Everything that a person encounters in his life evokes this or that attitude in him. A certain attitude of a person is manifested even to individual qualities and properties of surrounding objects. The sphere of feelings includes annoyance and patriotism, joy and fear, delight and grief.
The senses- these are the attitudes of a person experienced in various forms to objects and phenomena of reality. Human life is unbearable without experiences, if a person is deprived of the opportunity to experience feelings, then the so-called “emotional hunger” sets in, which he seeks to satisfy by listening to his favorite music, reading an action-packed book, etc. Moreover, emotional saturation requires not only positive feelings, but also feelings associated with suffering.
The most developed and complex form of emotional processes in a person is feelings, which are not only an emotional, but also a conceptual reflection.
Feelings are formed throughout a person's life in conditions. Feelings that respond to higher social needs are called higher feelings. For example, love for the Motherland, for one's people, for one's city, for other people. They are characterized by the complexity of the structure, great strength, duration, stability, independence from specific situations and the state of the body. Such an example is the mother's love for her child, the mother can get angry with the child, be dissatisfied with his behavior, punish, but all this does not affect her feeling, which remains strong and relatively stable.
The complexity of higher feelings is determined by their complex structure. That is, they are made up of several different, and sometimes opposite emotions, which, as it were, crystallize on a certain subject. For example, falling in love is a less complex feeling than love, since in addition to falling in love, the latter involves tenderness, friendship, affection, jealousy and other emotions that produce a feeling of love that cannot be expressed in words.
Depending on the nature of a person's attitude to various objects of the social environment, the main types of higher feelings are distinguished: moral, praxical, intellectual, aesthetic.
moral feelings a person experiences in relation to society, other people, as well as to himself, such as a sense of patriotism, friendship, love, conscience, which regulate interpersonal relationships.
Feelings that are associated with the implementation of a person and other activities are called praxic. They arise in the process of activity in connection with its success or failure. Positive praxic feelings include industriousness, pleasant fatigue, a sense of enthusiasm for work, satisfaction from the work done. With the predominance of negative praxic feelings, a person perceives labor as hard labor.
Certain types of work, teaching, some games require intense mental activity. The process of mental activity is accompanied by intellectual emotions. If they acquire the qualities of stability and stability, they appear as intellectual feelings: curiosity, joy of discovering the truth, surprise, doubt.
The feelings that a person experiences when creating beauty in life and in art are called aesthetic. Aesthetic feelings are brought up through familiarization with nature, admiring the forest, the sun, the river, etc. In order to comprehend the laws of beauty and harmony, it is useful for children to engage in drawing, dancing, music and other types of artistic activities.
Throughout the development of people, a special form of mental reflection of significant objects and events has been formed - emotions. The same object or event triggers different people different emotions, because everyone has their own, specific attitude.
Emotions- these are the subjective reactions of a person to the influence of external and internal stimuli, reflecting in the form of experiences their personal significance for the subject and manifesting themselves in the form of pleasure or displeasure.
In the narrow sense of the word, emotions are the immediate, temporary experience of some kind of feeling. So, if we consider the feelings experienced by the fans on the stands of the stadium and sports in general (the feeling of love for football, hockey, tennis), then these experiences cannot be called an emotion. Emotions here will be represented by the state of pleasure, admiration that a fan experiences when watching a good game.
Functions and types of emotions
Emotions were recognized as an important positive role in people's lives, and the following positive functions were associated with them: motivational-regulating, communicative, signaling and protective.
Motivation-regulating function is that emotions are involved in the motivation of human behavior, can induce, direct and regulate. Sometimes emotions can replace thinking in the regulation of behavior.
Communicative function lies in the fact that emotions, more precisely, the ways of their external expression, carry information about the mental and physical state of a person. Thanks to emotions, we understand each other better. Observing changes in emotional states, it becomes possible to judge what is happening in the psyche. Commentary: people belonging to different cultures are able to accurately perceive and evaluate many expressions of a human face, to determine from it such emotions as joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise. This also applies to those peoples who have never been in direct contact with each other.
Signal function. Life without emotions is just as impossible as without. Emotions, Charles Darwin argued, arose in the process of evolution as a means by which living beings establish the significance of certain conditions to meet their urgent needs. Emotionally expressive movements (facial expressions, gestures, pantomime) serve as signals about the state of the system of human needs.
Protective function It is expressed in the fact that, arising as an instantaneous, quick reaction of the body, it can protect a person from dangers.
It has been established that the more complex a living being is organized, the higher the step on the evolutionary ladder it occupies, the richer and more diverse the gamut of emotions that it is able to experience.
The nature of the experience (pleasure or displeasure) determines the sign of emotions - positive and negative. From the point of view of the impact on human activity, emotions are divided into sthenic and asthenic. Sthenic emotions stimulate activity, increase the energy and tension of a person, induce him to actions, statements. A popular expression: "ready to move mountains." And, conversely, sometimes experiences are characterized by a kind of stiffness, passivity, then they talk about asthenic emotions. Therefore, depending on the situation and individual characteristics, emotions can affect behavior in different ways. So, grief can cause apathy, inactivity in a weak person, while a strong person doubles his energy, finding solace in work and creativity.
Modality- the main qualitative characteristic of emotions, which determines their type according to the specificity and special coloring of experiences. Three basic emotions are distinguished by modality: fear, anger and joy. With all the diversity, almost any emotion is a kind of expression of one of these emotions. Anxiety, anxiety, fear, horror are various manifestations of fear; malice, irritability, rage - anger; fun, rejoicing, triumph - joy.
K. Izard identified the following main emotions
Interest(as an emotion) - a positive emotional state that contributes to the development of skills and abilities, the acquisition of knowledge.
Joy- a positive emotional state associated with the ability to sufficiently fully satisfy the actual need, the probability of which up to this point was small or, in any case, uncertain.
Astonishment- an emotional reaction that does not have a clearly expressed positive or negative sign to sudden circumstances. Surprise inhibits all previous emotions, directing attention to the object that caused it, and can turn into interest.
Suffering- a negative emotional state associated with the received reliable or seemingly such information about the impossibility of satisfying the most important vital needs, which up to this point seemed more or less likely, most often occurs in the form of emotional stress.
Anger- an emotional state, negative in sign, as a rule, proceeding in the form of affect and caused by the sudden appearance of a serious obstacle to satisfying an extremely important need for the subject.
Disgust- a negative emotional state caused by objects (objects, people, circumstances), contact with which (physical interaction, communication in communication, etc.) comes into sharp conflict with the ideological, moral or aesthetic principles and attitudes of the subject. Disgust, when combined with anger, can motivate aggressive behavior in interpersonal relationships, where attack is motivated by anger, and disgust is motivated by the desire to get rid of someone or something.
Contempt- a negative emotional state that occurs in interpersonal relationships and is generated by a mismatch of life positions, views and behavior of the subject with life positions, views and behavior of the object of feeling. The latter are presented to the subject as base, not corresponding to accepted moral standards and aesthetic criteria.
Fear- a negative emotional state that appears when the subject receives information about a possible threat to his life well-being, about a real or imagined danger. Unlike the emotion of suffering caused by direct blocking of the most important needs, a person experiencing the emotion of fear has only a probabilistic forecast of possible trouble and acts on the basis of this (often an insufficiently reliable or exaggerated forecast).
Shame- a negative state, expressed in the awareness of the inconsistency of one's own thoughts, actions and appearance not only with the expectations of others, but also with one's own ideas about appropriate behavior and appearance.
Emotions are also characterized by strength, duration and awareness. The range of differences in the strength of internal experience and external manifestations is very large for an emotion of any modality. Joy can manifest itself as a weak emotion, for example, when a person experiences a feeling of satisfaction. Delight is an emotion of greater power. Anger ranges from irritability and resentment to hatred and rage, and fear ranges from mild anxiety to terror. Emotions last from a few seconds to many years in duration. The degree of awareness of emotions can also be different. Sometimes it is difficult for a person to understand what emotion he is experiencing and why it arises.
Emotional experiences are ambiguous. The same object can evoke inconsistent, conflicting emotions. This phenomenon has been named ambivalence(duality) of feelings. For example, you can respect someone for their hard work and at the same time condemn them for their temper.
