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Despite the fact that we constantly experience certain emotions (even if not always strongly and clearly expressed), understanding our own emotional state and correctly recognizing our emotions is not always easy.

It is not for nothing that in art and in many psychological movements the dominant view is on emotions as the “dark” side - something powerful, but unknowable, captivating a person, literally forcing him to act one way and not another. The reasons lie in the very characteristics of this psychological phenomenon.

Firstly , emotions are rarely shown in pure form- almost always a person experiences some more or less complex combination of various emotions.

Secondly , the physiological reactions that accompany each emotion have much in common: increased breathing and heart rate, muscle tension can be “symptoms” of fear, anger, and joyful anticipation. Therefore, bodily sensations not only do not bring clarity to the identification of a particular emotion, but can, on the contrary, give erroneous clues.

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Thirdly , each of us is taught to manage our emotions from early childhood. Unfortunately, ideas about how exactly this should be done are determined mainly by culture and traditions, but do not always correspond to the psychological well-being of each individual. One of the first emotions to be attacked by society is the emotion of anger: in most modern cultures (and at least in European cultures!) anger is considered unacceptable, harmful, and dangerous.

It is clear that limiting the free expression of anger is a measure necessary for the survival of society. On the other hand, it is impossible to destroy this emotion forever, like the bubonic plague or smallpox virus: it is technically impossible, and besides, even if such a magical remedy were found, it would still be unacceptable to use it - after all, a person needs anger for survival, for in order to protect yourself or another at the right time.

The result is a very dual situation: anger is familiar to each of us, but we have learned from a young age that we “shouldn’t” experience it, much less show it.

Slightly less sharply, but also quite actively disapproved by society, is the emotion of fear. Such seemingly positive emotions as joy and interest are also persecuted: children are constantly told that they should not show excessive curiosity, and also express their delight too vigorously - especially if the occasion, from the point of view of adults, does not deserve it.

As a result, we “don’t recognize” many of our emotions simply because we consider them unacceptable.

And it turns out to be a vicious circle: emotions are considered “unreasonable,” difficult to control, and dangerous. Therefore, they strive with all their might to curb them - to suppress or completely subordinate them to conscious regulation, prohibiting their free experience and expression. As a result, we increasingly lose contact with our own emotional sphere, and due to the fact that we do not understand our emotions well, we find ourselves defenseless under their onslaught.

From what has already been said, it probably becomes clear how important it is to learn to understand your emotional world, to distinguish and be aware of your emotions. Regardless of how exactly you are going to deal with them - put them under the control of the mind or freely express them - first you still need to understand what exactly you feel. Psychologists are tirelessly developing methods to teach people to recognize and understand emotions.

One of these methods is sensitivity training (i.e., development of sensitivity).

The famous psychologist Carl Rogers described what happens in such training as follows.

The leader of the training invites those gathered to talk about themselves, their feelings, but he himself limits himself to only a few comments from time to time, in no case taking on a leadership role - which, of course, is what the training participants initially expect from him. Quite quickly, participants begin to experience confusion and irritation, since the current situation is incomprehensible to them: after all, usually people who apply for psychological help, they expect that the psychologist will “treat” them - question them in detail, give recommendations. In fact, in the context of group training, the main healing and developmental significance is the relationships and interactions that arise between people. After the situation in the group heats up to a certain high point, the participants begin to more or less openly express their emotions - albeit initially negative, associated with irritation and misunderstanding of what is happening.

An increase in the overall emotional level leads to the fact that group members become more frank, and this makes it possible to create new, trusting relationships between them. Gradually, an atmosphere of sincerity and mutual interest arises, people stop hiding their true feelings.

The sensitivity of the participants really increases, they learn to recognize the emotions of the people around them, notice and criticize those participants who are trying to be a hypocrite or hide under some kind of mask. Such an intense exchange of emotions, constant feedback between group members lead to the fact that people begin to more accurately recognize and understand both the emotions of other people and their own.

It is important to note: immersion in such a boiling “emotional cauldron” for someone can be not only not useful, but also truly dangerous!

