WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?

According to the American Psychological Association (2022), emotions are “a complex reaction
pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements, by which an individual attempt
to deal with a personally significant matter or event.” In other words, emotions are rapid, often
automatic, responses in the brain and the body that happen in response to a situation. For example, let’s
say you’re hiking along a trail and suddenly hear a rattle and see a rattlesnake right in front of you.
Without thinking, you jump back and run back down the trail. This immediate automatic response
happened outside your awareness which your body responded to automatically. It takes the thinking
part of the brain a bit longer to catch up and put words to what you are feeling in the moment.

So, where do emotions start? There are two schools of thought about this. One perspective is that
emotions start in the emotion center of the brain – the amygdala and limbic system. The effects of the
emotions are then felt in the body. The other perspective is that emotions start in the body. A situation
triggers some physical response in the body that then registers in the brain as a specific emotion.

Instead of getting caught up in which of these two perspectives is more correct, what is important to
note here is that emotions have both a cognitive and bodily component. This is why, when you talk
with your therapist about your emotions, the counselor may ask you where you feel an emotion in your
body. The therapist does this to help you connect the brain and the body to have a more connected,
holistic experience of emotion. Doing this helps you process the emotion in a more cohesive way.

All humans experience emotions. There are about 7 core, or primary, emotions that all humans
throughout the world experience – fear, sadness, happiness/joy, disgust, surprise, excitement, and
anger. All other emotions are either a more or less intense version of a primary emotion, a blend of
multiple primary emotions, or a reaction to a primary emotion (e.g., anxiety can be a reaction to a
primary emotion).

Emotions may look different from person to person because factors such as culture, gender, and family
influence how emotions are expressed. Additionally, individual beliefs about emotions and messages
we have received about emotions can influence how comfortable we are with emotions and how in
touch we are with our emotional experiences.

4 TIPS TO PROCESS EMOTIONS:

1.) RECOGNIZE – The first step in responding to your emotions is actually recognizing when you are
feeling emotions. How do you do this? Ideally, you would notice in the moment when you are having
an emotion. However, if you are not used to noticing your emotions, this may be quite difficult. If
noticing emotions in the moment is hard for you, take some time at the end of the day to think back on
times you felt emotions throughout the day.
What are you looking for? Emotion-related thoughts and reactions and body sensations can clue you in
to when you might have been feeling an emotion. Also, thinking about if other people would have felt
an emotion in a particular situation can help you begin to get curious about your own emotional
response to that same situation.

2. ) NAME – Naming an emotion is the first step toward taming it. According to Dr. Dan Siegel, a
psychiatrist and author of The Whole Brained Child, simply putting a name to an emotion helps calm
the brain. Once you have identified times throughout the day when you had an emotion, try putting a
name to it. If you have trouble identifying a word to match what you are feeling, use the emotion
wheel above to help you put words to what you are feeling.

3.) FEEL – This might seem obvious, but feeling your emotion is an important part of processing or
working with your emotions. What does “feeling your emotions” mean? Once you have identified that
you are having an emotion (or more than one!) and have named it, notice where you are feeling it in
your body. Maybe you notice tightness in your chest or a knot in your stomach. Try to feel the
emotion without judgment.
This can actually be quite difficult. Often we have feelings about or reactions to our emotions or try to
convince ourselves that we are not feeling the way we are actually feeling. Believe it or not, this
judgment of our emotions gets in the way of being able to effectively process and move through the
emotion. What can help? Take some deep breaths, tell yourself that your emotion makes sense, or
practice mindfulness. Allow yourself to feel the sensations that come with the emotion and remind
yourself that this emotion will not last forever. If allowed to process fully without judgment, primary
emotions typically only last about 90 seconds.

3. ) RESPOND – Emotions call for a response. Many times, however, we can get stuck reacting to
our emotions instead of responding. What is the difference? The key difference between reacting and
responding is intentionality. Responding to your emotion means that you have paused to notice and
reflect on what you are feeling, identified what the emotion is communicating to you, and made an
intentional choice in how to respond.

4 KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Emotions are a natural and healthy part of the human experience
Emotions do serve a purpose
Emotions do not last forever
In order to process emotions, you need to recognize them, name them, feel them, and respond rather
than react to them

(EMOTIONS 101: What are emotions? 4 Therapist-Tested and Approved Tips. (2022, November 30). Estestherapy.com. https://estestherapy.com/emotions-
101/)

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Neurobiological Basis of Emotions

- All emotions are, in essence, impulse to act, the instant plan for handling life that evolution has
instilled in us.

Explanation:

All emotions that you feel, all the emotions that are triggered, there are parts of the brain that activate
whenever you feel those emotions. That is why sometimes we try to associate a certain part of a brain
for a certain feeling, for a certain thought or for a certain emotion.