The qualities that characterize each specific emotional reaction can be combined in various ways, which creates many-sided forms of their expression. The main forms of manifestation of emotions are sensual tone, situational emotion, affect, passion, stress, mood and feeling.
Sensual tone is expressed in the fact that many human sensations have their own emotional coloring. That is, people do not just feel any smell or taste, but perceive it as pleasant or unpleasant. Images of perception, memory, thinking, imagination are also emotionally colored. A. N. Leontiev considered one of the essential qualities of human cognition the phenomenon, which he called the “bias” of the reflection of the world.
Situational emotions arise in the process of human life more often than all other emotional reactions. Their main characteristics are considered to be relatively small strength, short duration, quick change of emotions, low external visibility.
It's hard for me to sort out my feelings - a phrase that each of us has come across: in books, in movies, in life (someone's or our own). But it is very important to be able to understand your feelings.
Wheel of Emotions by Robert Plutchik
Some believe - and perhaps they are right - that the meaning of life is in feelings. Indeed, at the end of life, only our feelings, real or in memories, remain with us. Yes, and the measure of what is happening can also be our experiences: the richer, more diverse, brighter they are, the more fully we feel life.
What are feelings? The simplest definition: feelings are what we feel. This is our attitude to certain things (objects). There is also a more scientific definition: feelings (higher emotions) are special mental states that are manifested by socially conditioned experiences that express a person’s long-term and stable emotional relationship to things.
How are feelings different from emotions?
Sensations are our experiences that we experience through the senses, and we have five of them. Sensations are visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory and odor sensations (our sense of smell). With sensations, everything is simple: stimulus - receptor - sensation.
Our consciousness interferes with emotions and feelings - our thoughts, attitudes, our thinking. Emotions are influenced by our thoughts. And vice versa - emotions affect our thoughts. We will discuss these relationships in more detail a little later. But now let's recall once again one of the criteria for psychological health, namely point 10: we are responsible for our feelings, it depends on us what they will be. It is important.
Fundamental emotions
All human emotions can be distinguished by the quality of experience. This aspect of a person's emotional life is most clearly presented in the theory of differential emotions by the American psychologist K. Izard. He identified ten qualitatively different "fundamental" emotions: interest-excitement, joy, surprise, grief-suffering, anger-rage, disgust-disgust, contempt-neglect, fear-horror, shame-shyness, guilt-repentance. K. Izard classifies the first three emotions as positive, the remaining seven as negative. Each of the fundamental emotions underlies a whole range of states that differ in severity. For example, within the framework of such a single-modal emotion as joy, one can single out joy-satisfaction, joy-delight, joy-jubilation, joy-ecstasy, and others. From the combination of fundamental emotions, all other, more complex, complex emotional states arise. For example, anxiety can combine fear, anger, guilt, and interest.
1. Interest - a positive emotional state that contributes to the development of skills and abilities, the acquisition of knowledge. Interest-excitation is a feeling of capture, curiosity.
2. Joy is a positive emotion associated with the ability to sufficiently fully satisfy an urgent need, the probability of which before that was small or uncertain. Joy is accompanied by self-satisfaction and satisfaction with the surrounding world. Obstacles to self-realization are also obstacles to the emergence of joy.
3. Surprise - an emotional reaction that does not have a clearly expressed positive or negative sign to sudden circumstances. Surprise inhibits all previous emotions, directing attention to a new object and can turn into interest.
4. Suffering (grief) - the most common negative emotional state associated with the receipt of reliable (or seeming such) information about the impossibility of satisfying the most important needs, the achievement of which before that seemed more or less likely. Suffering has the character of asthenic emotion and more often occurs in the form of emotional stress. The most severe form of suffering is grief associated with irretrievable loss.
5. Anger - a strong negative emotional state, occurring more often in the form of affect; arises in response to an obstacle in achieving passionately desired goals. Anger has the character of a sthenic emotion.
6. Disgust - a negative emotional state caused by objects (objects, people, circumstances), contact with which (physical or communicative) comes into sharp conflict with the aesthetic, moral or ideological principles and attitudes of the subject. Disgust, when combined with anger, can motivate aggressive behavior in interpersonal relationships. Disgust, like anger, can be directed at oneself, lowering self-esteem and causing self-judgment.
7. Contempt - a negative emotional state that occurs in interpersonal relationships and is generated by a mismatch of life positions, views and behavior of the subject with those of the object of feeling. The latter are presented to the subject as base, not corresponding to accepted moral standards and ethical criteria. A person is hostile to those whom he despises.
8. Fear - a negative emotional state that appears when the subject receives information about the possible damage to his life well-being, about real or imagined danger. In contrast to the suffering caused by direct blocking of the most important needs, a person, experiencing the emotion of fear, has only a probabilistic forecast of possible trouble and acts on the basis of this forecast (often insufficiently reliable or exaggerated). The emotion of fear can be both sthenic and asthenic in nature and proceed either in the form of stressful conditions, or in the form of a stable mood of depression and anxiety, or in the form of affect (horror).
9. Shame - a negative emotional state, expressed in the awareness of the inconsistency of one's own thoughts, actions and appearance not only with the expectations of others, but also with one's own ideas about proper behavior and appearance.
10. Guilt - a negative emotional state, expressed in the realization of the unseemliness of one's own act, thought or feelings and expressed in regret and repentance.
Table of human feelings and emotions
And I also want to show you a collection of feelings, emotions, states that a person experiences during his life - a generalized table that does not pretend to be scientific, but will help you better understand yourself. The table is taken from the site "Communities of dependent and co-dependent", the author is Mikhail.
All human feelings and emotions can be divided into four types. It is fear, anger, sadness and joy. To what type this or that feeling belongs can be found from the table.
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And for those who read the article to the end. The purpose of this article is to help you understand your feelings, what they are. Our feelings largely depend on our thoughts. Irrational thinking often underlies negative emotions. By correcting these mistakes (by working on our thinking), we can be happier and achieve more in life. There is an interesting, but persistent and painstaking work on oneself. You are ready?
This will be of interest to you:
P.S. And remember, just by changing your consumption, we are changing the world together! © econet
Whatever a person does, everything evokes a certain attitude in him, expressed in feelings: he likes something, and something causes dissatisfaction, but it is difficult to find something completely indifferent. Emotions are a positive value, since human life is impossible without experiences. People who do not show their emotions and feelings are very different from those around them and resemble a machine: they cannot be happy, afraid, angry or love. It is the absence of experiences that distinguishes biorobots from humans.
Emotions are biased attitude of a person to the world around him, to what happens to him. The experience of this relationship is an emotion or a feeling. Emotions express acceptance or rejection of what is happening to a person in a given situation.
Conditions, objects and phenomena that contribute to the satisfaction of needs and the achievement of goals cause positive emotions: pleasure, joy, interest, etc. Situations that are perceived by a person as preventing the satisfaction of needs cause negative emotions: anger, sadness, fear, etc.
Emotions is a mental reflection in the form of direct, partial experience, the vital meaning of phenomena and situations, due to the relationship of their objective properties to the needs of the subject. (Shapar V.B. The latest psychological dictionary).
Emotions - this is subjective reactions a person on the impact of external and internal stimuli, reflecting in the form of experiences their personal significance for the subject and manifested in the form of pleasure (displeasure).
Emotions- a special class of mental phenomena occurring in the form of feelings reflecting the attitude of a person to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of his actual needs. (Gamezo M.V.)
Thus, the necessary conditions for the emergence of emotions are:
The existence of needs
Knowledge about the features of a given situation in terms of the possibility of their satisfaction.
The cortex regulates the actions of the subcortex, so a person restrains hunger, socially unacceptable impulses. But if the cortex is weakened (during intoxication, overwork, etc.), then the person loses the ability to restrain himself.
In 1950, D. Olds and P. Milner discovered in animal experiments pleasure centers and centers of suffering, and later the centers of hunger, thirst, etc., which made up the emotional map of the brain. At the same time, the centers of suffering, being located in different parts of the brain, form a single system. Therefore, negative emotions are experienced quite uniformly. Pleasure centers do not form such a system, and positive emotions are experienced in a more differentiated way.
table 2
Physiological mechanisms of emotions and feelings
Theories of emotion
information theory P.V. Simonova : emotions arise when there is a mismatch between a vital need and the possibility of its satisfaction (with a lack of information necessary to achieve the goal); awareness of a person about the means of satisfying a need can relieve emotions.
cognitive theory L. Festinger : positive emotions- if expectations are confirmed. Negative- if expectations are not confirmed
biological theory PC. Anokhin : positive emotions occurs when the result of an action matches or exceeds the expected result. The mismatch leads to anxiety, the search for new combinations that would lead to positive emotions.