We all need to be able to understand our emotions and the experiences of other people, but not everyone is ready to be in an environment of complete frankness and sometimes ruthless criticism. Sensitivity training (like any other psychological training that involves extremely close interaction with group members) can be of great benefit, but for a person who has a heightened sensitivity to criticism and does not have more or less stable self-esteem, this method can cause painful psychological trauma.

Why is it so important to be aware of the emotions that overwhelm us, and what is the danger of completely merging with with your own feelings? How borderline splitting and hatred of an object that causes pain destroys all of it in our consciousness good qualities and thereby destroys attachment? What are the differences between Western and Eastern approaches to working with negative experiences and what resources of consciousness need to be used in order to learn emotional regulation? Let's figure it out together with practicing psychotherapist Maxim Pestov.

A lot of texts have been written about the phenomenology of mindfulness; today we will focus on its therapeutic functions and try to figure out why mindfulness alone is not enough to achieve mental well-being.

In general, in Gestalt therapy, awareness is one of the main mechanisms for increasing the complexity of the psyche. Why is it even needed? The answer is very simple - in order to be able to regulate your emotional life. There are two poles of its course: when the subject is merged with his feelings and completely captured by them, up to an affective narrowing of consciousness and borderline splitting, and when he is able to react emotionally, while maintaining the opportunity not only to be in the process, but also to observe it. Awareness allows you not only to participate in something, but also to see how it works. By being aware, I place myself at the center of what is happening, rather than remaining hanging out on the periphery. To use a metaphor, the mind without awareness is like a horse running at a gallop. Awareness in this sense helps me remember that I am on a horse. After this discovery, we can control her instead of depending on her mood.

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Awareness is the starting point from which emotional regulation begins. On the one hand, it starts a process that unfolds over time, and the development of which we can observe, and on the other hand, it itself needs some kind of supporting foundation.

It often happens that even when we understand the need for awareness, we do not immediately realize it. For example, we lament that, although we had the necessary skills, we did not have the opportunity to use them. It is precisely for this that it is necessary to add to awareness such an ability as mindfulness, which has a lot of connotations in the Western approach to understanding mental activity. For example, there is the term Mindfullness, which is better translated in this way, and not considered as a synonym for Awareness. Mindfulness allows you to turn on awareness at the right moment. In this meaning it corresponds to the concept of observing ego.

Another ability necessary for the functioning of awareness is the development attention or concentration. It is important not only to understand something there, but also to maintain awareness for a sufficient amount of time. From the point of view of common sense, contact with unpleasant experiences evokes a natural intention to stop it as soon as possible. In the Eastern tradition, this desire is contrasted with the ability to observe emotional reactions as objects of one's mind, while maintaining non-involvement in these processes. In the Western tradition, the possibility of mental processing of unpleasant experiences is defined as nonspecific ego strength. Accordingly, attention develops along lines of clarity and stability and thereby gives awareness the necessary direction and stability.

So, we have briefly described the “left and right hand» awareness. Now let's see what follows from this. In a procedural sense, awareness allows one to return to experience its inherent integrity. When we talk about mindfulness, we most often mean turning our attention to the bodily components of emotions. Psychotherapists sometimes call this grounding- when observing bodily sensations helps reduce emotional overwhelm. This is also because awareness leads to slowing down and thereby increases accuracy and reduces the intensity of experiences. This is the first stage, finding yourself at the point from which the path begins.

The next stage, which logically follows from the previous one, is called symbolization or the process of giving meaning. It is very important to be able to place your experiences in some context, because emotionally difficult situation is part of the rest of life. Often, affect occurs when an experience is suspended in the air and isolated from background feelings. For example, the experience of anger may be particularly difficult to bear if other emotions that are also present in the relationship cannot be accessed. This affective reaction is called border splitting, when hatred of a “bad” object destroys its good qualities and thereby destroys attachment.

