Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence. Inna Zakharova
from point zero again and again. Most often, this is a counter-phobic model of behavior.
• Depreciate security, depreciate resources
In such a model of behavior, a person, having no resources, claims that he does not need them. For example, if a person does not have money to go abroad to relax with his family, he will say: “Why do we go abroad, nobody needs it, there is nothing to do there, I don’t like this type of vacation,” if he does not have the necessary things for a comfortable camping trip (tents, sleeping bags), he will go to the forest with one knife “Because I am an adrenaline type”, if someone builds a house, he immediately begins to condemn, etc.
In conversations, in the behavior of such a person, denial of his values will always be traced. A whole life strategy is taking shape: to depreciate those goals that you cannot achieve because you have neither material resources, nor internal.
The main fear is to see your failure.
With time, such a life leads to the fact that everyone ceases to take such a person seriously, avoids together activities, and close people cope with all things, including development, on their own. This is also a counter-phobic behavior, but with a different connotation.
• Accumulation
Because the uncertainty is terrible, it’s not safe to not know what will happen tomorrow, not to know how everything is arranged. So the value of information and knowledge is very high for all people with a leading need for security.
But there are people who ensure their safety in this way: they are protected from the outside world and collect information about everything until they consider its quantity sufficient to reach the world and people. They often send themselves to isolation and loneliness. As a rule, these are very erudite people, well-read and educated. Often they are not adapted to an ordinary, simple life, but have a large amount of knowledge. Well, if there is a person who can use their mind in practice, but in the worst case, such behavior leads to an encyclopedic life detached from the real world.
The main fear is to be unprepared, not to know, to be stupid.
With time, such a life leads to the fact that… a person limits himself in spontaneous actions to a narrow circle of people and defends himself from the world with pronounced intellectual arrogance.
Could there be a mixture of traits of each behavioral model? Of course, we described the extreme expressions, more often there is a tendency to a greater extent to one of these strategies, while others manifest themselves from case to case. For example, a person can usually move bravely towards fear, but can sometimes be scared.
Fear. A Healthy Way of Processing
Each emotion carries information about our current state and has unique energy. If you use the energy of emotion in order to get what you want, to move towards your goals, which you accept at the level of consciousness, then emotion performs its true function.
What is the energy in the emotion of fear? Even if we realized why it appeared, our body is filled with energy. The question arises: where can we use it? We must understand why our body is straining and mobilizing in fear, because the main idea of this state is not to immobilize us and make us ill. We usually freeze when we misuse this energy.
Adrenaline is responsible for fear at the hormonal level. Inside the body, this hormone works very interestingly. At the first stage of the release of the hormone, the blood rushes to the head: the pupils dilate, the eyebrows rise, some people may have a red face or spots on the neck. This moment lasts a split second, the body feeds the brain as much as possible in order to instantly decide at the moment of danger how to proceed. But very often in the modern world in a general atmosphere of security, a person experiences fear and is not aware of the danger that the subconscious mind perceives as a threat and, accordingly, cannot decide “What should I do next?” and take the necessary actions.
At the second stage of the action of the hormone, the blood goes to the extremities, because cannot stay in the head for a long time. At this moment, a very strong flow of blood strikes from top to bottom, as if the body was poured with a bucket of cold water, heaviness is felt in the pelvic area, knees become weak. Such a feeling is usually described as “my heart is in my throat right now” or “I am shit scared.” When the blood was in the head, it was necessary to make a decision, and then, when it goes into the body, the head is no longer able to make decisions and think, you must follow the decision that you have already made. When all the energy sinks into the body, the muscles become tense, the body says: “I am ready, let’s act!” They often say “if you don’t know what to do, do at least something” and this is true. In such situations, it’s worth doing at least something not to get stuck, your body muscles are ready for focused actions.
It is important to ask yourself for:
What can I do useful right now?
What steps can I take to achieve my goal?
Therefore, it is important to have these goals. When you begin to act, you spend your mobilized body, you spend your internal resources in the direction of your goals; otherwise they are simply burned at the hormonal level inside you and bring discomfort.
So, a healthy strategy of processing fear:
Step 1. We notice the expression of fear at a low intensity
As soon as the shoulders tightened, and tension appeared in the stomach, we immediately say to ourselves:
I have started to worry now, what am I afraid of?
It is necessary to list all the possible dangers that come to your mind.
Step 2. Explore which of these fears are real
We remove all unrealistic fears that are wound up by our mind and cannot happen, we leave only what really can happen.
How real are these dangers?
What is the percentage of probability
that this is exactly what will happen?
Fear is often inadequate to the current situation, but it is an echo of some system dynamics or some previous experience. We must check the correspondence to the current moment. If you usually discover a real fear that concerns what is happening to you right now, the body begins to relax. After all, emotions are lights which task is to warn. And when the emotion does its work, it begins to leave. That is why it is said that awareness of emotions in the current moment is one of the first steps to manage your state. It is often enough to take only this step.
Step 3. We make a resource calculation
How many resources do I have now
in order to cope with this situation?
Resources are material and immaterial, internal and external. The amount of material resources affects our psychological state.
For example, I need to move to another city, I worry about how to do this. We calculate the resources:
• I have a car
• I have some petrol
• I know the way
• who can I ask for helping me to load heavy things? Will I find these people among friends or hire anyone for money?
If you calculated resources, made a plan, pulled up additional necessary resources, for example, support for loved ones, missing information, then you