Classification of types of emotional phenomena
Man is the most emotional being. He is able to experience tens of thousands of shades of emotions at different periods of his life, but a person’s vocabulary is limited to 5-6 thousand words, which are not enough to express all these shades. There is no single classification of emotions. Let's imagine the most common classification in psychology (see Fig. 1).
Rice. 1. Types of emotional phenomena
In Table 3 we give definitions to the emotional phenomena indicated in the classification.
Table 3
Types of emotional phenomena
| concept | Concept definition. Assigning an emotion |
| Sensual tone - | - these are positive or negative experiences accompanying certain vital influences (taste, temperature, etc.) and prompting the individual to preserve or eliminate them. Many human sensations have a certain emotional connotation. We do not just feel any smell or taste, but perceive it as pleasant or unpleasant. Feeling hot or cold, we simultaneously experience pleasure or displeasure. Images of perception, memory, thinking, imagination are also emotionally colored. A.N. Leontiev called this phenomenon the "partiality" of reflection and considered it one of the essential features of human cognition. |
| Emotions are basic | - These are emotions that are situational in nature, expressing an evaluative attitude to emerging or possible situations. They are short-lived, rather strongly pronounced, the causes of occurrence by a person are quite well understood. These emotions are well studied and 10 main ones are distinguished among them. (K. Izard). Each basic emotion underlies a spectrum of states. Almost all of them are read by facial expressions. |
| Joy - | - a positive emotional experience associated with the ability to fully satisfy an urgent need. It serves to establish contacts with people, save useful thoughts and actions in memory, eliminate the negative impact of negative emotions. |
| Astonishment - | - an emotional reaction that does not have a clearly expressed positive or negative sign to sudden circumstances. It serves to extinguish the existing activity of the nervous system and to prepare the body for activity in a new situation. |
| Interest - | - emotional reaction to the new, the source of motives for learning and creativity. |
| Sorrow (grief, suffering) - | - an emotional signal of the inability to satisfy vital needs. It manifests itself in the attachment of thoughts to the object of sadness, tears, bitterness in the mouth. Sadness slows down the pace of life, makes it possible to look back, see the future, and in this sense is an adequate state. |
| Anger - | - emotional experience, negative in sign, as a rule, proceeding in the form of an affect and caused by the sudden appearance of a serious obstacle to satisfying an extremely important need for a person(pain, restriction of freedom, physical effects, etc.). Anger ensures the mobilization of all the forces of the body for the fight. |
| Fear - | - negative emotion that manifests itself when a person receives information about a real or imagined danger; emotional response to danger. Fear is a way of activity and protection from strong shocks. |
| Disgust - | - negative emotional experience caused by objects (objects, people, circumstances, etc.), contact with which comes into sharp conflict with the ideological, moral or aesthetic principles and attitudes of a person. In evolution, it arose as a defense against poisoning. |
| Contempt - | - negative emotion that arises in interpersonal relationships and is generated by a mismatch of life positions, views and behavior with life positions, views and behavior of the object of experiences. Contempt is the rejection of another person. |
| Shame - | - a social emotion that expresses the subject's awareness of the inconsistency of his actions, thoughts, appearance with the expectations of other people and his own ideas. The experience of shame is an indicator of the condemnation of one's actions and the desire to correct them. |
| Guilt - | - emotion arising from violation moral and ethical standards . Without acceptance by the individual, social norms do not arise. Guilt expresses a person’s condemnation of his act and himself, accompanied by a decrease in self-esteem, repentance and the desire to improve. The experience of guilt is similar to the experience of shame. |
| Mood - |
- a stable, weakly expressed, relatively long-term experience that colors the behavior and activities of a person for a considerable time. The reasons are far from always clear to the person experiencing them, but they always exist and can be determined. Mood depends on health, self-esteem, level of claims, character, etc. It is an emotional reaction not to the direct impact of certain events, but to their significance in a person’s life in the context of his life plans, interests and expectations. Mood is an unconscious assessment by a person of how favorable circumstances are for her. It can be joyful and sad, cheerful and depressed, cheerful and depressed, calm and irritated. It indicates that a person is set up, ready to respond in a certain way. S.L. Rubinstein believed that, 1) it is not objective, but personal; 2) this is not a special experience, timed to coincide with some particular event, but a diffuse, general state. Other people, their attitude, their attention, care, even just facial expressions shape the mood of a person. Often repeated, mood can become a stable personality trait (pessimists and optimists). The older a person is, the more stable, constant his mood becomes. Mood leaves a significant imprint on a person's behavior: it can stimulate or suppress his activity. With the predominance of a positive mood, a person easily experiences temporary setbacks and grief. Consequently, it is important to be able to manage your mood(through reflection, self-knowledge, self-analysis, mastering the means of mental self-regulation). |
| affect - |
- an emotional experience that arises suddenly, quickly takes possession of a person, proceeds rapidly, is characterized by a change in consciousness, a violation of volitional control. It occurs in extreme conditions, when a person does not see a constructive way out of a situation that has already arisen. The cause of affect is most often a conflict between a strong attraction, desire, a person's desire for something and the objective impossibility of satisfying the impulses that have arisen. With affect, the volume of consciousness narrows and is limited to a small number of ideas and perceptions that are closely related to the emotion experienced, and all the forces of the body are mobilized. The forms of its manifestation are anger, delight, ecstasy, horror, despair or stupor, stiffness. The affect ends with a breakdown, fatigue and even fainting, since extremely strong excitation, having crossed the limit of the efficiency of nerve cells, is replaced by unconditional protective inhibition, emotional shock. Impairments of consciousness may lead to an inability to later recall episodes of the event that caused the affect, or the event as a whole ( complete amnesia). The expression of emotions in the form of affect is not desirable. With the exception of rare cases of the development of a pathological affect, accompanied by a deep stupefaction of consciousness, a person is responsible for his actions committed in a state of passion. It would be wrong to think that affect is completely uncontrollable. Despite the apparent suddenness, it has certain stages of development. And if at the final stages, when a person completely loses control over himself, it is almost impossible to stop, then at the beginning any normal person can do it. Of course, this requires enormous volitional efforts, the more significant, the more the affective state has developed. The most important thing here is to delay the onset of affect, to “extinguish” the outbreak, to restrain oneself, not to lose power over one’s behavior. There are special techniques that help a person cope with a strong emotion and prevent it from turning into an affect. To do this, it is recommended to notice and realize an unwanted emotion in time, analyze its origins, relieve muscle tension and relax using the following techniques: breathe deeply and rhythmically; attract a pre-prepared "duty image" of a pleasant event in your life; try to look at yourself from the outside, separate the experience itself from the object that “caused it”, etc. Thus, the affect can be prevented, but this requires endurance, self-control, special training, and the development of the moral qualities of the individual. Almost all experienced affects are remembered. Their influence on the psyche is so great that often even a memory evokes aftereffect reaction. A person in his memory, as it were, relives it anew. Having studied the mechanism of the trace effect, A.R. Luria in the early 1930s. created the first lie detector. Its action was based on the fact that when naming words associated with an experienced affect, a person unconsciously manifests a complex of vegetative and motor reactions. Initially, the lie detector was used in answering questions during the interrogation of the accused and witnesses. Now it is not used in domestic forensic science, firstly, for ethical reasons, and secondly, because of the possibility of obtaining false information, i.e. the same type of change in vegetative parameters occurs with different emotions. |
| Stress - Physiological stress - Informational stress - Emotional stress - Depression - |