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It should also be remembered that emotions are a contact phenomenon, which means that awareness alone is not enough: it is important to associate the emotion with a need and with an object that could satisfy it. When emotions remain an “individual” process, which the subject tries to cope with on his own and does not “deploy” them into contact, then we observe a stoppage of experience. The extreme manifestation of this process is the onset of a state of mental trauma. Accordingly, the task of emotional regulation is to restore sensitivity during mental anesthesia, and not to support the avoidance of contact with negative emotions.

Awareness of the context allows you to make the transition to the third stage of emotional regulation, which we will conventionally call procedural thinking. By this I mean the ability to observe a complex emotion in the dimensions of the past (the context of a shared history) and the future (the potential for its development). If this does not happen, then the experience of interrupted experiences in which it seems that relationships are collapsing, or life is divided into before and after, greatly contributes to the development of affect, which floods consciousness and finds its way out in reaction. But this method does not lead to an increase in experience; rather, on the contrary, it prevents mental processing.

1) a person’s clear recording of his condition, creating the possibility of managing and monitoring this condition; 2) the ability to express this state in symbolic form.

At the same time, the degree of awareness of emotions and feelings should be different. A person can know that he is experiencing something and that this experience is clearly different from all previous ones (for example, for the first time a lover experiences a state that he cannot define, but at the same time he knows that it continues and that it is impossible with anything compare).

Another level, which can be called actual awareness, manifests itself in the fact that a person is able to express knowledge about his condition in verbal categories ("I loved you, love, perhaps, has not yet completely faded away in my soul"). It is at this level that control over emotions is possible, that is:

• the ability to anticipate their development;
• understanding the factors that determine their strength, duration and their consequences.

One of the main observations made by Freud, and later confirmed by numerous experimental studies, is essentially that emotional processes are not fully and not always conscious. First of all, those processes that arose and were formed in early childhood are not realized. For this reason, many emotional experiences and associations of this period never receive their expression in symbolic forms, although they can participate in the regulation of the behavior of an adult. Feelings towards the people with whom you have the closest connection are also not realized and have become habitual. While feelings are being formed, there is high degree awareness: various traits of new comrades or rivals are noticed and reflected upon. But as the relationship is established, awareness correspondingly decreases until what is happening begins to be taken for granted.

The main indicator of a mature normal emotion is its voluntary nature.
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Arbitrariness in this case, it is generally understood as the possibility of indirect control of the expression, experience and generation of emotion.

The separation of experience and manifestation in socialized and cultivated emotion, the possibility of a delayed, altered or suppressed reaction - all this is the result of the formation of voluntariness. An emotion acquires arbitrariness not directly, but through sign-symbolic operations, which include verbalization and mastery of the subject area of ​​emotions.

Awareness of emotions occurs through learning processes. A person learns to identify in an initially undifferentiated mass of experiences some specific experiences associated, for example, with hunger, anxiety, anger, fear. This process is carried out with the active assistance of other people, thereby acquiring a purely social character.

Communicating with the child, the mother guides him through such stages as differentiating her own and other people’s feelings, naming them, establishing a connection with the subject, and teaching forms of expression. The child learns not only to recognize, for example, that the emotion he is experiencing is usually called anger, but also to notice what happens to him when he is angry, what thoughts and images arise in his mind, etc.

THEORIES OF FOREIGN RESEARCHERS

The question of the place of social factors in the formation and manifestation of emotions has long been seriously studied by psychologists. If Charles Darwin, in his work “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872), argued that facial expressions are caused by innate mechanisms and depend on the species of animal, then subsequent studies showed that Darwin’s idea is only partly correct. Social determinants also play a significant role in people's emotional behavior.

