A person’s life is full of events, and each of them is accompanied by certain emotions. Everyone at least once felt incredible euphoria, incomprehensible sadness, the joy of meeting or complete apathy. This is normal. Every emotion that is caused by environmental influences is the norm. But often an individual has a violation of emotions when he unconsciously begins to go from extreme to extreme.
Emotions need to be felt.
How and when a person manifests the spectrum of his emotions often depends on his environment and the behavioral framework that are associated with this environment. Not everyone can do something non-standard, sometimes even crazy. You must admit that it’s not so easy to stand in the middle of the street and shout something at the top of your voice, because each person initially has social models of behavior that do not provide for eccentric actions that do not fit into any framework.
Such stereotypes and limitations lead to the fact that a large number of unexpressed emotions accumulate inside. Naturally, emotional stress increases every day and a person becomes prone to mental disorders. But that's not all. If you hold back emotions for too long, then after some time a person will simply forget how to express them, and they will not have a free exit. From the inability to express their feelings, a violation of emotions is formed, which entail a disorder of the entire psychophysical system of the body.
Emotions and mood
In psychology, emotions are a subtle feeling that constantly depends on a huge number of immanent and external factors, and needs to be recognized by the individual and carefully worked out. Speaking in scientific language, this is an integral manifestation of the altered tone of neuropsychic activity. V. Myasischev suggested that the entire list of emotions can be divided into three large groups:
- Reactions that are responsive to the stimuli that provoked them.
- States. When the neuro-psychological tone changes and is kept in an altered state.
- Relations. There is a logical relationship between the emotion of a person and a specific person, object or process.
In psychology, emotions are the main regulators of the body's mental and bodily activities, which can use psychological defense methods and help to adapt.
In general, all emotions are aimed at clearly reflecting the internal, mental state of a person, because they often show much more than words. If we exclude the entire list of emotions from the everyday life of a person, then everything that surrounds him will turn into a dull reality, which is simply there. Conversations will become monotonous, meaningless and uninteresting, and people will completely cease to understand each other. The emotional coloring of the dialogues makes it possible to understand the immanent state of a person and find common ground with him. Plus, without emotional expression, art would be meaningless.
Emotions also affect mood. And vice versa: if the mood changes, emotions change. Very often, increased emotions can lead to conflicts with others. Violation of feelings is characterized by the fact that a person suddenly begins to rush from one extreme to another. He becomes emotional impotent, acquiring various mental disorders.
Learning emotions
At all times, in order to recognize emotion, people looked at facial expressions and listened to the emotional coloring of speech. Back in the USSR, methods were developed that help to recognize standard emotions. These include anger, joy, disgust, surprise, sadness, fear. Today, there are various physical and psychological indicators of the manifestation of emotions.
Physiological indicators of changes in the emotional background are pressure fluctuations, palpitations, skin reaction, temperature, psychosomatic indicators. If a person is worried or feels fear, these indicators may decrease or increase.
As for the methodology for recognizing emotions by facial expressions and gestures, it was created in the middle of the twentieth century. There is still a debate between psychologists and physiologists about how effective this technique is. Some gestures of facial expressions can be imposed by society, some - a person can consciously control. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to interpret the violation of emotions using physiognomy.
Psychological methods are aimed at determining the immanent state of a person. For this, various tests and questionnaires are usually used that reveal the emotional characteristics of the individual. Depending on the answers, a more specific description of the psychological state can be given.
You can also determine the violation of the development of emotions using a special diary. A person should write down in him all the emotions that he experiences throughout the day for subsequent analysis. This helps to identify the state of the emotional sphere of a person. If it is violated, then all physiological and psychological data will have unsatisfactory indicators.
When a person is at odds with himself, it is extremely difficult for him to give an objective assessment of situations or people. He is focused on his inner experiences and very often falls into a hysterical state. As a result, he may experience mental states such as:
- Stress.
- Frustration.
- The crisis.
Stress
Stressful conditions can become sources of various mental illnesses. Stress is usually understood as a strong emotional stress and / or shock that arise as a result of unpleasant experiences. In the 30s of the last century, Canadian pathophysiologist G. Selye studied the effect of stress on the activity of the body. He formed the doctrine of General Adaptation Syndrome (OSA). In general, the scientist identified two reactions to the influence of the environment:
- Specific. A person has a specific disease with specific symptoms.
- Nonspecific. In the context of the general adaptation syndrome , any disease can be traced. This reaction consists of three phases:
- First phase. Anxiety. Under the influence of stress, the body changes its basic characteristics.