- neuro-psychic overstrain caused by super-strong extreme exposure; the state of the necessary total mobilization of the forces of the body and mental activity to find a way out of a very difficult, dangerous situation (Enikeev M.I.). - this is a non-specific response of the body to any requirement presented to it, which helps it to adapt to the difficulty that has arisen, to cope with it (G. Selye). With the help of stress, the whole organism mobilizes itself to adapt to a situation that cannot be dealt with by conventional means. Stress is a natural part of human life, not all stress is harmful. Stress, according to Hans Selye(1907-1982), a Canadian biologist, physician and psychologist, is a non-specific response of the body to any demand presented to it (adaptation syndrome). It manifests itself in incoherent speech, confusion, memory impairment, etc. It proceeds in three stages (G. Selye): 1) anxiety- mobilization of all the body's defenses to adapt to a situation that cannot be handled by conventional means (eustress). This is manifested in the intensification of the work of internal organs, in improving the indicators of the volume and stability of attention, and in increasing efficiency. A person is internally ready to overcome obstacles, he is characterized by faith in success. But already at this stage, increased excitation from the centers of the brain spreads to the peripheral sections and internal organs; 2) stabilization- the situation is fixed, there is an overexpenditure of adaptive forces (distress). All systems of the body, brought out of balance, begin to function at the ultimate level. Outwardly, the behavior differs little from the norm, everything seems to be getting better, but internally there is an overexpenditure of adaptive reserves. If the action of stress factors continues, the third stage occurs; 3) exhaustion, as a result, there is a deterioration in well-being, a disease (nervous or somatic) and even death. A feature of stress is that a person reacts not only to danger or a real deterioration in the situation, but also to the threat of this. For example, often stress arises not only in a situation of loss of a job or divorce of spouses, but also with fear of losing a job or in anxious anticipation of a break in marital relations. Behavior under stress differs from affective behavior. Under stress, a person, as a rule, can control his emotions, analyze the situation, and make adequate decisions. If it lasts for a long time, serious problems arise. People deal with stress in different ways lion stress(danger spurs a person on, makes him act boldly and courageously; activity increases, forces are mobilized, efficiency of activity grows) or rabbit stress(can cause disorganization of activity, a sharp drop in its effectiveness, passivity and general inhibition take place)). Not a single person manages to live and work without experiencing stress. Severe life losses, conflicts, stress when performing hard or responsible work, everyone experiences from time to time. Some people deal with stress more easily than others; are stress-resistant. According to the type of stressor and the nature of its influence, physiological and psychological stress are distinguished. - the reaction of the body to a threatening situation (pain, blood loss, respiratory failure, etc.). Psychological stress is divided into informational and emotional. - a type of stress that occurs in a situation of significant information overload, when a person cannot cope with the task of processing incoming information and does not have time to make the right decisions at the required pace (especially with high responsibility for the consequences of the decisions made). This type of stress is characterized by a decrease in the volume and concentration of attention, increased distractibility, inability to concentrate, memory impairment, an increase in the number of errors and wrong decisions, thinking becomes confused, unable to assess existing conditions or predict results. - type of stress (R. Lazarus) arising from emotional overload of a person; most authors associate its occurrence with situations of threat, resentment, danger, etc. The consequences of this type of stress are the following. Tension, anxiety, anxiety increase. Painful suspiciousness appears, the feeling of health disappears. Sleep worsens. Increased consumption of drugs and stimulants. Personality traits change: neat people can become sluts, sociable people can become gloomy and withdrawn. Life goals can be abandoned, hobbies abandoned. Perhaps the appearance of depression, feelings of helplessness or emotional outbursts. Responsibility for what happens is often placed on other people. There are thoughts and phrases containing the threat of suicide. - an affective state characterized by a negative emotional background, a change in the motivational sphere (a decrease or complete lack of interest in the outside world, etc.), cognitive representations and a general passivity of behavior. Ways to reduce the psychotraumatic impact of stressful situations: 1) rationalization of an impending negative event, its comprehensive analysis, reducing the degree of its uncertainty, getting used to it, preliminary joining it, eliminating the effect of surprise; 2) depreciation, decrease in the value of a stressful situation; 3) limiting mental intensification of possible negative consequences of upcoming events (reality may turn out to be easier than expected crisis situations). |
| Emotional burnout - |
- the mental state of healthy people who are in intensive and close communication with clients, patients in an emotionally saturated atmosphere when providing professional assistance; manifests itself in emotional and / or physical devastation: a feeling of emotional tension and a feeling of emptiness; at the same time, an indifferent and even negative attitude towards people served by the nature of work arises, the consequences of which are irritability and conflict. Emotional burnout also leads to a decrease in labor productivity, self-esteem competence, the growth of dissatisfaction with oneself and a negative attitude towards oneself as a person. The reasons: monotony and monotony of work, inadequate leadership, lack of conditions for career and professional growth, professional inconsistency, socio-psychological maladaptation, etc. Internal conditions that affect the occurrence of emotional burnout: accentuation of a certain type of character, high anxiety, high aggressiveness, conformity, inadequate level of claims, etc. Emotional burnout hinders professional and personal growth and, like stress, leads to psychosomatic disorders. Means of prevention: optimization of working conditions, psychological correction of emotional disorders in the early stages, etc. |
| Anxiety - | - a state of unconscious threat, a feeling of apprehension and anxious expectation, or a feeling of vague anxiety. |
| Anxiety - | - a person's tendency to experience anxiety, a state of conscious or unconscious expectation of the impact of a stressor, frustrator; fairly stable personality trait. |
| Panic - | - a motivational mental state associated with the manifestation of mass fear of a real or imaginary threat, a state of periodic fright, horror, growing in the process of mutual infection by them. |
| Frustration - |
- an extremely emotionally intense negative state associated with the emergence of an insurmountable obstacle for a given person in achieving a goal that is significant for her. (Enikeev M.I.) If the causes of frustration cannot be eliminated, a deep depressive state may occur, associated with a significant and prolonged disorganization of the psyche (weakening of memory, the ability to think logically, etc.). It manifests itself in unbearably painful, oppressive mental stress, in a feeling of despair, hopelessness, extreme aggressiveness towards the frustrator. The depth depends on the significance of the target being blocked and its proximity. Neuroses and character deformations can also take place: persistent self-doubt, low self-esteem and level of claims, rigidity (inability to change behavior programs). The intractability of frustration is due to the fact that a person cannot eliminate the causes of such a state. Therefore, he is looking for some compensatory ways out, goes into the world of dreams, sometimes returns to earlier stages of mental development (regresses). A person's resistance to frustrators depends on the degree of his emotional excitability, such as temperament experience of interaction with such factors. What to do? Behave rationally, reduce the level of claims, put up with difficulties, etc. |
| Euphoria - | - a mental state (mood), which is characterized by carelessness, serenity, complacency, carelessness and at the same time an indifferent attitude to the serious aspects and phenomena of life. Euphoria is caused by alcohol, drugs, spectators for artists, etc. |
Feelings are the most developed and complex form of emotional processes in a person; they are formed in the conditions of his life in society.
Higher feelings - a special form of experience associated with more complex spiritual needs, which contain all the richness of truly human relationships. The objects of these feelings are individuals, groups of people, cultural objects, works of art and literature. The education of higher feelings is of a cultural and historical nature, is associated with the awareness and acceptance of universal values, knowledge of national characteristics, folk traditions and rituals (MGPU).
Types of higher senses
Depending on the nature of a person's relationship to various objects of social reality, the following main types of higher feelings are distinguished:
Feelings moral (moral) - a person's experience of his attitude to other people, to society, to the rules and norms of the hostel. They arise when comparing the phenomena of reality with social norms after their adoption.
Intellectual feelings - feelings associated with cognitive activity and regulating the intellectual activity of the individual.
Aesthetic feelings are a kind of coloring of sensations that characterize our attitude to the individual qualities of an object.
Practical feelings - feelings associated with the practical activity of a person.
Table 4 gives examples of higher senses.
