Intention, Rules, and the Garden of Eden
The objective of early childhood is to provide the holding environment that allows the child to assume that things follow from his or her intention. This is an early understanding…
Deprivation and Intention: The First Call to Adventure
Getting at the core of our experience is difficult to do philosophically, and for good reason, there is little written by authors who are experiencing first-hand the creation of the…
Trust, Mistrust, and the Birth of the Ego
The human psyche reaches unfathomable depths in any age, but we probably understand the least about the foundations laid at the first stages of life. It is a stage that…
Response Modulation and Voluntary Change in Physiology
Our attitudes towards emotion are manifested in how we act to reduce, avoid, or intensify them. This is, by definition, emotional regulation. There are many reasons why we might want…
Adapting of Cognitive Reappraisal to Varying Situations
One of the most mature and “rational” ways of regulating one’s emotion is that of cognitive reappraisal. This is an effort to rethink one’s emotion by changing the meaning of…
Regulating Emotion with Fantasy and Rumination: Attentional Deployment to Empower Emotions
Continuing the discussion on emotion regulation we come to attentional deployment. This is to changing one’s attention in order to impact the quality or intensity of our emotion. This is…
Situation Modification and Its Distinction with Mere Action
When we act on emotions, we are making an effort to change them. Whether to further excite them, or to reduce them or avoid them. We manipulate our environment so…
Emotion Regulation by Situation Selection with the Guidance of Self-Awareness
When it comes to emotions, we often talk about two different things, what they seem to mean and whether they are helpful to us or not. This article will focus…
Willpower: Ego Depletion and the Appeal to a Future Self
The feeling of being drained of energy while still having things to do is a feeling I regularly have. The tendency to procrastinate becomes practically inevitable. I hazard to guess…
Blocked Thoughts: What Is the Difference Between Suppression and Repression?
Any discussion of emotion often quickly starts attributing value to some emotions or thoughts without realizing it. We are constantly monitoring our emotional states and our progress towards goals, and…