Effectively Managing Physical Feelings, Emotions, and Moods
Physical feelings, emotions, and moods are central aspects of our humanity; from sensory pleasure and pain to anger, fear, love, joy and happiness, to candle-lit dinners and sunsets, they are crucial to all our experience, they are central in all our interactions with ourselves, colleagues, loved ones, and the world beyond.
Increasing our sensory and emotional sensitivity means that there is more of the world available to us; increasing the range and depth of feeling and emotional experience increases our potential quality of life. Managing moods effectively greatly enhances our experience of the world and our ability to optimise situations.
Sensory feelings, emotions, and moods are intimately related. We often seek the enjoyable feeling and emotion feelings and try to avoid or get rid of the uncomfortable or painful ones. While this is often a useful, if we do not understand that it is often the case that uncomfortable or painful feelings and emotions play a crucial role in identifying damage (pain), real and potential threats (fear and anxiety), then we are at risk of mismanaging our feelings and emotions. If we stop the pain, fear or anxiety rather than using it effectively we may well put ourselves and others in greater risk. If they are inaccurate or mistaken or stuck feelings and emotional responses then it would be useful to correct them rather than just “get rid of them”.
The same is true for enjoyable emotions we may mismanage them by seeking them even though they may not be relevant or useful; From the pleasure a bully gets in inflicting pain, the emotional high in drug use and crime through to missing out on the development higher emotions and meaning in life through an addiction to watching soap operas.
To get the most from our positive emotions and to use our negative emotions relevantly we need to manage them effectively. To manage our lives we need to manage our experiences of pleasure and pain effectively.
The effective managing of emotions starts with a high level of sensitivity to both and how they relate and continues with an understanding of how they work and the skill to manage them. Effective management includes using emotions as relevant responses to life experience and for planning for the future, developing effective unconscious emotions and creating “higher” and “deeper” emotions.
All of this is dependent on an accurate understanding of how our feelings and emotions work, how to manage them effectively and how to change them effectively. A very effective way of doing this is through the application of Developmental Behavioural Modelling DBM®.
MODELLING PHYSICAL SENSATIONS, EMOTIONS, and MOODS
Physical sensations are often misunderstood, pain for example while being very unpleasant functions very positively as an alert or warning of hurt or damage. To often the desire to get rid of pain undermines its positive function. The same mistakes are evident in our managing of emotions.
Our emotions have been a source of fascination since the earliest times. There have been many different theories about emotions from Psychologists like William James and Freud and from Philosophers, from Lange to Sartre with little practical application for managing our emotions more effectively. Moods have not been given the same level of attention although they are central to many aspects of our lives, from drugs to change “negative moods” to the recreational use of drugs as “mood enhancers”.
In English “mood” covers a wide range of important experiences and processes including physical and emotional feelings (good and bad mood, moody), motivation (in the mood for pizza), environmental conditions (setting the mood). In Spanish there are a range of different labels and phrases for the same experiences. Examples include: for mood, “humor, esta de anima, modo”, for good mood and bad mood “ en bien humor y mal humor, for in the mood “tener ganas estar para apatecer”, for lighten the mood relajar al ambiente”, for mood swings “cambios de humor”, for not in the mood “no estar de humor”, for set the mood “crear el ambiente”. This wide range of different
Developmental Behavioural Modelling( DBM®) offers a unique range of distinctions, models, and skills. These offer a practical and verifiable set of distinctions, models and processes for identifying HOW we experience feelings, emotions, and moods, HOW they develop and change, and HOW we manage them more effectively. DBM® identifies 14 different types of feeling and emotion, all of which work differently, and each one requires a different way of managing and different skills for changing if we are to optimally effective.
The developmental perspective of DBM® allows us to make a practical decisions on how best to manage and change feelings, emotions, and moods with the aim of improving the quality of life for ourselves and others.
Developmental Behavioural Modelling DBM®
All of us build our understanding of the world around us based on our experience. We continue to create and change this understanding throughout our lives. We call this understanding that each of us creates our ‘model’ of the world. By a model we mean “an organised dynamic representation of our world”. We do not respond to the world as it is. We respond to how we have made sense of it, how it is “meaningful” to us. We then respond to new things based on what we already “know”. Instincts build in responses for animals but human beings need to learn how to respond in our cultures, organisations, countries and families. This learning, the building of a model, is a process of Modelling. All our cognition and all our emotions are based on our understanding of reality, on our models of the world.
We build and use models; our clients build and use models. As professional we are more likely to build formal models (including theories) to extend our informal or “naturalistic” modelling.
Both informal understanding and the formal understanding of science are models (and theories) built through the process of modelling. No matter what the epistemology underlying a theory both the epistemology and the theory require to be created in the first place.
Developmental Behavioural Modelling (DBM is the formal studying of the complete range of modelling. This includes the structure and function of models, how models are formally and informally constructed and applied.
WORKSHOP
In this workshop John will introduce the key distinctions, models and change processes for effectively managing physical feelings, emotions, and moods identified through the field of Developmental Behavioural Modelling (DBM®).
While this training will focus mainly on emotions and moods we will explore physical sensations and how we can manage (and mis-manage) them as well as how physical sensations are involved in emotions and moods. As well as exploring how the three are similar and how they differ we will also explore the patterns that connect all three and how they interact together.
This workshop is NOT about quick superficial techniques for getting rid of unwanted emotions. The workshop IS about developing a deeper understanding, an increased sensitivity and skill in creating, using and relevantly changing emotions.
Participants will learn:
The Science of sensation, emotions, and mood: aspects of the wide range of scientific exploration of feeling and emotion including how our feelings and emotions can benefit from the investigation, experimentation and verification of scientific methodology
The Art of sensation, emotions, and mood; how feeling and emotion plays a major role in art and in every day emotions
The Art and Science of effective sensation, emotions, and mood; how these two elements integrate to form a holistic methodology for developing effective emotions
What physical sensations are and how they work
What emotions are and how they work
What moods are and how they work
The evolution and learning of feeling, emotion, and mood.
How to identify feelings, emotions, and moods
The metaphors of feelings, emotions, and moods
The myths of feelings, emotions, and moods
How to identify patterns and processes of feelings, emotions, and moods
How all feelings, emotions, and moods relate holistically
The key differences in feelings, emotions, and moods, and how to manage them differently
How to experience the full range of feelings, emotions, and moods
How to change feelings, emotions, and moods
Sensory sensitivity and how to develop sensory skills
Emotional skills and how to develop emotional skill
Skills in creating and developing moods
How to use emotions to think and feel more effectively
Sensory feeling intelligence and how to develop sensory feeling intelligence
Emotional intelligence and how to develop emotional intelligence
How to use emotions intelligently
Emotional wisdom and how to develop emotional wisdom
The benefits and limitations of the expressing and suppressing of feelings, emotions, and moods
How to Coach feelings, emotions, and moods
Specific change processes and patterns for working with emotional difficulties, problems and limitations
How emotions operate in relation to our conscious mind, unconscious mind and biological mind
The role of emotions in psychological defences
The role of feelings, emotions, and moods in personal and professional development
The relationship between feeling, emotions, and moods and creativity
How to develop “higher level” emotions
