god forbade...must reading

Self Regulation

    Self regulation skill is necessary for reliable emotional well being. Behaviorally, self-regulation is the ability to act in your long-term best interest, consistent with your deepest values. A violation of said values causes guilt, shame and anxiety, that undermines well being. Emotionally, self-regulation is the ability to calm yourself down when you're upset and cheer yourself up when you're down.

    A good place to start is an understanding of the biology and function of emotions in general and, specifically, feelings. Emotions move us. The word emotion, derived from the Latin, literally means to move. The ancients believed that emotions move behavior, in modern times we say they motivate behavior. They energize us to do things by sending chemical signals to the muscles and organs of the body, they prepare us for action.

Emotions have one of three motivations,

Attack

Approach

Avoid

    In approach motivation, you want to get more of something, experience more, discover more, learn more, or appreciate more, you increase its value or worthiness of your attention.

    Typical approach emotions are interest, enjoyment, compassion, trust, and love. Common approach behaviors are learning, encouraging, relating, negotiating, cooperating, pleasing, delighting, influencing, guiding, setting limits, and protecting.

    In avoid motivation, you want to get away from something - you lower its value or worthiness of your attention. Common avoid behaviors are ignoring, rejecting, withdrawing, looking down on, dismissing.

    In attack motivation, you want to devalue, insult, criticize, undermine, harm, coerce, dominate, incapacitate, or destroy. Attack emotions are anger, hatred, contempt and disgust. Characteristic attack behaviors are demanding, manipulating, dominating, coercing, threatening, bullying, harming, and abusing.

    Feelings are the conscious and most misunderstood component of emotions. In contrast to the simplicity of basic motivation, feelings are complex, ever-changing, and subject to moods, depression, sensations of warmth, cold, pleasure, pain, comfort, discomfort, and physiological states, hunger and tiredness. All these can feel like emotions, which is why people often give psychological meaning to anything that feels uncomfortable. Discomfort seems close enough to negative emotions to keep us hopelessly confused, as long as we focus on feelings instead of motivations.

    Self-regulation is more attainable when focused on values rather than feelings. The latter should be evaluated as signals about reality, a means to self-regulation, rather than an end in themselves. Indeed, self-regulation is difficult when focused on feelings, simply because focus amplifies, magnifies, and distorts them.

    Feelings are an important part of how humans create meaning and motivate behavior, but they are never the only important - and rarely the most important - aspect of the meaning-behavior complex.

    Consistent self-regulation requires focus on your deepest values rather than feelings. It's also the best way to feel better. Violation of values invariably produces bad feelings, while fidelity to them eventually makes you feel more authentic and empowered.

Steven Stosny Ph.D

in Anger in the Age of Entitlement

Psychology Today