Emotions can be useful if they are appropriate. Feeling fear when a fire breaks out is useful because it can lead to protective action. Stage fright, on the other hand, is a form of inappropriate fear that requires effective regulation.
Healthy emotionality means the appropriate ability to regulate emotions.
The focus of current affective science is the question of whether the ability to regulate emotions can be trained intentionally, for example by practising contemplative techniques. The hypothesis is that contemplative practices improve emotional granularity, i.e. the ability to differentiate emotions finely.
In scientific psychology, it is postulated that emotions are shaped by previous experiences. The emotional reaction is categorized with the sensory input and previous experiences are recreated (this is called concepts). The idea behind this is that the brain understands what caused the feelings and how it should act. This is how emotional habits are formed, but they lack granularity, i.e. differentiated distinctions. If an emotion is only roughly perceived, the sensory input can easily be associated with a previous experience. There is a risk of ineffective actions that are not appropriate to the situation. However, if the brain perceives finer details of the sensory sensation (through the body's senses), these can be distinguished from previous experiences. The finer the granularity, the more appropriately the situation is evaluated.
In contemplative techniques of traditional Buddhism, the instruction is to note everything that arises in the experience through mental verbalization in each moment - such as "planning, planning, planning, pain, pain, pain". Both traditional and contemporary mindfulness practice include the instruction not to construe mental states as 'belonging to me', often expressed in MBI as 'not identifying with one's emotions'. This "decentering" facet can enhance granularity by creating the psychological distance to use descriptions of experiences that do not align with one's self-concept.
Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being combined with other intervention approaches. For example, there is evidence that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduces the risk of depressive relapse in people with recurrent depression.
Results suggest that training-induced increases in emotional granularity can mediate improvements in emotion regulation.
Theory and initial research findings support the hypothesis that contemplative practices may contribute to the cultivation of beneficial emotional granularity[1].
[1] Cf. Wilson-Mendenhall, D Christine und Dunne, D John (2021) Cultivating Emotional Granularity, Front Psychol. 2021; 12: 703658.
Kommentar hinzufügen
Kommentare