- Second phase. Resistance. The body begins to resist the effects of the stressor, anxiety decreases, and the body is struggling to adapt to changing conditions.
- Third phase. Exhaustion. Prolonged exposure to a stressor depletes the body. Anxiety again appears in a person, only in this case it is already irreversible, diseases of an endogenous type begin to develop.
A person is not able to adapt infinitely to environmental conditions, sooner or later his body will "wear out" and all possible emotional disturbances will appear. Despite all this, stress is not always harmful, because only thanks to it is the training of the psyche and the body.
Frustration
This is another specific emotional state that occurs when a person cannot satisfy his needs. This condition is characterized by:
- The presence of a plan according to which a person should act initially.
- The presence of an insurmountable obstacle that hinders the achievement of the ultimate goal.
In such situations, a person can manifest himself either as a mature personality, or as an infantile one. In the first case, the individual will more actively achieve his goal and his motivation will increase significantly. In the second, the individual will behave unconstructively. This can manifest itself in aggressive behavior or avoiding the problem.
The crisis
This concept originated and developed in America. At that time, clinics and mental health centers began to be established in the country. Crisis is usually understood as a condition that occurs when a person is faced with an obstacle on his way to a goal, and cannot overcome it for a long time with the usual methods.
First, a person begins a period of disorganization. During this time, a person makes many abortive attempts to solve the problem. Ultimately, he reaches a form of adaptation that best suits his interests.
Just like stress, a crisis carries a sanogenic and pathogenic component. The individual who managed to cope with the crisis takes on a new form of adaptation in difficult situations. If this does not happen, then symptoms of disturbance of emotions begin to appear.
There are several types of crises:
- The crisis of development. Usually caused by situations such as entering a new school, retirement, marriage, etc.
- Random crises. They are spontaneous, unexpected. This is unemployment, natural disaster or a certain social situation.
- Typical crises. Events that sooner or later occur in any family: death, the appearance of a newborn, etc.
Each of these crises has its own characteristics, which are inherent only to them. Accordingly, different methods of assistance and preventive measures are chosen.
Symptomatology
Symptoms of impaired emotions are quite extensive. Various emotional fluctuations can lead to stressful situations, corresponding long-term actions and cause irreparable harm to the human psyche. If the general emotional background suddenly changes, then this may be the first signal of the development of mental illness.
Emotions arise and are realized as a result of the functioning of the cerebral cortex, autonomic and motor system. Therefore, one can observe a violation of emotions with local brain damage and a general malfunction in the functioning of the body, and the influence of external factors only aggravates this condition. As a result, various syndromes appear, which contribute to a further breakdown of the emotional sphere.
Such syndromes include such positive and negative emotions as:
- Depression is a persistent depressed state of personality, which is accompanied by negative thoughts, longing and sadness for no reason. All events that occur around the patient, he perceives with a sense of hopelessness, which can lead to suicide. Usually this condition occurs with hypertension or hepatitis.
- Mania. This syndrome is characterized by general high spirits, motor and mental agitation, which is usually expressed by speech and gestures. A person is characterized by a predominance of lower emotions: he ceases to feel the measure in food and sex. Self-esteem rises to a real megalomania.
- Dysphoria. A person daily experiences aggression to everything that surrounds him. This can be expressed in a sullen mood, outbursts of anger, irritability, discontent or rage. This condition is characteristic of temporal lobe epilepsy.
- Euphoria. The antipode of dysphoria. The person is serene, feels completely happy, does not pay any attention to problems and worries. Even if he has visible troubles, a person sincerely believes that he lives quite well. He simply looks at the world through rose-colored glasses, he even perceives tragic situations with joy and optimism.
- Ecstasy. It is believed that this is the highest degree of manifestation of delight and admiration. In a state of increasing emotional tension, a sense of enthusiasm erases the boundaries between the real and the fictional world. A man goes into a trance.
- Anxiety. A person has emotional anxiety. Subconsciously, he begins to worry about tragedies or disasters that may occur. Usually this anxiety is not caused by anything and is provoked by a wound-up life situation. A sense of anxiety is characteristic of somatic and nervous disorders.
- Emotional lability. Emotionally labile individuals have an unstable mood. In five minutes, a person can go from fervent laughter to all-consuming rage. Such people are sentimental and sensitive to even minor manifestations of emotions from the environment.
Classification and types of emotions in various mental illnesses
Emotional disorders are characteristic of people with mental illness. People suffering from neurosis note painful emotional and affective reactions and emotional states. Those who suffer from a neurosis of obsessive conditions, there is an increased sensitivity and anxiety. Those with hysteria are characterized by lability of emotions and impulsiveness. Neurotics suffer from irritability, fatigue and weakness. All types of neurosis are characterized by reduced frustration tolerance.
