Controlling Your Emotions, Or ‘Finding The Silver Lining,’ May Harm….

[MACHOParticipant]

Controlling Your Emotions, Or ‘Finding The Silver Lining,’ May Harm Your Psychological Health

‘Cognitive reappraisal’ is a psychological term for what a lay person might refer to as ‘accentuating the positive’: you find a way to perceive a negative situation in a positive light. Now researchers have shown that finding a silver lining in those dark clouds may not always be a good thing after all. In fact, positively reframing a situation may have negative effects on your health.

Context is King
Previous studies consistently provided evidence that cognitive reappraisal is linked with positive outcomes. Thinking positive, then, should work like a charm in all cases. Yet, doubt entered into the hypothesis of Allison Troy, a psychological scientist at Franklin & Marshall College, and her team of researchers. Doesn’t context matter as it does in most areas of life?

To investigate whether thoughtful reappraisal of a negative situation produced uniformly positive effects, Troy and her team recruited 170 people who had recently experienced a stressful life event. Next, each participant took an online survey that was designed to gauge levels of depression and life stress. About one week later, the participants returned to the lab for the second part of the experiment.

In this phase, the participants first watched a neutral film clip meant to produce a non-emotional reaction: a dispassionate baseline emotion. Now, the participants watched three sad film clips in a row. During these clips, randomly assigned participants used cognitive reappraisal techniques so that they might think about the filmed situation “in a more positive light.” After sorting through their results, the researchers discovered something unexpected.

“When stressors are controllable, it seems that cognitive reappraisal ability isn’t just less beneficial, it may be harmful,” Troy explained in a press release.

Specifically, for those participants whose stress was uncontrollable — say, an individual whose spouse is dying of inoperable cancer — the ability to regulate sadness was associated with fewer reported symptoms of depression. But for those participants whose stress was somehow controllable — say, an individual experiencing trouble at work because of poor performance — mental reappraisal was related to higher levels of depression.

“Context is important,” Troy said in the press release. “These results suggest that no emotion regulation strategy is always adaptive. Adaptive emotion regulation likely involves the ability to use a wide variety of strategies in different contexts, rather than relying on just one strategy in all contexts.” Yet, as previous researchers have discovered, thought regulation is no less complicated than emotional regulation.

Ironic Rebound Effect
In a classic 1987 study, researchers from Trinity University and University of Texas chose to explore one of Sigmund Freud’s fundamental insights: that people have unwanted thoughts. To test whether cognitive control is possible, the researchers designed an experiment where participants were asked to suppress any thoughts about white bears while thinking aloud over the course of five minutes. Though prompted not to think about a white bear, the participants seemed to routinely mention the wild animal about once a minute. The researchers deduced that the “paradoxical effect of thought suppression is that it produces a preoccupation with the suppressed thought.”

In short, controlling your thoughts may be as futile as controlling your emotions.

Sources: DN Wegner, DJ Schneider, SR Carter, TL White. Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1987.

Troy AS, Shallcross AJ, Mauss IB. A Person-by-Situation Approach to Emotion Regulation. Psychological Science. 2013

You must own a better Crystal ball than I

[Anonymous 54]

I think that seeing the silver lineing is about denile and dissosiation.
Not helpful.
I think its better to see both the good and bad in a situation.
Deal with negative emotions. Work through them.
Then try to see the posative in what youve learned from it.

Make both sides work for you..

But hey, what do I know. Im nuts! Hahah

[Anonymous 54]

I have worked with image replacment.
Theres a real word for it.
If you have seen something awful, have a more pleasant image ready to go.
When the negative image appaers, instantly replace it with the pleasnt one.
I find it helpful.

I would go insane with out it.

Imagery Rescipting. I just looked it up.

[harpo-my-“SON”Participant 2410]

excessive stoicism is fear disguised.

I have been guilty of this in the past.

would you rather someone harm themselves
or lose control and harm you or someone you love?

Now I know that those who are attempting
to control you/me the populous, are more
enslaved than anyone else.They deserve our pity.

My silver lining no longer has to be created.
For I am sitting on my cloud of questionable
mentality. Thank you Jesus.