Among the most famous experiments that confirmed this conclusion are the Landis experiments, which were carried out in the 20s of the 20th century. (the results were published in 1924). These were quite cruel experiments. Thus, in order to evoke strong negative emotions, a shot was suddenly heard behind the subject’s back; or the subject was ordered to cut off the head of a live white rat with a large knife, and in case of refusal, the experimenter himself performed this operation in front of his eyes; in other cases, the subject, putting his hand into a bucket, unexpectedly found three live frogs there and was simultaneously struck electric current etc. In this way, Landis was able to evoke genuine emotions. Throughout the experiment, the subjects were photographed, and the main muscle groups of the face were outlined with charcoal. This made it possible to subsequently measure, using photographs, the displacements that occurred at various emotional states as a result of muscle contraction. Contrary to expectations, it turned out to be impossible to identify facial expressions typical of fear, embarrassment and other emotions (if we consider the facial expressions characteristic of most people to be typical). At the same time, it was found that each subject has a certain repertoire of facial reactions characteristic of him, repeated in different situations: a person closed or opened his eyes wide, wrinkled his forehead, opened his mouth, etc. Landis then conducted additional experiments With by some subjects who were asked to depict some of the emotions they experienced in the experiment (disgust, fear, etc.). It turned out that facial imitation of emotions corresponded to generally accepted forms of expression, but did not coincide at all with the facial expressions of the same subjects when they experienced genuine emotions.

However, Landis's experiments indicate the extreme importance of distinguishing between generally accepted, conventional facial expressions as a recognized way of expressing emotions and spontaneous, involuntary manifestations of emotions (Poe: Reikowski, 1979).

An important point in understanding your own emotional reactions and states is acceptance or non-acceptance their in a given culture. Those emotional processes whose manifestation faces punishment have difficult access to consciousness. For example, prohibitions in the area sex life women, expressed in demands for modesty, restraint and even contempt for any manifestations of sexuality, were important point education in different historical eras, especially at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not surprising that Freud so often observed in his patients signs of negative emotions associated with their own sexual activity.

Another example of a negatively reinforced emotion is the emotion of fear in men. In case ʼʼ a real man If one should not be afraid, then the manifestation of fear dooms him to condemnation and ridicule.

When incarnating into a human body, the Soul takes with it a certain amount of its energy. Plus, throughout life it is fed with energy from the Creator and from its Higher aspects. What do we, as people, spend this energy on?

We can put it into creativity - creating our lives, implementing our projects and ideas. Or we can just throw it out. There are many energy practices for filling the physical and subtle bodies with energy. But it is also necessary to find the channels through which our energy leaves.

One of the energy leakage channels is negative, negative emotions . Although we know that there are no “good” and “bad” emotions - everything is experience. Just for ease of understanding, we divide them into 2 groups.

I like this definition:

Negative emotions are emotions that interfere with the growth and development of the Soul. Teachers from the Subtle World

That's why so much attention is paid to negative emotions.

What not to do with negative emotions

1. They can't suppress– i.e. Convincing yourself that everything is fine when it is not at all.
2. They can't displace into the subconscious - i.e. Convince yourself that there is no emotional problem when there is one.

Otherwise, suppressed and repressed emotions will create other problems - illnesses, unpleasant situations. I wrote about this in.

During the consultation, the person and I look for the reasons for his life problems, and often these reasons are suppressed and unlived emotions in past incarnations Souls. And in this life they create similar situations, as if demanding that the Soul finally pay attention to them and release this energy.

It is impossible to live life without negative, negative emotions. But you can learn them control. Then there will be no harm to you and to others. Because throwing out your inner storm on them is also not useful)))
Controlling our emotions means that we live and show up in this world. consciously.

Awareness of your emotions

Negative emotions often arise in a split second, once - and it’s there.
The very first thing that is useful to do is pay attention to the emotion or feeling you are experiencing right now.
Realize, understand that they arose.

We basically act automatically: we are hooked - we immediately react. And we often react to the last strength – our own or our interlocutor’s)). Because there is no awareness - what's happening to me now?

At first you have to pay attention to this point. After some time of practice, this happens in a split second.
And the main thing is that it works!

For example: you are talking with someone at home - and at some point your mood changes. Your task is to track this moment in time and realize your emerging emotion: “But now I’m irritated (or angry, or etc.).”
Awareness of your negative emotion and acceptance of it is already half the battle!

View from the outside

Many people spend a long time in a state of depression, anger, dissatisfaction, guilt or anxiety. Most methods that teach how to get rid of these sensations do not get to the root of the problem.

