Second reading: Emotions

Answer the following questions:

1. What are the emotions? How many types of emotions can you identify in the text?

An emotion is a state of our organism which provokes an answer that will influence the posterior way of acting in front of a situation. It is important to have developed the emotional intelligence in order to be capable of predict, use, comprehend and manage our emotions. Then, the emotional awareness has an impact on the emotional intelligence as has two basic components. The first one is the ability to recognize emotions not only in ourselves but also in the people that surround us so we can understand them better and develop a quicker and more efficiency answer to them. 

Being aware of our emotions is useful not only to understand the emotions of the people but also regulate the unpleasant emotions and to promote the ones that give us more pleasure.

The basic classification of the emotions is by the feeling that they give us while we have them. For example, we can classify them in positive emotions (such as happiness, humor and love), negative (anxiety, shame, anger and fear), ambiguous which mean that an emotion can have both positive and negative repercussion in our mood (surprise, hope and compassion) and aesthetics which are express by different artistic manifestations. 

Another classification can be basic and complex emotions. The basic emotions are the ones that we have in the first years of our live. Since we are babies we suffer from happiness, fear, love and shame. In this moment of our lives, we get satisfaction through the actions of an adult. At the ages from three to six we develop the capacities of memorization, language and a major capacity to identify situations and the emotion that correspond to those actions. Is in that moment that the complex emotions are developed and we start to be aware of them. Between the ages of 8 and 10 we know that an emotion can have at the same time a positive and negative effect in our personality and mood. 

The basic and complex emotions are related among them. For example, pride is a complex emotion which is similar to happiness, shame and anxiety can be sometimes mistaken by fear, when we experience jealousy the effects that this emotion has in our system are quite similar to the ones that we have when we suffer from anger. Surprise is an ambiguous emotion that can be related with either happiness, sadness, fear or anger. 

2. What are the differences between emotions and feelings?

At first sight, emotions and feelings can be understood as concepts with the same meaning so most people tend to use them as synonyms, but this is far from the truth. Emotions and feeling do not apply to the same emotional states. 

Basically, an emotion is what leads our way of acting and have a close relationship with our personality. We are the way we are because of the influence that our emotions have in ourselves. 

On the other hand, a feeling is what we have when we are conscious about an emotion. We know that we have it so we are able to identify it, classify it and also evaluate it. All of this is done through the language. 

3. What should be taken into account to educate emotions at school age?

Firstly, what the child needs to know is to indentify, understand, accept, describe and recognize the emotions in order to regulate them. The teacher is the one that leads to that knowledge so the students can learn first from the educative agent and then by themselves. During this stage, children can classify those emotions that they know as pleasant or unpleasant, or even from similar to opposite.

At the ages from three to six they learn the basic emotions such as happiness, sadness, love, fear and humor, and then at the ages from six to twelve they keep learning from those basic emotions but also from the complex ones. In this phase, they learn the connection that exists between the basic and complex emotions, this means that they are aware, for example, that what complex emotions are related with happiness. 

They also develop the ambiguous emotions and are aware of the fact that the same emotions can be, depending on the situation, beneficent or harmful, or even if both feelings can occur at the same time. 

The students form the upper years can identify and reflect about what influences an emotional answer, if this answer comes from the cognitive, physiological or behavioral part of us. They as well understand that we can hide an emotion and pretend that we are feeling another way in appearance, so they learn more mechanisms to recognize emotions in other people, even when they do not want them to be visible. Being able to be aware of the emotions of the people of our environment helps us to improve the social relationships. 

Another aspect important to teach to students is how to regulate the emotions, tolerating and trying to make disappear the negative ones and promoting the ones that give us satisfaction. To get rid of a prejudicial emotion, students learn that the best thing to do is try to change the situation or the mental processes that are provoking this emotion. 

As I have already stated, in the early years is the adult who works as a mediator and helps the child to regulate his emotions, but from age 10 they can do it by themselves. To be able to moderate their emotions, they first need to learn some strategies that will support and help them. 

The temporal distancing is a good way to make disappear a bad emotion letting time pass from the situation that created this emotion until our answer, so we are capable to think more objectively how to act in order to not make the situation even worse. Another useful strategy to relax and think more properly how we are going to respond it is the behavioral distraction which consists in doing activities that attracts and give us satisfaction. The cognitive restructuring asks us to replace the negative thoughts by positive ones to be able to see things from a different point of view. Very linked with the cognitive restructuring we find the planning of the resolution of a problem which is demanding us to analyze and look for a pleasant solution for our conflict from another perspective. Accepting the responsibility of ones own helps us to reduce the negative charge of an emotion as well as the relaxation in order to be aware of the respiration and to learn how to control it to relax and chill.