I express my sincere love and respect for
every person of authority along with my pity
for their very real enslavement.
I know it is voluntary, but that does
not change their status. (SERVANT)

Gun carrying civil servants are targets
for every lunatic who fails to harm themselves
by taking control of their own emotions.

Better to control your emotions than spill
them out onto society.

Once you go postal their is no going back.

good post Macho.

Love and respect to all.

I was bound to be misunderstood, and I laugh at those who misunderstand me. Kind mockery at the well intentioned, but unfettered cruelty towards those would be prison guards of my creative possibilities. This so as to learn as much from misunderstanding as from understanding. Taking pleasure in worthy opponents and making language fluid and flowing like a river yet pointed and precise as a dagger. Contradicts the socialistic purpose of language and makes for a wonderful linguistic dance, A verbal martial art with constant parries that hone the weapon that is the two edged sword of my mouth.

[Dark KenshiParticipant 2132]

Interesting… Buddhist monks probably are one of the most psychologically impaired people in the world, just like Stoics, aren’t they?

Ohhh yeah, they are absolutely impaired, when they are contented all the time, they probably don’t see things in a very grim an dark way, because that is how you avoid depression, right? Riiiiiight?

F~~~ no.

I rather be “impaired” like a Stoic philosopher or a buddhist monk, than one of those “depressed” good-for-nothings that I see all around, all the time.

"Young was I once, I walked alone, and bewildered seemed in the way; then I found me another and rich I thought me, for man is the joy of man." Odin, Hàvamàl, stanza 47.

[FragmentedParticipant 2758]

MACHO wrote:

say, an individual whose spouse is dying of inoperable cancer — the ability to regulate sadness was associated with fewer reported symptoms of depression. But for those participants whose stress was somehow controllable — say, an individual experiencing trouble at work because of poor performance — mental reappraisal was related to higher levels of depression.

This isn’t rocket science to me. A person who’s about to lose someone to cancer, knows it’s out of their hands, therefor they feel no responsibility for the outcome. A person who’s performing poorly at work, feels like they’re responsible for the outcome, believing they have the power to change it, even if they sometimes don’t.

http://register-her.net/web/guest/home

[Gravel PitParticipant]

I’m setting a marker comment here so I can come back and read the OP, wanted to bring it to the top of the list. Sounds interesting.

[Gravel PitParticipant]

MACHO wrote:

The researchers deduced that the “paradoxical effect of thought suppression is that it produces a preoccupation with the suppressed thought.”

This is basically the set up for the movie Inception. Just saying, kind of funny.

harpo-my-“SON” wrote:

I express my sincere love and respect for
every person of authority along with my pity
for their very real enslavement.

I do something similar to this.

The flaw with the experiments above is that they replace the negative thoughts with “positive” ones. Trying to imagine a “silver lining” is always going to be unhelpful.

When in a sudden rage or flurry of negative emotion, or when in physical distress…this is what I do.

I consider nihilism and the seemingly vast emptiness of limitless spacetime. Its SO indifferent, so f~~~ing meaningless and void. We don’t f~~~ing matter. I don’t matter. The feelings of rage or sadness are inconsequential and meaningless. It’s all nothing. Whatever it is that is causing the distress is puny and meaningless in the face of the enveloping blackness.

Not exactly a silver lining is it? That is why it works. Because its the truth (for me).

Then to wrap it all up. I spring back from that vast darkness and meaningless eternity, all the way back to the micro level. I’m seeing one of those fishing bobbers on the water right off the edge of a small row boat.

It’s sunset, orange and amber colors reflect form the tiny variations and dimples in the water bouncing off the floating bobber. I imagine the tiny particles of water. I imagine the silence, everything is silent and blocked out. I even imagine looking up from the water at the floating bobber. Nothing matters.

Go back and forth between infinite spacetime to that bobber. Rage and depression subsides.

[MACHOParticipant]

I love lying down on the grass on a crystal clear night and stare into space imagining my place in the universe at that precise moment.. imagining my body glued to the earth by gravity keeping me from falling into outer space!

That does the trick for me every time 😎

Gravel Pit wrote:

the seemingly vast emptiness of limitless spacetime. Its SO indifferent, so f~~~ing meaningless and void. We don’t f~~~ing matter

You must own a better Crystal ball than I

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