This happens because we don't see big picture what's happening. We are inside the situation and are involved in it headlong.

Look at the situation from the outside, from an observer's perspective:
– What’s going on now?
– Is this emotion mine?
– Do I want to experience it now? Or am I automatically getting involved again?
“If she’s mine, then what exactly got me so hooked?” Why am I reacting this way?

Such an outside view works wonders - the growing storm gradually subsides and the conversation continues as normal. Or your communication ends here, but without a storm.

While you are doing these simple techniques, you may miss and not hear some phrases of your interlocutor.

BUT - you will maintain inner peace, you will preserve your and his energy, you will not lead to a conflict, with all its consequences!

A simple exercise also helps a lot to stop the inner storm.

You say to yourself mentally (or out loud):

- STOP! Relaxing!

Living a negative emotion

Negative emotions are not useful to suppress and repress - they need to be reside. You can live in different ways.

For example, you can hit someone when anger builds up inside; or you can just cry in a secluded place. Since we are talking about the conscious manifestation of oneself in this world, “hitting” is not appropriate. And crying is very useful, including for men.

There is also a simple practice for experiencing emotions.

1. Choose a place that is comfortable for you, sit down, or better yet, lie down if possible.
2. Pay attention to your body:
   – feel where this emotion is already located or is just emerging in your body,
   – how it feels,
   – how its energy moves in your body – from where and where.
3. Observe it from the outside - WITHOUT evaluating or condemning yourself, just observe it.
4. Accept this emotion - Yes, it exists, I experience it.
5. Ask Higher Powers fill you up love, or do it yourself if you already know how. In love, negative emotions are neutralized and transformed.

During this practice, awareness, acceptance your negative emotion and her transformation– without harm to yourself and others.
It only takes a few minutes and you are fine.

Breath

Another effective way living emotions - breath. Slow, deep inhalations and exhalations also help stop the storm.

Physiology comes into play here. This practice must also be done consciously, and not automatically.

1. Focus on your breathing. Watch how cool air enters through your nostrils and fills first your lungs and then your entire body.
2. Exhale - watch how a thin thread already warm air leaves your body through the nostrils. You don’t need to do anything special - just watch...
3. Now remember your emotion - what is left of it now? How has your condition changed?

Take responsibility

Responsibility is one of the important qualities of a person who is engaged in harmonizing his inner world. Teachers from the Subtle World also speak about the importance of taking responsibility.

What does this mean about emotions?
This means that I understand that:
- it wasn’t he who offended me, but I I myself (myself) was offended at him...
- It wasn’t she who made me angry, but I I myself (myself) got angry at her...
– it wasn’t the news that upset me and now I’m depressed, but I myself (myself) allowed react to the news with depression...
– it wasn’t the child who pissed me off with his school grades, but I myself (myself) got angry for a child...

This means that I don't blame other people for what happens to me.
This means that I myself am responsible for what happens in my life.

Why this happens exactly the way it happens is another question that needs to be addressed. And again - I work with myself, and do not try to change and make other people better!

When we understand our personal responsibility, the number of unpleasant and conflict situations in our lives.

For example, we stop the flow of accusations and claims against the offender. Because the offender simply does NOT exist. This reduces the amount negative energy, released by us into the world around us)).

And as a result, our personal space becomes cleaner and brighter. And our personal energy is also preserved.

We are not responsible for their emotions

We are also not responsible for other people's emotions. Often we blame ourselves for, for example, offending someone or causing someone's indignation.

But this is not so: this is their personal reaction to our words or actions. Their emotions are their personal responsibility. Their emotions point them to aspects of their personality that they need to work on.

That is, they had a choice - for example, to be offended or not to be offended. Even when the goal was to offend.
Of course, you can ALWAYS ask for forgiveness from any person when something is bothering you. Nobody can cancel this. But don’t blame, condemn yourself and sprinkle ashes on your head!

Imagine how much the number of quarrels and conflicts will decrease when each of us takes personal responsibility for every word, for every action towards other people!

Do not look for those to blame outside, but rather bear your own personal responsibility.