Table 4
Examples of higher feelings
| Moral | intellectual | aesthetic | Practical |
| Love, Companionship, Patriotism, Sense of duty, Honor, Friendship, Goodwill, Humanity, Sympathy, Tenderness, Pity, Sympathy, Shame, Pangs of conscience, Hatred, Cowardice, Selfishness, Enmity, Envy, Malevolence, Cruelty, etc. | Thirst for knowledge, Curiosity, Curiosity, Feeling of interest, Feeling of love for the truth, Feeling of surprise, Joy of discovering the truth, Feeling of satisfaction from intellectual activity, Doubts about the correctness of the decision, Confidence in the correctness of the proof, Sense of humor, Irony, Sarcasm. | The experience of the beautiful and the ugly in nature, life, art, man, etc. Associated with the understanding of harmony, sublime, tragic, comic Aesthetic pleasure, etc. | Annoyance, Pleasure, Creative upsurge, Diligence, Feeling of enthusiasm for work, Pleasant fatigue, Satisfaction with the work done, etc. |
Morality- the doctrine of the virtues that allow a person to become happy; this is a proper attitude, behavior in society; due in terms of good and evil. Moral- realm of existence how concretely a person implements moral norms, this is the specific behavior of specific people. Moral culture of the individual - an indicator of how deeply and organically humanistic norms, principles, values of morality are embodied in its real actions. Moral norms are formed and changed in the process of the historical development of society, depending on its traditions, customs, religion, dominant politics, etc.
The love of a mother for her child is the highest feeling, not depending on the mood or on what mark he received. The mother can get angry with the child, be dissatisfied with his behavior, punish, but all this does not affect her feeling, which remains strong and relatively stable.
What moral (moral) feelings inherent in a person, largely depends on the conditions of his life in society, relationships with other people, education. These factors determine the place of spiritual needs and value-semantic attitudes in the structure of personality orientation. For example, a feeling of love for the Motherland develops when the concept of "Motherland" is filled with personal meaning. To do this, it is important to know the history of your country, its sights, cultural monuments, to get acquainted with outstanding works of art, to take an active part in social and cultural life.
Moral feelings are active. They act as the motivating forces of many heroic deeds and deeds. It is important that compliance with the requirements and rules of public morality become a vital need for a person. Violation of these requirements and rules should cause moral dissatisfaction, resentment, shame, anger.
Styles of love according to Lee (Andreeva, Family Psychology):
- « Eros" - love at first sight intense relationship.
- "Ludus" - love - a game.
- "Storge" - love - affection or friendship, with slow development and long-term commitment.
- "Pragma" - love of convenience, compatibility with a partner and the presence of obligations on his part.
- "Agape" - altruistic love.
- "Mania" - possessive love, dependence on a partner and self-doubt.
"People eat when they are lonely, make love when they are angry, speak from the podium when they are sexually horny. Such a perversion of the connection between sensations and behavior is evidence of alienation from oneself." I. Polster.
People often confuse sensations with feelings, and feelings with emotions. Ask your friends: How to say: I feel hungry or I feel hungry? What is resentment: feeling or emotion? What about joy?". By asking these seemingly simple questions, you will receive varied and contradictory answers.
Unfortunately, in the psychological literature these concepts are often confused. To my great surprise, having read dozens of books by classics and contemporaries, hundreds of journal articles, I have not come across a coherent system that clearly delimits feelings, sensations and emotions and gives answers to their semantic differences! It would seem that there is nothing wrong with this, and you should not cling to words. It seems that there is no urgent need to draw clear and rigid boundaries between the meanings of related words. But this is only at first glance. A clear understanding of the meaning of these words and their differences is relevant for working with the human sensory sphere in all types of psychotherapy and is extremely important in such areas as gestalt, psychosynthesis and body-oriented psychology.
The distinction between these concepts and the ability to differentiate them allows you to determine the place of violation in the relationship of a person with himself and the world and purposefully work with it.
Sensations are the process of obtaining information about the properties of objects, phenomena and the internal states of the body. Information comes to us through sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, vestibular apparatus and kinesthetics (sensory information from muscles, tendons and ligaments). You can compare the sensations with the instrument panel and sensors in the cockpit, which show flight parameters: altitude, speed, air temperature, fuel level, wind direction and strength, fuselage tilt, distance to other objects, and much more. When I have a sore throat, I feel hot, unwell, and heavy in my head, and these signs tell me that I am getting sick. If a person is deprived of sensations, then he will not be able to navigate what is happening and will not be able to do anything purposefully.
Feelings have a completely different function. If we compared the sensations with the instrument panel showing the flight parameters, then the feelings can be compared with the pilot's personal assessment of these indications. I remember well that the illness on the eve of meeting with my girlfriend evoked completely different feelings in me than the same illness on the eve of the control in physics. Feelings are a process of personal assessment of the situation, which performs both signaling and organizational-guiding functions. They talk about a person's attitude to what is happening, show him good or bad from this. Thus, feelings play a dual role: they are a system of signals of well-being or trouble on the one hand, and a regulator of our desires and aspirations on the other. And speaking in the language of Gestalt, feeling is a holistic signal about the relationship between human needs and the environment. Feelings can carry a huge energy potential, but even in this case, they should not be confused with emotions. Emotions are the external expression of our feelings, their presentation to the outside world. This is a non-verbal language of communication that appeared among our distant ancestors many hundreds of thousands of years ago. He helped to understand each other and successfully interact even before the advent of articulate speech and verbal communications. Even the higher animals are able to discern our emotional messages by tone of voice and facial expression.
Thus, despite the fact that feelings carry an emotional coloring and energy, they turn into emotions only when a person begins to present them to the world and people. As Lowen wrote: "To avoid confusion between these concepts, it should be noted that the word emotion suggests activity (motion - movement and the preposition e-outward, outward)". (A. Lowen. Psychology of the body) If, due to the strength of experience or the inability to notice one's feelings, a person immediately jumps into the realm of emotions, unable to realize his feelings, then they say: "No feelings - only emotions"!
In summary, we can say that:
- sensations are information;
- feelings - how I feel about it (my assessment);
- emotions - how I react to it, and what I express with it (my reactions and messages to the world).
Looking at these concepts in terms of their functions, it is easy to see their place on the contact cycle curve. Their informational, evaluation and contacting role in the process of satisfying the need can hardly be overestimated. I remember how many years ago, at one of the psychological trainings, I was struck by the question of the leader to one of the members of the group, whose name was Nastya: " Who are you crying for and what do you want from it". And her surprised answer: " No one and nothing, just crying and that's it, I do so often"Later, I managed to understand both her feelings, and the address of her emotions, and what need she was trying to resolve with it. I was struck that emotions are not an uncontrolled element, but our choice of action and resolution of a need, that emotions have an addressee and a specific goal Whether the crying person is aware of this is another matter.
Consider the sequence of occurrence and manifestation of the affective wave "sensations - feelings - emotions" on the example of the cycle of satisfying the needs of B. Reznik and T. Barley:
I. Stage of non-differentiation.
II. The stage of figure formation.
III. Shape focus stage.
IV. Field scanning stage.
V. The stage of resolving the need.
VI. stage of assimilation.
VII. stage of non-differentiation.
The emergence of sensations, the growth of their intensity and the formation of a vague figure of need corresponds to the level of sensations. Focusing the figure, identifying sensations and evaluating them gives rise to feelings, accompanied by scanning the field in order to satisfy the need - the level of feelings. The choice of the mode of action and the resolution of the need corresponds to the level of emotions. This is followed by the second, control wave - the level of pleasant sensations - the stage of resolution. Withdrawal and assimilation - the level of feelings (satisfaction) and final emotions. Then there is a temporary lull when the field is not differentiated. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Often, disruption of the gratification cycle occurs due to distortion in the perception of sensations, incorrect identification of feelings, and unconscious presentation of one's emotional reactions. The situation is complicated by the speech patterns of the language, both Russian and the languages of the Romance group. It is possible that things are different in the East, but I cannot say with certainty. We say "sense organs" instead of "sense organs"; we say "he expresses his emotions" instead of "he expresses his feelings", and of a person with poor emotional expression we say "he has few feelings". It turns out that we initially do not understand the role of sensations, we put feelings in their place, and we put emotions in place of feelings.
I want to repeat the well-known saying of Polster: "L people eat when they're lonely, make love when they're angry, stand on the podium when they're horny. Such a perversion of the connection between sensations and behavior is evidence of alienation from oneself.. (I. Polster, M. Polster. Integrative Gestalt Therapy)
If distortions at the level of sensations lead to such consequences, what happens when distortions also occur at the level of feelings and emotions? Feeling of hunger and feeling of loneliness, feeling of sexual desire and emotion of anger. Having learned to distinguish between these concepts, the client will no longer confuse anxiety and hunger, fatigue and depression, attraction and love, confidence and aggression. This list is endless, and you can think of some of the most striking examples from your own practice.
