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Feelings are contagious. The way you say something is acknowledged before the words are processed.

Handling emotions in someone else requires self-management and empathy.

Being able to manage emotions in someone else is the core of the art of handling relationships.

When the emotional brain is driving the body with a strong reaction there can be little or no empathy. Empathy requires enough calm and receptivity so that the subtle signals of feeling from another person can be received and mimicked by one’s own emotional brain.

When the emotional brain is driving the body with a strong reaction there can be little or no empathy. Empathy requires enough calm and receptivity so that the subtle signals of feeling from another person can be received and mimicked by one’s own emotional brain.

Attunement: letting a child know their emotions are met with empathy, accepted and reciprocated

Children are more empathic when the discipline included calling strong attention to the distress their misbehavior caused someone else

BOOK CLUB MEETING

Negative emotions twist attention toward their own preoccupation, interfering with the attempt to focus elsewhere.

Distracting with something exciting, funny, uplifting works best. Aerobic exercise is good too. Achieve a small triumph or an easy success. Seeing things differently also helps. Also helping others helps.

Best solution for melancholy is spending time by yourself to think about what’s going on, why, and how to fix it. Distracting with socializing only prolongs the melancholy. But distracting does help break the thought pattern which helps to question the worry’s sadness and think positively.

How to battle worry:
1. Catch it right when it starts
2. Apply relaxation methods
3. Challenge the worrisome thoughts

Taking out anger on a person escalates the anger. Calm down first, then bring it up. Don’t suppress it, but don’t act upon it.

Another cool down is waiting out the emotional surge. Best to distract yourself during this time dive it’s hard to be angry when enjoying ourselves. Examples: going for a drive, walking, exercise, deep breathing. Thinking about what caused the anger creates more anger

Anger builds in anger. For medium anger (doesn’t work for high wage because people can’t think straight then), mitigating it with compassion deescalates it.

Anger causes a heightened emotional state, lowering the threshold that provoked anger.

Reframing a situation more positively was one of the most potent ways to put anger to rest

TAKEAWAY: Be aware of what you feel, and how you feel about those feelings.

Alexithymia: lacking words for your feelings; having difficulty describing feelings ; having trouble discriminating among emotions as well as between emotion and bodily sensation

To recognize a foul mood is to want to get out of it.

Styles of dealing with emotions:
1. Self aware
2. Engulfed
3. Accepting

Self awareness means being aware of both our mood and our thoughts about that mood

The problem is that the amygdala doesn’t do exact matches. It does partial matches which is why a response comes up in a situation you don’t expect. ESPECIALLY since the amygdala develops and starts reacting in a time before reason.

Hippocampus is a library of information regarding events. Amygdala adds the emotion to those events. People get fucked up because the amygdala develops in infancy. Neocortex and hippocampus take years to develop.

Thalamus gets info from the eyes, translates it into brain language, sends it to the neocortex for processing into logic, which then sends the info to the amygdala for emotional response. The thalamus also sends the info to the amygdala directly via a back door shortcut, and it’s faster than its transmission to the neocortex, so the amygdala can often react before the neocortex processes what’s going on.

I used to feel bad about Cohen because Frances seemed manipulating and possessive, but he’s an ass.

I used to feel bad about Cohen because Frances seemed manipulating and possessive, but he’s an ass.

Is Jake a cuckold or what? He’s ok with Mike having Brett, and Cohn having Brett, and that Greek rich guy having Brett, and Romero having Brett, and he still jumps when she says jump. Where is his self esteem?