It would seem that most of us, under the influence of emotions, behave more or less the same way: weep, experiencing a loss, rejoice, receiving gifts. But if we are so similar, why don’t universal schemes like “how to overcome stress in 10 steps” work?
The answer to this question was found by the American psychologist and neuroscientist Richard Davidson. He found that people experience and exit stress differently because they are different emotional types. How to determine your type and apply this knowledge?
Emotions and stress
Stress is a constant companion of modern man. Residents of megacities are especially vulnerable: hours in public transport or traffic jams, endless rush and fuss, multitasking that is required of us at work, and, as a result, constant nervous tension and negative emotions.
Stress makes us sharp, irritable, aggressive, leads to the fact that we catch infections, get sick with the flu more often. Chronic diseases and heart problems are exacerbated. It turns out a vicious circle: negative emotions provoke stress, and stress affects the overall emotional background.
To prevent stress or cope with its consequences, you need to find a way that suits your emotional type and take action in time.
6 aspects of emotional types
The emotional type is a unique combination of our experiences and reactions to various factors. These are our unique features, due to the physiology of the brain. People with different emotional types behave differently. Some people quickly recover after a failure at work and move on, others fall into despair and feel like failures. Some are used to listening and comforting loved ones, others prefer to keep their distance.
Emotional types are distinguished by the following features:
1. Resistance to external influences. Are you able to quickly leave failures behind or lose your temper for a long time? Do you persevere or give up immediately?
2. Forecasting the future. Are you optimistic about life, do you continue what you started, even if everything did not go according to plan?
3. Social intuition. Can you read intonations and body language of others, feel their mood and inner state?
4. Self-knowledge. How well do you know and feel yourself, are you aware of your feelings and emotions, recognize the messages of the body?
5. Sensitivity to the situation. Are you able to capture the nuances of behavior in different groups, feel the general mood and evaluate the appropriateness of certain remarks?
6. Mindfulness. Is focusing on a task easy or difficult for you?
The combination of indicators on each of the scales gives your individual emotional type, unique as a fingerprint. It is important to understand that there is no ideal or even “normal” emotional type, but it is still worth knowing yourself better and taking into account your own characteristics.
The emotional type in action
During the consultation, Olga complained about a conflict with a colleague. She herself is new to the company, but she managed to prove herself well and become a senior specialist. Her colleague has been working for a long time, feels free and sabotages duties. For example, he may go away on business in the middle of the working day, leaving Olga to deal with urgent tasks.
After Olga filled out the emotional type questionnaire, it turned out that she had a high score (9) on the scale of grasping the context and sensitivity to the situation. Olga is very worried about the current conflict. At the same time, the stability indicator — 6 — indicates insufficient ability to recover from failures. Each conflict is perceived too close to the heart, and because of this, there is discomfort and uncertainty about the correctness of one’s behavior. In addition, Olga’s attentiveness level is 6 points, which means that it is quite difficult for her to concentrate on business.
It is very important for Olga to learn how to defend boundaries, increase self-confidence, voice wishes and disagreement right away, and not go into inner feelings. Meditation sessions will help her train mindfulness and concentration.
It is difficult to find a partner if you don’t understand yourself well, you don’t feel your true needs
Lena came to the consultation with another problem: her personal life did not work out. Men appeared on the horizon, but «not the same» and not for long. During the conversation, it turned out that she did not receive her father’s love in childhood and unconsciously looked for his replacement in all men.
The test results on the emotional type questionnaire showed that Lena has the maximum predictive value of 10. This is good: the girl is positive and able to move on. The sustainability indicator — 4 — indicates that failures with men, although they spoil her mood, but not for long. Sometimes Lena wants to give up and retreat, but this state quickly passes, and the girl again tries to establish her personal life.
Why, over the years of trying, Lena never found her man? Each of them did not fit the «ideal image», did not reach high standards. This is the influence of the self-knowledge scale (6 points): it is difficult to find a partner if you do not understand yourself well, do not feel your true needs. This is what Lena needs to work on.
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Determining the emotional type will allow you to understand what your strengths and areas for development are, what needs to be tightened up, strengthened, what to pay attention to, and most importantly, how, based on this data, to recover from stress as quickly as possible.
You can fill out the questionnaire .