Uncategorized – Page 3 – The Emotions Doctor

An Open Letter to my Registered Subscribers

Blog Registration:

I recently adjusted my blog so that only those who register can leave a comment. Many of you have chosen to register and I thank you for your support.

Your Email Address:

I want you to know what happens to the email address you provide when you register.

The short answer is nothing.

I do not like spam and I assume that you do not either. While I could be wrong, it is entirely possible that you gave your email address because it is required in order to register and be able to leave a comment and NOT because you wanted another source of email notifications in your inbox.

Based on this assumption, you will not be receiving emails from me.

Communicating with me:

I DO, HOWEVER, WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU ABOUT HOW I CAN MAKE THIS BLOG BETTER FOR YOU!

So, as a registered reader, please leave a comment on the blog or feel free to contact me via email. My email address is TheEmotionsDoctor (at) gmail.com.

Note ==> Put “TED” in the subject line.

I, personally, read all comments and TED related emails.

New Posts:

I post a new article every other Wednesday because I want to educate my readers about emotions and about relationships.

So, visit the site (at least) every other Wednesday for a new post and leave a comment if you choose. (Liked the article because…Didn’t like the article because… Want more information about…)

Finally-A Reminder about the “Index Tab” to help you access earlier posts:

Remember to click on the “Index Tab” in the upper right hand corner of the home page. I have upgraded the index to list posts by Topic, Title and Date to help you more easily access any article that interests you.

Again, thanks for your support and continued involvement with my blog.

Ed Daube, Ph.D. The Emotions Doctor.

Happy New Year 2019

To you, my readers:

I would like to wish you all a happy and prosperous 2019.

In submitting my posts on his blog, My intent is that your life and your relationships have been improved by the knowledge that you can master your emotions as tools.

I hope that you will continue to use the suggestions I make rather than just consume them (as most people do).

With this in mind, let me reemphasize that I welcome all of your comments and questions.

If you would like me to address an issue related to understanding what emotions are or how to use them as tools, please take a moment to leave me a comment on the blog. I read every comment because I want to eliminate spam (there is a lot of it) and respond to all legitimate comments.

So, for 2019, help me help you by leaving your comments.

My only disclaimer is that I can only respond in general terms and, while I will make every effort to answer your questions as completely as I can, I don’t do therapy over the internet so my comment may not completely address your issue.

But, I will do my best.

With that said, I look forward to 2019 and I hope you do to.

All the best.

Announcing a new and improved Index!

To my Readers:

In order to make it easier for you to access the valuable information on this blog that is most relevant to you, I have revised the Index so that it now reflects specific topics.

These are the topic headings:

Using Emotions as Tools (including facts you didn’t know, your emotional toolkit, and more)

Anger (including anger mastery, you as a target of other’s anger, and more)

Other Emotions (fear, anxiety, empathy, regret, jealousy, regret, stress, and more)

Relationships and Emotions (conflict resolution, empathy, living in an emotional world, and more.)

Words and Emotions (you cannot not communicate, what vs why, atomic power of words, and more)

Here is HOW you can get to the article that interests you:

Go to the Index by clicking on the Index tab above.
Go the the Specific Topic.
Find the Article that addresses the information you want.
Note the Date of Publication.
Go to the Archives to the right of the page.
Click on the Date.
Scroll to the article.
Enjoy.

I write this blog for you. Please let me know how I can improve it by sending me an email with “blog” in the subject line.

My email address is: TheEmotionsDoctor (at) gmail.com
Please be assured that I do not collect or share email addresses and I will never spam you.

To your continued learning…..

The Emotions Doctor

My 100th post, the INDEX, two (no opt-in) downloads, and a very interesting question from a reader.

A special note to you my readers and followers:

This is my 100th post. Happy 100.

As it is with any series that appears on TV, the 100th episode is a major milestone.

This is how I view this post.

The blog index and free downloads. (Just a reminder.)

Index

For your convenience so that you can access any of my past posts, I have included a tab to the index of blog posts by title and date at the top of my home page. If this link doesn’t work, you can click on the tab, scroll down and the index link will appear. Find the topic you want and go right to the specific month in the archives on the right hand side of the screen. You may have to scroll down just a bit to get to the post you are seeking.

Downloads

Secondly, you can also download, with no opt-in, the first two chapters of both of my Amazon best selling books from the welcome post.

Please visit the index and take advantage of the free downloads.

So, it the spirit of 100, I thought I would write about a question I received on Quora not too long ago. It was a question I had never been asked.

Here is the question.

What emotions should you experience daily, in order to be in control of your emotions?

My response…..

While I am not trying to “put words in your mouth” nor am I demeaning your question in any way, it seems that you view emotions as if they were vitamins. Emotions are not like vitamins as I will explain below. So, the short answer is that there are no minimum daily requirements for emotions.

To put this answer in a different light, you would find the following question quite silly: “How many times a day should my smoke detector go off?”

Let me elaborate..

Your emotions are tools, just like your smoke detector, which alert you to how you perceive your surroundings. The primary emotions are mad (anger), sad, glad (happy) fear, disgust, and surprise. With the exception of glad and surprise, all of the primary emotions are primitive threat detectors. Each emotion reflects a different perception of a situation that demands your attention, elicits an initial reaction, and gives you an opportunity to develop and implement a reasoned response.