To solve these and similar questions, it seems to me that it is necessary to have:
- The skill of differentiating sensations, feelings and emotions based on their criteria.
- Sensations convey information about the situation inside and outside.
- Feelings are internal assessments, reactions and experiences.
- Emotions are the presentation of reactions and assessments to the world.
- The skill of observation is awareness of the moments of transition of sensations into feelings, and feelings into emotions, and vice versa.
I offer several interesting exercises that help to gain practical skills in awareness and differentiation.
- "List".
Make the largest possible list of feelings, emotions and sensations. No need to strive to do it all at once. It's best to do this exercise for a few days until you have an impressive list of 50-100 or more items.
- "Sorting".
Break it down into two or three columns. I deliberately do not say that there should be two or three. It depends on whether you will include feelings and emotions in one list, when one word can have different meanings depending on the context, or there are strictly determined words. For example, where would you classify resentment? Panic? What about satisfaction?
- "Fitting".
Try on each word from the list - by feeling, feeling or expressing it. Note what was easier for you and what was harder. Are there any names on the list that you could not imagine and survive at all? Even during the day, it is useful to stop for a minute or two and "catch by the tail" the emotion, feeling or sensation you are experiencing, realizing and identifying the "caught beast". Determine the strength and clarity of what you are experiencing, according to a 10-point, 100% or any other scale convenient for you.
- "Pendulum of feelings".
Listen to yourself and be aware of your actual feeling at the moment. Stay with it for a while, and then go into the area of sensations associated with this feeling, noticing and realizing the place, strength, clarity and other parameters. Return to the realm of feelings and see what new shades have arisen in the feeling, or whether it has changed completely. And then, starting from this feeling, go into the realm of emotions, noticing how you express them in movements, gestures, facial expressions and intonation. After a while, return to the realm of feelings again and be aware of what you feel now, what has changed and what has appeared.
- "Zone of Concern".
When a person is worried about some problem, a zone of anxiety arises around it from feelings, sensations and emotions. On the one hand, in this area all experiences are stronger and sharper, and on the other hand, they are less clear and stable. It is reminiscent of a room of distorting mirrors in which a person is distorted so that he looks either as a skinny giant, or as a broad dwarf, or walking upside down, or stretching forward like chewing gum. By daily noticing - realizing the strength and certainty of feelings, sensations and emotions in this problem zone, you will be able to track the positive dynamics of changes both in the zone itself and in the problem that gives rise to it. Working with an area in which improvements are slower should be given more time and effort.
Summing up, I note that understanding the role and place of these phenomena, as well as the ability to differentiate them, is an important condition for awareness - the observation of true feelings, sensations and emotions that will help the client to see and restore violations of contact with the actual need. They are the most reliable indicator of the energy processes going on in a person when the "organism-environment" field is "perturbed". Processes from the moment the first vague sensations arise to the moment the need is met and it dissolves in the surrounding background. I express my confidence that as long as a person exists, any violation in the "Self" system is necessarily accompanied by greater or lesser changes in the sensory sphere, both through the "Id" function and through the "Personality" function. If you run away from recognition and awareness, expecting that everything will work out automatically, on its own, then this will lead to the loss of the "Ego" function as a mechanism for assessing the situation, choosing and making adaptive decisions.
As Perls wrote: "To strive for maximum automatic functioning and minimum awareness - awareness - it means to strive for death before it comes" (F. Perls, P. Goodman, R. Hefferlin. Workshop on Gestalt Therapy).
The mental state is a relatively static moment of the process, but with a pronounced dynamic character, which manifests itself in increased or decreased activity of the individual. Such states arise under the influence of both external factors - the situation, time, verbal influences, the nature of the work (activity), and internal ones - the physiological state of the body. Mental states are characterized by integrity, mobility, stability and direct connection with other mental processes and personality traits.
Integrity characteristic of mental activity as a whole, reflects the specific relationship of all components of the psyche at a certain moment.
Mobility manifests itself in the variability of mental states and the presence of stages of flow: the beginning, a certain dynamics, completion.
Sustainability differs in relativity, the dynamic component is present, but not as pronounced as in mental processes.
In psychology, two types of mental states are most studied:
- 1) emotions - a special class of subjective psychological states that arise in the process of direct biased reflection of reality;
- 2) attention - the dynamic side of consciousness, the process, as a result of which there is an awareness of the perceived and its interpretation into a holistic structure.
Mental states serve as the backdrop against which human life unfolds. At the same time, they act as the material from which personality traits are “built”. States have polarity, i.e. each corresponds to its opposite, for example, activity - passivity, confidence - uncertainty. In the classifications of the types of states, various criteria are used (Table 9).
Table 9
Types of mental emotional states
|
Criterion |
Types of mental states |
|
The role of personality |
|
|
situational |
|
|
Dominant |
Intelligent* |
|
emotional |
|
|
Depth degree |
Surface |
|
Deep (disturbed physiological functions) |
|
|
Shift of physiological functions |
|
|
Flow time |
short-term |
|
lingering |
|
|
Long |
|
|
Impact on personality |
Positive |
|
Negative |
|
|
Stenic (from Greek sthenos - strength) |
|
|
Asthenic (from Greek astheneia - weakness, lethargy) |
|
|
degree of awareness |
Unconscious |
|
Conscious |
The first difficulty faced by the researcher emotional processes, is to determine what is reflected in emotions: the inner or outer world. In modern psychology, this issue is resolved in favor of relations between the two worlds, in other words, emotional states reflect the attitude between the inner world ("want") and external ("I can"). If the objects and phenomena of the external world, the conditions of a person's existence contribute to the satisfaction of his needs and the achievement of goals, then positive emotions are formed, if they interfere - negative ones.
In the process of evolution, emotional states arose as a means of allowing living organisms to determine their physiological state.
logical state depending on external influences, as a kind of way to maintain life within its optimal boundaries. Emotional states warn of the destructive nature of a lack or excess of any factors, serve as a signal of a beneficial or harmful effect on the body, and they arise faster than a rational assessment of the situation. Having fixed a signal of mismatch between “I want” and “I can”, they immediately open or close access to a person’s energy resources. "Victory ahead!" - and the person wins, "I can't do it!" - and the person loses. And the chances were equal.
The second difficulty is associated with the simultaneous, sometimes contradictory manifestation of emotional processes in internal experiences, in behavior and pronounced physiological reactions. What should be given preference in research - internal experiences, behavior, physiological reactions?
Inner experiences, firstly, are subjective, and secondly, they are difficult to convey in words. In behavior, a person can hide his feelings, moreover, most cultures differ in the forms of manifestation of emotions. Physiological reactions, it would seem, are more objective, but, alas, researchers cannot distinguish the cause of an increase in the heart rate, which can be caused by directly opposite emotional states, such as love and hate. Therefore, in psychological research, all factors are taken into account. However, the degree of presentation of descriptions of experience, fixation of behavior and measurements of physiological reactions depends on the type of emotional process being studied.
In human life, emotional processes perform the following functions:
"evaluator" of activity, its course and results (joy, chagrin);
“the organizer of the activity: direct, promote or hinder its implementation (anger, fear);
Regulator of human communication (love, hate).
The most effective emotional processes perform these
functions for those who are able to master them, can restrain them, sometimes demonstrate the exact opposite.
Emotions accompany all human mental processes, and they are qualitatively different, just as the processes themselves are different. It is customary to distinguish:
- emotional tone (pleasant/unpleasant) that accompanies sensations, such as taste, temperature, contact. Emotional tone encourages the preservation of influences or their elimination;
- emotions accompanying perceptions (auditory, visual);
- feelings as the highest product of the development of emotional processes in a person.
Any manifestations of human activity are accompanied by emotional experiences that have qualitative differences. At the beginning of activity, feelings arise that anticipate the future: the current activity of a person, the development of events; the process of activity is accompanied by emotions; in an extreme situation, when the activity is completed, the event has happened, the situation has become irreversible, an affect may arise (Table 10).
