The Emotional Curve In Our Lives

What is the emotional curve and how does it play a role in our lives? We’ll talk about that below.

Many experts define a feeling as a subjective state with an overwhelming or intense affective charge.

It is difficult to clearly describe the feeling itself, but everyone can describe the subjective states in a clear way. For example, you can describe a situation when you felt angry or happy.

A large part of these emotions, from sadness to fear, develop in a similar way: through the emotional curve.

What are emotions for?

According to researchers such as Martinez-Sanchez (2011), a lack of outlet for important emotional events (such as crying over someone you have lost, expressing concern, etc.) can give rise to a noticeable physiological hyperactivation.

It can even result in depression and other negative effects that affect physical and mental health in both the long and short term.

Why then is it so important to express emotions?

These authors address the existence of intrapersonal (within oneself) functions that are related to homeostasis and survival, true extrapersonal functions, which have a more social nature.

Intrapersonal factors

• Emotions help coordinate different cognitive, physiological and behavioral systems.
• They activate behaviors that can be counteracted when the emotion is not there. A person who, for example, is not very athletic can run very fast when he is scared. Or a self-defined pacifist who can defend someone who is in danger when he feels angry.

• Emotions prepare the body for escape or fencing, and they play an extremely important role in your survival. Feeling scared is just the precursor to the escape-or-fencing response in relation to everything you experience as a threat. Without the marker of fear, the body would not have been able to face danger or escape.

When your body starts with this alarm in response to a dangerous stimulus (when you experience fear) this activates it

When you are in danger, the fear will increase your heartbeat, contract the spleen to secrete red blood cells in case of injury, dilate your pupils, etc.

Emotions teach you to handle information quickly. Your brain can quickly evaluate the properties of the stimulus, allowing you to take appropriate action as quickly as possible.

Extra personal factors

Emotions help you communicate your intentions to other people and share how you feel.

They help you control your facial expressions, gestures and and your voice so that you can also influence the behavior of others.

As Aristotle once wrote, man is a political animal, and emotions also have a socializing role. Your emotions affect, for example, how others behave.

Some people use sadness when they feel they need support from others; others use care or joy, etc.

There are many, many examples of the role of emotions in social relationships.

The emotional curve

It is difficult to maintain the maximum intensity of an emotion over a long period of time. In fact, the normal development of an emotion is a curve.

The feelings first get stronger and stronger. When they have reached maximum intensity, they decrease in strength.

This may seem intuitive, but it is not something that most of us think about on a daily basis, especially when it comes to mental health.

This curve also applies to emotions as well as anxiety and panic attacks. However, they rarely last more than ten minutes.

The emotional intensity that comes with fear, anger and sadness makes it very easy to act when the feeling is at its peak.

Many people go into therapy for this reason. The actions you take at the height of your emotional intensity are often counterproductive.

Learning to deal with emotions in therapy

During the early states of therapy, when the patient does not know how to handle his answers, it can be good to talk about the emotional curve.

The goal is not to control the emotions, but to avoid the negative consequences that a poorly managed intense emotion can give rise to.

For patients suffering from depression, anxiety or sadness, it can be very helpful if you learn how emotions work in detail. The therapist should also explain what you should not do during the peak of the emotional intensity.

Continued therapy should over time help the patient not to experience such intense emotional responses.

Three things you should not do when the emotional curve peaks

It is important to explain which three things you should not do when experiencing intense emotions, regardless of whether it is anger, sadness, fear or happiness.

The experts recommend this because the actions taken during these occasions are probably not rational.

Here are some things you should not do at the peak of the curve:

• Take decisions. We can use the example of a woman with clinical depression. It is important to make her understand that it is dangerous to make decisions when she feels the worst. The decisions she makes will always go hand in hand with the sadness or desperation she feels at this time. If she avoids making decisions on these occasions, she can avoid outcomes such as suicide and self-harming behaviors.

• Try to solve the problem. If the intense feeling was caused by a certain event, you should not try to fix what is happening while you are still feeling it. Since your rational brain is not turned on, you will not have all the tools you normally need to solve a problem. Frustration can also lead you to make wrong decisions. It is best to wait until you feel the emotional intensity decrease.
• Think. Emotions can lead to endless catastrophic, irrational and worthless thoughts. Some of these thoughts can actually cause new and intense emotions, which can lead to irrational behavior.

In addition to these actions, it is good if you make a list of alternatives that you can use on occasions with emotional intensity.

Develop things you can do that will help you avoid thinking, solving problems, or making decisions. Have the list ready the next time you are high on the emotional curve.