Patients with psychopathy are prone to pathological emotional and affective reactions; emotionally aggressive outbreaks are characteristic of epileptoid, hysteroid, and hyperthymic psychopathy. Those who suffer from asthenic, psychasthenic, and sensitive psychopathy are characterized by low mood, despair, lethargy, and longing. But schizoid psychopaths have a dissociation of emotional manifestations, which can be described in one simple expression:
As fragile as glass in relation to oneself and dull as a tree in relation to others.
Epilepsy is characterized by dysphoria. Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy often suffer from fears, anxiety, anger; much less often they can observe feelings of “insight” and pleasant sensations in different organs. Those who suffer from organic lesions of the central nervous system note emotional and affective reactions, irritability, euphoria, anxiety, and “incontinence of emotions”.
If we take into account the above types of emotions, the category of relations suffers the most from the disorder of emotions. They become pathologically distorted, a person may not understand what is happening to him: at one moment he feels normal (that is, experiences neutral emotions), and at another second he feels all-consuming hatred or jealousy.
In a normal mental state, a person feels the need for activity and strive to complete the work begun. If any emotional pathologies occur, then a person may be chased by affective outbursts, he will refuse to work, his muscles will tighten and obvious vegetovascular reactions will appear.
Children
Emotional problems haunt not only adults, but also children. As you know, the emotional sphere develops in a person from birth and young children have a much greater susceptibility than adults. As a result, a violation of emotions in a child can manifest itself more pronounced. Unfortunately, parents do not attach importance to the general depression of the child and write off uncontrolled behavior or unwillingness to do homework on character traits and ordinary laziness.
In an adult, emotional instability is expressed standardly: it is sadness, longing, tension, unmotivated joy and lability of mood. In children, this diagnosis is hidden, and most often the child simply begins to suffer from pain in the lungs, heart and other organs. This is manifested by psychosomatic disorders. The child begins to lose his appetite, he has problems with the gastrointestinal tract, mental development is inhibited. He does not sleep well at night, sweating appears.
Disturbance of emotions in preschool children is manifested in anger, unmotivated aggression, fictional fears. If the baby suffered organic lesions during childbirth or as a result of some other trauma, then in the first few years this creates irreversible changes in the emotional background.
In genetics, children are given such characteristics as temperament, poise, adaptation and mobility. All other emotions are acquired in the process of socialization, as well as their normal functioning.
The development of the child is largely influenced by his environment, especially peers. Usually children tend to resemble each other, have the same interests and views. For growing children - this is normal, but it is worth watching to see if the child turns into a conformist.
Violation of emotions in children can be divided into two types of reactions:
- Pathological. Mental reactions, which are expressed in a change in behavior, which leads to a change in social adaptation. Usually manifest as neurotic disorders. Significant role is played by behavioral and psychological factors such as family conflicts, improper upbringing and non-pedagogical behavior of teachers. Symptoms are displayed in a continuous violation of the emotional sphere.
- Characterological. This reaction is due to the impact of a certain microenvironment on the behavior of children.It has an accurate orientation, does not violate social adaptation and does not have associated physiological disorders. Violations are manifested in mental abnormalities, which are expressed in low self-esteem, emotional immaturity, speech impairment and the cognitive sphere. There is a general intellectual underdevelopment.
How to manage emotions?
Exploring the emotional sphere of a person by psychologists, physiologists and psychotherapists, several techniques have been developed to correct changes in the emotional background in children and adults:
- The active approach. Here the main one is game therapy for children. Most often, children with emotional disabilities have a lack of gameplay. The absence of active games negatively affects mental and mental development. If a child will work through various situations in life in the gameplay, then he will quickly adapt to real life conditions.
- The psychodynamic approach. Weakening of emotions occurs due to the resolution of internal conflict. A person must learn to understand himself and his needs, be aware of life experience.
- Ethno-functional therapy. In laboratory conditions, the subject’s bifurcation is artificially created so that a person can realize his problems by looking at himself from the side. Having the ability to transfer his emotions to an ethnic projection, a person fully understands them and passes them through himself. Since managing emotions is not always easy, ethno-functional therapy is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Today, problems in the emotional sphere are common among all segments of the population, of any age. There is no person who in the conditions of modern life does not experience stress, fatigue and irritability. Some social conditions tell us that we need to hide our feelings, while others appeal to the excessive manifestation of the entire list of emotions. Given such a cognitive dissonance, it is not surprising that the public suffers from a disorder of emotions.