You do not control your tools such as the smoke detector, your smart phone, or your TV remote, you learn how to master them as tools to get them to work for you and do what they were “designed” to do.

If you perceive something that you find interesting, enjoyable or pleasurable, the emotion you experience will be glad (happy), your initial reaction will be to spend more time with the task or person you find interesting and you will respond by pursuing that task or person. This is the “message” of glad.

If you perceive a situation which threatens your values, your goals, or your sense of right vs wrong and you believe you can do something to change that situation, the emotion you feel will be anger, your initial reaction will be to attack and your reasoned response would be an action that is designed to deal with the situation. This is the “message” of anger.

So, as your emotions alert you to your surroundings and prepare you to act, you won’t experience an emotion until you encounter a situation or person which grabs your attention. Many situations ==> many emotions. No situations==>no emotions.

Your task is to learn about your emotions, how they work, and how you can use them as tools.

You can go back and read the many comments I have made on Quora or you can get a good overview by downloading a free copy of the first chapters of my book Emotions as Tools:A Self Help Guide to Controlling Your Life not Your Feelings and my second book Beyond Anger Management:Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool from by website TheEmotionsDoctor.com.

……

To you, my readers. Thank you for coming to (and back to) my blog and participating in my effort to bring some clarity to the emotional universe. If my material raises some questions for you, please take a moment to leave a comment. While I don’t do therapy over the internet, I do read all comments and attempt to answer all legitimate (I eliminate SPAM.) questions.

As a reminder, in order to help you access what I have written, I have included an index to all my posts. There is an IndexI tab at the top of this site. When you click on it, a PDF document will come up which lists each post and tells you the date it was posted. You can then to the post in the archives to the right of the screen.

Thanks, again. And, here is the next 100 posts.

It is the “end” of the year. How will you approach it?

Today is December 27.

The New Year is 4 days away.

You still have time to decide how will you handle 2018.

I am not talking here about how you will bring in the New Year. You may choose to go out and party, stay at home with your significant others, or watch the “ball” drop at midnight and go to bed.

What I am talking about is how you will approach the New Year emotionally.

There are many options:

Will you think back on 2017 and nostalgically reflect on all you have accomplished?
Will you get depressed because of all the things you didn’t get done that you wanted to accomplish?
Will you be anxious because you can’t predict what will happen in 2018?
Will you feel sad because of what, or who, you lost?
Or will you feel despair because you dread what may happen in 2018?

As The Emotions Doctor, my suggestion for you involves three steps each of which comes from the emotional process I have discussed in many of my earlier posts:

take some time to think about what you are feeling,
validate the feeling
make a decision about how you want to approach 2018 and what you want to feel.

It is important to note that your feelings reflect how you view your “world”.

Your perception of the world is always under your control.

Because of this, you can choose how you want to feel about the future (2018).

Yes, it is true that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the world today and going forward into 2018.

If you choose to focus on this uncertainty and your inability to control global events, you will feel anxiety as distress. This can lead to depression.

If you choose to acknowledge the uncertainty but focus your attention of what you can influence, then you might experience the flipside of anxiety which is anticipation.

You can set some goals if you wish (and this is a good idea if the goals are believable, backed up by a plan and measurable).

Or, you can make some new year’s resolutions which is probably not a good idea as you most likely will not remember them 3 days into the New Year.

However, you choose to go into 2018, I hope you will continue to come to this site, read my posts and leave a comment. Also, be sure to check out the index as there may be a previous post which addresses a question you might have about emotions.

I wish you all the best in 2018 and let me be the first to wish you a Happy New Year.

Sorry, there is no post today.

I am taking the week off.

I will return next week with a final word before leading into 2018.

Happy Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US.

In addition to eating too much, many of us use this day to think about all that we have in our lives for which we are thankful.

I am thankful for many things including you, my readers.

I hope that you will take some time to reflect on all that you have to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A comprehensive video overview of emotions and emotions theories

I am including this video from YouTube’s Crash Course on Psychology for any of you who might want more indepth information on what emotions are and the psychological theories which attempt to explain them.

Full disclosure: This is a 10 minute and 50 second video. While the information is quite good, it is somewhat long. So, if you aren’t really interested in diving this deep into emotions and emotions theory, skip this post and we’ll see you next week.

Easy access to all posts now available.

In order to make it easier for you, my readers, to access all of my previous posts, I have put together and published an index to all my posts.

Here is what you need to do…

You can access the index by scrolling up to the top of this page and clicking the index tap in the upper right corner.
This will open up to a page with the index.
Click on the index and you will see all of my previous posts with the month that post was printed.
Go to the right side of the home page where all of the posts are archived by month and click on that month.
This will take you to the page with the post you are seeking.
You may have to scroll down a bit but the post will be there.
Thank you for being a loyal reader.
Please let everyone you know who might be interested in the material I write about each week and let them know the index exists.

I will keep the index updated.

All the best,

Ed Daube, Ph.D., The Emotions Doctor

How to use your emotions effectively. A 30 minute podcast.

Here is a link to a 30 minute podcast I recently completed covering topics related to using emotions effectively and strategically. I discussed how I developed the Emotions as Tools Model and how to strategically use the emotion of anger.

Use your emotions effectively: Guest – Dr Ed Daube