Table 10
Emotional processes and their varieties
affect (from lat. affectus - emotional excitement, passion) - a strong, relatively short-term reaction associated with a sharp change in life circumstances, when a person cannot find an adequate way out of an extreme situation. Affect is a genetically fixed way of "emergency" resolution of the situation. In the process of evolution, animals developed three ways of reacting to a dangerous situation: flight, stupor, aggression. Human affects are analogous to the corresponding processes in animals. They manifest themselves regardless of the desire of the person himself in the form of stereotypical actions imposed on him. However, the animal expression of affect in humans is extremely rare. In the process of its evolution, the external manifestations of the affective state have changed significantly: their range has narrowed, there has been a replacement of some movements for others. But the affective state itself did not disappear. Man has not ceased to be afraid, although the external manifestations of fear are changing.
The emergence of affects obeys the law: the stronger the initial motive and the more effort was expended on its implementation, 114
the stronger the affect that arises in the case of a low result or no result:
Extreme situations that can cause affective reactions include:
- high intensity of work, strictly limited in time (the German researcher W. Dibschlag published data in 1974, according to which a person’s workload is considered normal at 40-60% of the maximum possible. A load that requires the use of 80% of resources is possible only as a short-term how 20% is the body's resource, which it can use only once in case of a threat to life);
- lack and homogeneity of information;
- monotony of work;
- low physical activity;
- lack of interpersonal communication.
Among the affective emotional reactions, stress and frustration are distinguished.
Stress(from english, stress - tension) - one of the varieties of affect: a state of strong and prolonged mental tension caused by difficulties, dangers that arise in solving an important task for a person. This is a non-specific, as G. Selye wrote, the body's response to the demand presented to it, when the nervous system receives an emotional overload, and whether the situation is pleasant or unpleasant does not matter, the main thing is that it is unexpected and causes a strong mental shock.
Stress leads to exhaustion of the body, which passes gradually, in three stages:
stage I - anxiety reaction, which is characterized by physiological changes that prepare the body to meet a new situation and lead to a state of alertness and anxiety;
stage II - the phase of resistance, when outwardly everything seems to remain normal (tired of waiting), but the body continues to use up its reserves;
stage III - exhaustion.
The state of stress has objective indicators that manifest themselves at all levels: physiological, psychological and socio-psychological (Table 11).
Levels of manifestation of stress and its features
|
Level of manifestation of stress |
Features of the manifestation of stress |
|
Physiological |
Motor stiffness or restlessness Changing the threshold of sensitivity in various limits |
|
Yawning, causeless tears or laughter, hyperemia or pallor of the face, tremor of the fingers, itching of the body, etc. |
|
|
Psychological |
Disorder of all types of memory |
|
Scattered attention, easily distracted |
|
|
Thinking is difficult or fast |
|
|
Speech retardation or increased activity |
|
|
Accelerated experience of time |
|
|
Socio-psychological |
Decrease in qualitative and quantitative performance indicators. Disruption of activity |
|
Shift of behavioral response to the extreme points of the scale "excitation - inhibition". Behavior inadequacy |
frustration(from lat. frustratio - deceit, failure) - a mental state resulting from the breakdown of hopes caused by objectively insurmountable (or experienced subjectively) difficulties that stand in the way of achieving the goal.
The emergence of frustration obeys the law: the stronger the desire of a person to satisfy the need and the closer such an opportunity was, the more intense the experience of frustration when hope is frustrated. This can be expressed by the following formula:
Need (strong) + Opportunity (close).
n gV ^ Frustration
Result (absence)
In states of frustration, a person experiences a whole range of negative emotions and can behave in different ways:
- aggressively, seeing "malicious intent" in the circumstances, expressing dissatisfaction, experiencing irritation, indignation and blaming the one who seems to be the culprit of the breakdown of hopes;
- depressive, withdrawing into oneself, experiencing depression, resentment, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, personal infringement, an inferiority complex, feeling "guilty without guilt";
- internally, realizing the causes of failures, recognizing both the fact of the objectively existing situation, and a certain share of one’s own guilt. However, this option is not a characteristic sign of frustration, but an indicator of getting out of it.
Frustrated states of a personality can also be “warmed up” by internal factors, a predisposition to reproduce such situations, for example, excessive gullibility, impulsiveness, anxiety, disorganization, riskiness. In such cases, a person creates difficulties for himself in order to overcome them later. In life, situations of frustration often arise, so it is necessary to develop immunity to such states. And this is quite possible. “If you can’t change the situation, change your attitude towards it!” - this thesis includes a whole range of protective motivation.
emotions (from lat. emoveo - excite, shock) - this is a whole class of mental states that manifest themselves in the form of direct, biased experience that occurs in the process of activity, and sometimes anticipates it. Genetic inheritance provides a person with a set of emotional reactions determined by temperament. Therefore, it is the emotional manifestations that most accurately indicate the temperamental characteristics of a person. But the system of brain activity that takes part in this is extraordinarily malleable; temperament is not everything. Critical to establishing the emotional habits that govern our lives is education.
Depending on what effect emotions have on the person experiencing them, they are divided into positive and negative. There are three emotions of a positive nature and six that reflect feelings of hostility. The emotional experience of grief and compassion stands apart (K. Izard).
Grief-suffering is the most common emotion that dominates in loss, depression. It is characterized by despondency, loss of strength, a feeling of loneliness. Sometimes suffering and experience leads to the psychological improvement of a person.
Positive emotions include:
- joy - characterizes a sense of confidence, accompanied by a feeling of strength and energy recovery;
- surprise - a quickly passing emotion, prepares for new events;
- interest-excitement - can act as a supporting motivation for work. In this state, a person feels inspired and animated.
Negative emotions:
- anger (rage) - a feeling of one's own strength, energy. In rage, the energy is so high that a person feels that he will explode if something is not done;
- disgust (disgust) - a feeling that arises in the event of a mismatch: the value-significant manifests itself in an ugly form;
- contempt (neglect) - a feeling of superiority over another person;
- fear (horror) is the strongest and most dangerous emotion. Associated with a sense of lack of reliability, danger, trouble;
- shame (shyness) - accompanied by a temporary inability to think logically and effectively. A person feels helpless, constrained, stupid, therefore a normal human desire is not to get into situations for which one can be ashamed;
- guilt-repentance - occurs when wrong actions are performed. It leads to condemnation of oneself, a decrease in self-esteem and self-respect.
Why are there more negative emotions? Probably, their diversity allows them to more successfully adapt to unfavorable circumstances, which they report. But positive emotions require a particularly careful attitude to themselves, not only because they are fewer, but also because they are the energy source of our health and successful existence.
In the process of performing a particular activity, a person develops emotional tension, which is usually divided into operational and actually emotional.
Operational tension-- a state associated directly with the process of performing an activity. It includes not only general emotional well-being, but also emotions of a negative modality: dissatisfaction with oneself, a sense of overcoming difficulties, etc. These emotions have a mobilizing effect and help maintain a high level of performance.
Emotional tension - arises against the background of past failures, an authoritarian style of interaction, a negative reaction of a significant other, etc. It disorganizes cognitive activity: attention is weakened, memory worsens, speech dynamics is disturbed, overall performance decreases. Emotional tension tends to “expand”, capturing those areas of activity in which a person has not experienced failures before.
Mood- stable, relatively long-term emotional state of a person, its positive or negative background 118
life. The mood is "poured" through the human psyche and sets it up for a certain perception of the world. In a joyful mood, a person tends to perceive everything in a positive light, in an anxious mood, to expect trouble from everywhere. The mood is always personal, when a person has a joyful mood - this does not mean that he is happy with something or someone. He's just happy. Usually the mood is characterized by lack of accountability. A person does not even notice it until it changes.
Emotions are an integral part of our existence. It is naive to think that you can eliminate anxiety, depression, or hostility from your life. However, by taking responsibility for their emotional state, a person is able to learn how to adequately express them, thus reducing the negative impact of negative emotions on the body.
There are various reasons that give rise to negative emotions. They can reflect the state of health, depend on the nervous system and metabolism. One of the distinguishing features of emotions is the ability to be transmitted from one person to another: emotions are contagious! Therefore, people are unconsciously drawn to people with a good mood and avoid those who are always "out of sorts." It is quite possible to raise the emotional state on your own. Remember, "tuning the body" will entail "tuning the spirit." Start the desired action, and inner experiences will “catch up” with it. The brain will play along with your actions. Conduct a thought experiment: sit down at the table, drop your head into your hands, sigh heavily several times - and you will get negative emotional sensations. Now straighten your shoulders, make some vigorous physical movements, and it will seem to you that life is not so bad.