One thing that we learn from Goleman is that it is an impulse to act, basically it gives us signal of what
to do. For example, when there is an object that is threatening in front of you. Your response can be
fight, flight or freeze. Fear has allows our ancestors to survived threats in the world. For example, it
allows us to survived from predators so that we will be able to protect our lives.

Now, which part of the brain is in charge of different emotions? One active part would be
AMYGDALA.

AMYGDALA, also helps in memory, but the types of memory that are processed in our amygdala are
those that are EMOTIONAL MEMORY. Hence, the amygdala also involves in fear and other
emotional responses, because the amygdala is the center of action.

AMYGDALA, had been the center of action, the motional sentinel that can take control of our actions
even before the neocortex could assess what to do.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

The ability to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations, to control impulse and delay
gratification, to regulate one’s mood and keep distress from swamping the ability to think, to empathize
and to hope.

Explanation:

1. To persist in the face of frustration,

- meaning, if you are emotionally intelligen, you have the capacity to be resilient, you won’t
easily give up, you find ways to keep pushing, you will find newer goals to pursue, eventhough what
you are doing has been frustrating for quite some time.
2. You have the ability to control impulse.
- meaning, you won’t act impulsively, but rather you know how to take a moment to reflect
before doing something.

3. Ability to delay gratification

- delaying gratification is very important, would you choose to have something good that you
can get something right now or you would rather have something grand that you can get something in
the future?

4. Helps regulates our mood

- it helps in our ability to think to emphatize and to hope.

SIGNS THAT YOU ARE EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT.

1. SELF AWARENESS
- to know one’s emotions.
- this is about how we feel or the thought behind the feeling.

Meaning, you should dot delay your emotions, you should not be ashamed of your emotions but rather
your should be able to identify those emotions and be self-aware. What are the things that trigerred this
emotions. So this is about how you feel and what’s the thought behind that feeling. What you think
affects the way you feel and the way you behave.

ELLIS’s ABC FRAMEWORK

A - Activating Event
- What happened in the enviroment.
B- Belief
- After that event happened what came into your mind.
C- Consequences.

Example:
I failed an exam, my belief is that I’m not good enough so the consequences is that I’m going
to hate myself.

However, lets change the way we think even if you fail the exam. What if you think
something like this?

This is just a challenge. I’ll be able to be successful in the next exam look at the new
consequences that you will feel competent eventhough you failed in that exam.

Changing the way you feel and being aware about the things that triggers these feelings would
be helpful in coping.

Hence, that is related to…

2. MANAGING EMOTIONS
- we can control how long emotions would last.
- it is normal to feel sad. It is normal to feel disappointed.
- it is normal to feel frustrated and when you lose someone close to you.
- It’s normal to grieve.

However that will no longer normal.

- if you have been feeling these emotions for quite sometime and because of those emotions
you can no longer go to work or go to school.
- you can’t no longer perform your day-to-day functions.
- Hence an emotionally intelligent individual is someone who knows to manage these
emotions so that he or she will remain functional and mentally healthy. If you know how to manage
your emotions you will be able to effectively deal with difficult things without becoming impaired or
disfunctional.

There are various strategies in order to help people to change their emotions and that may
include relaxation, meditation or journaling, or engaging in your favorite hobbies.

Find ways to channel your emotions so that you will not dwell in that negative emotions to a
point that these emotions will not allow you to perform your day-to-day functions.

You are also high in emotional intelligence. If you can motivate yourself. One theory that
talks about motivating onself is the LOCUS OF HOPE THEORY.

DR. ALLAN BERNARD’S LOCUS OF HOPE

1. SELF (Internal)
2. Family (External)
3. Peer (External)
4. Spiritual (External)

Basically, Locus of Hope is talking about what are the different pathways in enhancing our level of
hope.

Because in western setting, they are very INDIVIDUALISTIC, meaning of they want to feel hopeful, if
they want to feel good or feel competent, they will look at their own abilities. They will think about
their personal characteristics and they would say that I can do it because I know I work hard for it.

However in our setting, in the Philippines, we are very COLLECTIVISTIC. That’s why in motivating
ourselves it is important for us to hear what other people have to say about our capabilities.

That is why in the LOCUS OF HOPE THEORY, it was identified that there are 3 more sources of hope
other that the SELF. The 3 remaining are all external.

You don’t only get hope fro yourself. You also get hope from your family members. So it is important
if your family members believe in your abilities they know that you are capable and they will support
you rather than practice what we called crab mentality.

It is important to express how you feel to your family members because that’s more helpful that you
realize specially when you’re encouraging them do something that they are not confident about.

Our hope also increased as influence by our PEERS. So our friends play a very important role in
enhancing our level of hope so it is important that you are there for your friends when they need you.
Because sometimes they just need someone who will listen to their goals or to their dreams and
sometimes you can find a common ground about your situation.

We also have what we called SPIRITUAL, meaning as Filipinos when we are facing different
adversities in life we reach out to GOD in order for us to feel optimistic about the future.