Do you at times struggle with managing your emotions? Do you find yourself hanging on to a thought and associated strong emotions for much longer than you would like to? One of the goals of my blog is to increase your understanding of the internal resources you have, how they can impact you, and how to learn to use them to your advantage. I have previously written on developing mental flexibility, and on self reflection and rumination, and the difference between the two. This week I look at attention, emotion regulation, and using attention control to regulate your emotions.

About attention

From a neuoroscience perspective, attention is a limited resource and its control determines what is in our conscious awareness at any point in time. Most people have experienced the benefits of paying attention. In completing a task correctly, in receiving instructions, in learning a new topic. You have also likely experienced the down side of not paying attention in terms of making mistakes, conflict in relationships, and not performing as well as expected on academic tasks.

At any time many things contend for our attention. These include our current goals and tasks. There is also the equivalent of a priority queue for emotionally charged items. This is part of our evolutionary design. Emotions are designed to gain attention so we can take action. In the fight and flight world of early evolution, not paying attention and quickly responding to emotions was the difference between life and death.

About Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is the ability to respond to, control and modify the duration and intensity of emotions we experience in relation to life events and experiences. Many factors contribute to what would be the unregulated intensity and duration of emotions. These include genetic factors, previous life experiences and even external factors intentionally manipulated to create a heightened level of response (Try to become aware of sensory cues such as music, volume, images and words and what emotional response you have to them). The media and adverting industries are experts at this. Without the ability to regulate we are at risk of stress, distress, mental health disorders and risk taking behavior.

One of the indicators of good mental health is the ability to emotionally regulate. There are many effective therapeutic approaches for working with individuals struggling with the effects of not being able to regulate emotion, and the associated distress, mental health disease and lack of functioning that can result. For those who do not require this level of support but would like to learn more, then paying attention to your attention is a good starting point.

Using Attention to Regulate Emotion

The nature of emotionally charged stimuli is that they are designed to gain and keep our attention. If we can increase our ability to move our attention away from them, then this has the effect of reducing the associated level of emotion and even the actual emotional state. An example is if we keep going over a negative interaction from earlier in the morning with our partner then the associated negative emotion remains, and it may even increase in intensity. Moving our attention to other thoughts will immediately reduce this emotional intensity and even change it. There is a catch, in that research suggests that the nature of these distractors will influence our ability to change the emotion. Thoughts that create positive emotions, or focus on information relevant to the task you are working on, will tend to be more effective than neutral thoughts. Therefore if your thinking about that fight in the morning, either thinking about something that makes you happy, or refocusing on the current work task will tend to be more effective. Just deciding not to think about the negative event tends to focus your attention further on the negative event. I think there is no surprise here. (Don’t think of the colour blue. What are you thinking of?)

Mindfulness

There are many great resources on techniques such as mindfulness. The article below offers a number of ideas for implementing mindfulness in your life. As this article suggests, mindfulness doesn’t need to have a spiritual basis. From a neroscience perspective it is the impact in has on attention that makes the difference.

4 simple exercises to strengthen your attention and reduce distractibility

In Finishing

Attention and emotions are very improtant resources to ensure our survival. In our modern world with an excess of emotionally charged stimulus, emotional regulation becomes critical. Particularly due to difficulties in regulation being associated with many mental health disorders. One proven group of strategies focus on attention control as a way of regulating emotion. This week I have given you some ideas on using attention control to regulate your emotions I encourage you to consider this approach and also to look at the article on mindfulness.

If your emotions are causing you significant distress I suggest you make contact with a therapist or other mental health service for support.

Enjoy from Scott