Negative emotions and working with them are big topic. And this is the theme of our entire earthly life)))

Personally, I like short practices and exercises that don't take much time to complete.
In this article I shared with you my experience and simple, effective techniques to help you get started.

And the main stages of this work: awareness, acceptance, control And transformation your emotions.

P.S. I would be glad if you share in the comments how you work with unproductive(negative) emotions!!

Time flies and we often lose a lot. We are looking for happiness and waiting for the moment when it comes. But are we always attentive to what happens to us?

Do we always have time to notice that suddenly something has happened that we have been waiting for so long?

It happens that we don’t notice how we got to work. Or, when you come to work, you can’t remember whether you turned off the stove or not, or whether you closed the door. And these thoughts capture all our attention. They are not allowed to complete work tasks.

Why do such “memory lapses” happen?

Because when we turned off the iron and closed the door, our thoughts were somewhere far away. Maybe we were thinking about the upcoming meeting. Or maybe that the child is having a matinee in the garden and needs to get ready.

In any case, we were not present at that moment in our real life, we missed important moments.

Mindfulness

In other words, this is the ability to live here and now, to live every moment of your life.

How does this work in life? This is setting the focus of attention on the present moment. Usually, our thoughts hover somewhere in the future - we make plans. Or in the past – then memories from childhood, then we replay the conversation last week back.

Focus on the present moment and you will see many details. The smiles of people around you, how bright the light is where you are sitting, what the temperature is now, warm hands or cold.

It all depends on what you're looking at.

Mindfulness helps you redirect your distracted mind to present moment. On your physical and emotional sensations.

Mindfulness is being attentive to everything that happens to you. Mindfulness calms and focuses you, and you become aware of each moment.

Dreaming about the future or remembering the past, we forget about the present. But it's important to remind yourself more often that people who live in the present moment are much happier and more confident.

Living here and now sounds quite simple, but in fact it requires a lot of practice. Mindfulness helps develop the skill of managing emotions. As a result, you will achieve control over your emotions without suppression.

Your thinking will become clear and simple. Making decisions will become easier and more interesting. Even if you get into stressful situation, you will be able to think clearly and see more options than someone who reacted to stress.

Have you ever experienced feelings so strong that they completely captured your attention?

Most often this happens during disputes and quarrels with loved ones. We make a promise to ourselves the next time we communicate with a mother or child not to raise our voice or get irritated. But here’s another misunderstanding and we lose our temper. We say some words that we later regret. How did this happen?

We have lost touch with the present moment, we have lost touch with ourselves, our emotions. We weren’t aware of ourselves at that moment.

Are you paying attention to your emotions? How do they influence decision making?

To become emotionally healthy, it is important to recognize, acknowledge and accept your emotions. Awareness of emotions is a step towards managing them. It is important to always be attentive to the present.

It happens that thoughts about a recent conversation or event occupy all our attention. You are not your thoughts. Your worries, fears, guilt and other negative emotions are not you, but just part of what you have experienced.

If you are overwhelmed with emotion, lost, or ready to yell at someone else, the first thing you need to do is stop.

Look around, look around, take a deep breath and observe. What do you see, what kind of people are around you, what do they do, what words do they say. What sounds do you hear and what smells do you smell? Are you cold or warm? Perhaps at this moment you are outside and it is raining or windy, or maybe the sun is shining.

When you were in a beautiful place or experiencing a joyful event, how many times did you think that it would end soon instead of enjoying the moment?

Or you were thinking about what awaits you tomorrow. Were you thinking about the conversation you had with a friend a few days ago? Often we think about something else instead of living real life which is happening to us right now.

Take every opportunity to learn to enjoy every moment. Mindfulness is about choosing your emotions responsibly.

Choice - we control emotions, or emotions control us. You need to practice this.

This skill does not arise on its own, but it can be learned and developed. After all, awareness allows us to change what we don’t like, our automatisms, habits.

Life becomes much richer and richer, but at the same time calmer and more harmonious. After all, now you control yourself and your life!

Be happy in every moment!

[especially for the School of Self-Development “Start Life Again”]