling an emotion body sensations are generated and thoughts associated with it). It is easier to access them through the body than through the word.

Therefore, even the most unconscious media, such as art, are good vehicles for emotional therapy since they mobilize the memories of the amygdala. In this type of therapy it is necessary to experience emotions to bring about a change. With such experience we can give meaning to our emotions and look for a new way to understand our feelings.

EMOTIONS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

Every emotion has its function. Studies (Paul Ekman) have shown that there are at least six innate emotions: joy, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and surprise. But it’s often hard to identify them because they camouflage each other.

There’s also an amalgamation of terms that confuse emotion. Thus, feelings would be formed by the union of emotions and the thoughts associated with them (it would be the voluntary emotion, evoked by the thou-

EFFECTS

ght itself, for example having an access of sadness is not the same as feeling melancholy); the mood would be the maintenance of the physiological state that leaves an emotion but in lesser intensity (it is not the same to feel anger for something, than to be in a bad mood for a while due to this anger); temperament is the tendency to evoke an emotion in a given situation (by our learning or emotional experience).

“Positive” emotions make us feel good. “Negative” emotions tell us something is wrong and we need to do something about it.

It helps us to approach and relate to others, creating links with our environment while improving our self-concept. It awakens our empathy and altruism towards others and increases our sense of well-being.

JOY: SADNESS: ANGER: FEAR: Its expression serves to ask for help from others, approaching us to tuck in and give us their support at a critical time, increasing the union between the members of a group. It also allows us to reflect on the current situation and to focus on what is most important for us at the moment by focusing on finding solutions.

It is the alarm that warns us of what constitutes a risk to our life or well-being, causing an activation in the person that helps him to avoid such a threat. It is important that this activation is not excessive, because then there will be a blocking situation that will cause this emotion to cease to be beneficial for us.

Affecting thinking in decision making.

It primarily has the utility of protecting ourselves and what is important to us by preparing the organism to initiate and maintain a level of activation aimed at achieving our goals.

It is related to aggressive behaviors whose purpose is to eliminate what prevents us from reaching them, so it is important to channel it properly so that it does not become harmful to our health, thus being important its control but not repressing its expression.

DISGUST:

It mainly serves the function of protecting us from ingesting substances or objects dangerous to our body and prevent the spread of diseases.

Research has shown that people who have a type of brain damage may have impaired both the ability to experience emotions and the ability to make good decisions. There are many situations in which we believe that our decisions are only guided by logic and rationality. But in reality, emotions play a key role in each of our decision-making. In our day to day we must be aware that our way of feeling influences and directs us almost as much or more than our own reasoning. Being happy is not thought, it is felt. Emotions are signals that push us to act, to move in a direction, to decide.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:

When we talk about emotional intelligence we mean the ability to understand, use and manage our own emotions in ways that reduce stress, help communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and lessen conflicts.

A high level of emotional intelligence allows us to forge healthy and balanced relationships within the family, at school and at work. It is also the basic tool for positive self-criticism, a very useful resource for approaching without judgment our own qualities and areas of opportunity for the purpose of improvement.

But what is emotional intelligence?

It consists of five fundamental pillars whose objective is to provide mechanisms to understand the root of emotions, learn to navigate through them and establish the bases for effective communication.

SURPRISE:

It is the emotion whose duration is shorter and which precedes others. It helps us to pay full attention to a new, sudden and

Elaine Houston, a positive psychology researcher and behavioral science specialist wrote about the five elements of emotional intelligence.

1

Self-consciousness is the step from which the entire structure of emotional intelligence begins, it is the ability to recognize and understand our own emotions and how they impact others.

2self-regulation. This focuses on developing the ability to manage adverse feelings and adapt to changes.

Motivation is a key to achieving our goals. Emotional intelligence gives us the tools to self-motivate ourselves, with a focus on fulfillment and personal satisfaction, moving the need for recognition or external reward to the background.

3

Empathy. Ability to recognize and understand how other people feel and take these emotions into account before continuing an interaction

4

SOCIAL SKILLS

Social skills are the last piece of the puzzle, conforms to the mechanisms needed to understand the emotions of others, establish a distance between these and ours at the same time as we build a communication channel to connect with the people we interact with.