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There's plenty to stress us out: news reports of regions devastated by natural disasters and nuclear threats; a weak economy; and (insert any number of your own personal stressors here). Some of it we can control; some we can't. And that's why it's worth taking look at how we respond to the stress around us—because that, more than the what, determines our experience.
We have discussed at length the types of strategies and attributes that can lead to flourishing, or doing better than average. What about the types of strategies and attributes that lead to resilience, or maintaining positivity during times of stress and misfortune?
The Importance of Regulating Negative Emotion
Emotions are vital to our human experience, and they are also ubiquitous. Consider what can happen during the course of just a walk down the street: Within a three-minute span you may suddenly remember how you embarrassed yourself at the last office party and blush, be interrupted in these thoughts by a text from a friend that makes you burst into laughter, and then startle in fright when someone coming around the corner runs into you.
How we manage this constant barrage of emotions may be critical for our emotional health. The different strategies by which we manage our emotions are collectively called emotion regulation.
Returning to the embarrassing office party, how do you deal with that flush of negativity? Do you distract yourself by immediately thinking of something else? Do you quash the feelings through brute force? Or do you try to reinterpret the meaning or implications of the event (Probably no one was paying as much attention as I think they were; Just because that happened once doesn’t mean I’m that kind of person)?
If this last alternative sounds the most psychologically healthy to you, research indicates that you are right. Rethinking or reinterpreting the meaning of the emotion-eliciting event is called cognitive reappraisal, and it has been linked with numerous positive outcomes like higher well-being, lower depression, and overall satisfaction with one’s life.
Why This Cognitive Reasoning Works
Since greater stress brings about greater negative emotions, using healthy forms of emotion regulation like cognitive reappraisal may be most critical as stress rises.
A recent study by Allison Troy out of University of Denver and published in the journal Emotion examined emotion regulation ability (by asking the women to reduce their emotional response to a sad movie clip) and depression symptoms in women with varying levels of recent stress.
They found that for women who were under low levels of stress, there was little relationship between their emotion regulation skill and their levels of depression.
For women under high stress, however, they found a strong association between emotion regulation ability and symptoms of depression, such that women who were better able to use cognitive reappraisal to reduce their sadness had fewer depressive symptoms.
What Does This Mean?
One thing that this research indicates is that when we are aware that we are under stress – a job loss, relationship strife, illness of a loved one – it is more important that ever to examine how we talk to ourselves about the events in our lives. Focusing on the positive and rethinking our current circumstances to see them in a more positive light is more important under high levels of stress than low levels.
Broader Implications
While we’re on the subject of managing stress and negative emotion, here is an excellent piece from the Washington Post discussing the current nuclear crisis in Japan and how the psychological fallout of past nuclear disasters has actually been more detrimental to people’s health than the physical fallout.
Tend to your emotional self-care in these troubled times, and if you can, reach out to those in need.
Sarah Rose Cavanagh, Ph.D., is professor of psychology in affective science at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. To learn more about her research, please visit http://bit.ly/sarahrose.