Emotions do not reflect the world directly, therefore, various violations are possible in the process of emotional cognition. As you know, our head does not like to rest, even during sleep, images of the past and ideas of the future arise in it: there is a continuous dialogue, as a result of which this or that mood is formed (Fig. 14). "
Psychologists note at least ten distortions typical of humans. Get to know them.
- 1. A general conclusion is drawn from single facts: the only negative event is seen as a black bar.
- 2. Maximalism: the world is seen in black and white.
- 3. Psychological filtering of events: a person pulls out negative details from life and lives in them (“a fly in the ointment in a barrel of honey”).
Rice. fourteen.
- 4. Disqualification of the positive: a person denies positive facts, considering their appearance impossible in principle.
- 5. Leaping inference: a negative interpretation of reality due to ignorance (the person decides that someone treats him badly) or the belief that bad premonitions are sure to come true ("as always").
- 6. Exaggerating the bad and downplaying the good: the spyglass effect.
- 7. Inference based on emotions: "I feel, therefore it is true."
- 8. Reasoning in the style of "Could it be ...", which gives rise to a guilt complex and anger.
- 9. Labels: instead of describing their own or other people's mistakes, the person himself is evaluated, and with the help of bright, catchy images, metaphors, etc.
- 10. Acceptance of responsibility for events beyond your control: see yourself as the reason, despite the fact that there was really no way to influence the events.
A bad mood leaves an imprint on mental activity, reduces work productivity, and deprives the desire to live. If a bad or lethargic mood lasts for a long time, then this is an indicator that not everything is going well in a person’s life. It is necessary to change the train of thought in time, otherwise there is a chance of falling into the so-called "lethargic cycle": negative thoughts cause negative emotions, which, in turn, lead to unproductive behavior, suppressing any activity, which inevitably affects the entire life of a person (Fig. 15 ).
How to get out of a bad mood? Here are some simple rules:
To get started, free your head from negative thoughts by writing them down on a piece of paper;
Rice. fifteen.
- read ten types of violations in the process of emotional cognition and choose those that are fixed in your thought;
- replace the negative thoughts you wrote with more objective ones.
For these purposes, you can use positive speech statements (Table 12). Recall situations when you said the phrases recorded in the left column. Paraphrase them using those suggested in the right column.
Emotional states have a different degree of severity, and consequently, a different degree of influence on the body. Never "inflame" the body to the highest forms of manifestation of negative emotions. On the contrary, learn to reduce them, transferring and keeping the emotional state at a more favorable Level. This is again possible through internal dialogue.
As you know, any organism in a situation of danger is protected. The mechanism of psychological protection against harmful or undesirable influences is characteristic of each person individually and the group as a whole. This is not a separate psychological phenomenon, but a function of the personality as a whole, which is a complex structural and functional system. In terms of content, it may include certain views of a person: worldview, scientific, religious, political.
Table 12
Translation of negative speech statements into positive ones
The composition of psychological protection includes components: emotional(timidity, fear, antipathy, aggressiveness, etc.), mental(doubt, distrust, etc.) and strong-willed(principality, negativism, conformism, etc.). Psychological defense can function at different levels of awareness (intentional and unintentional) and deployment.
The forms of psychological defense used by man are very diverse. The very concept of "psychological defense" was introduced by 3. Freud as a form of conflict resolution between unconscious drives and social demands or prohibitions. After the Second World War, extensive research into the mechanisms of psychological defense was launched in psychology.
One of the defense mechanisms is instrumental. He is distinguished by a straightforward reaction: there is an opportunity to eliminate the threat and this will be done. In primitive society, such an action was usually an attack or flight.
In the modern world, the use of instrumental protection is difficult. A person is forced to remain in an uncertain situation of a real or potential threat. A threat can trigger any of the emotions, from anger to depression, but most often it creates anxiety. There are various forms of anxiety relief. emotionally concentrated protection - both adequate and inadequate.
Many forms of adequate psychological defense are described in psychology, but all of them, one way or another, are gathered under the slogans: “If you can’t change the situation, change your attitude towards it”, “Change the rules, it’s easier than changing the world.”
It is considered inadequate to consider those methods of relieving anxiety that destroy a person over time. These include such common and quite effective means at the time of use as alcohol and tranquilizers. Mental techniques that distort a person's ability to see things as they are are also considered inadequate. For example:
- suppression - neither in actions, nor in feelings, nor in consciousness, the internal conflict is clearly manifested, but since internal tension is growing, an explosion is inevitable, and it will have serious consequences for a person;
- rationalization (“fox and grapes”) - a person convinces everyone that he does this of his own free will, for example, undermines health at work on his own initiative;
- inversion - a person turns anger against himself.
Feelings are one of the main forms of human experience, in which mental and emotional processes are intertwined and fixed in an inseparable unity. This is a complex holistic stable formation around a certain object, person, activity. We note their main features.
- 1. Feelings are characterized by objectivity, they are associated with a representation or idea about some object: a concrete or abstract object, type of activity and people who surround a person. Depending on the subject area, feelings are divided into:
- moral (ethical, morality): love, humanism, patriotism, responsiveness, justice, dignity, conscience. These feelings regulate human behavior. The pinnacle of moral feelings is love for good. At the negative pole of this category are base, immoral feelings: greed, envy, selfishness;
- intellectual (cognitive): interest, curiosity, surprise. The pinnacle of intellectual feelings is the love of truth;
- aesthetic: love of beauty. The range of their manifestation is very wide - from pleasure and delight to disgust. A specific mature aesthetic and at the same time intellectual sense is a sense of humor. It presupposes the presence of an ideal, without which it degenerates into vulgarity, cynicism, and malice.
- 2. Feelings develop, improve, they are different for different peoples and are expressed in different ways in different historical epochs among the same peoples.
- 3; Feelings cannot be separated and formed separately, they are interconnected.
- 4. Feelings are connected with the work of consciousness and therefore can be arbitrarily regulated.
- 5. Feelings are ambivalent, which manifests itself when a stable feeling and an emotional reaction to a certain situation do not match.
- 6. Feelings, developing, determine the dynamics and content of situational emotions.
The formation of feelings is a necessary condition for the development of the human personality. By itself, knowledge (rules, norms, ideals, etc.) does not yet guarantee that a person will accept them for execution. Only colored with the corresponding feeling and having become the subject of a stable emotional relationship, they turn into a regulator of human activity, a source of his motives.
In the early 1990s in the United States, D. Golman's book "Emotional Intelligence" was published, which caused a real sensation. Since then, the concept of "emotional intelligence" (EQ) has become firmly established in scientific use, displacing the idea that the main capabilities of a person are determined by the intellectual coefficient (IQ). In the US, there is even a saying that goes something like this: "With a good IQ, you will be hired, with a good EQ, you will be promoted."
What is the basis of the ability to get along with people? The ability to recognize their temperament, mood, motivation, needs and take this into account in communication. In recent years, G. Gardner's idea of the so-called personal (emotional) intelligence of interpersonal relationships has become widespread, characterized by the following indicators: self-knowledge and self-esteem, knowledge and ability to cope with feelings, empathy, and the art of interpersonal relationships. Other researchers also include perseverance, enthusiasm, motivation, social dexterity in emotional intelligence. It is believed that it is precisely the deficiencies of emotional intelligence that increase the risk of being captured by depression, aggression, drug addiction, and lead to eating disorders.
Emotional sensitivity - empathy - is influenced by factors such as gender, age, emotional experience, social attitudes. It is a professionally significant property for teachers, psychologists, doctors and all those who work with people.
There are three levels of empathy development:
- lower - a person shows emotional blindness to the state, feelings and intentions of the interlocutor;
- medium - in the course of communication, a person has fragmentary ideas about the experiences of another person;
- the highest is the ability to immediately enter the state of another person and maintain this understanding throughout the entire interaction.
So, psychologists are convinced that the emotional factor is decisive in establishing interpersonal relationships.
In order to manage your own or someone else's emotional state, you need to learn to recognize it. In psychology, various tasks and tests are developed, which, on the one hand, allow determining the level of development of a person’s emotional intelligence, and on the other hand, help to improve social skills in recognizing and understanding the emotions of other people.