How to Deal with Anxiety and Depression? 5 Effective Processes

Gross (2008) emphasized on five processes for which we, as humans, can regulate our emotions. The processes are situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. Even though it was in grad school when I first came across the process model of emotion regulation, I felt like I knew some of these concepts already. Then it struck me! I can relate this to what I have been doing in my meditation practices for over last 10 years. For example, Gross argues that by attentional deployment, we may be able to regulate our emotions without changing the environment. To me, this notion correlates with mindfulness living, which emphasizes on the idea that external circumstances should not always dictate the quality of life and focuses on altering our reactions. In therapy, especially when I work with individuals who suffer from anxiety, depression, and other negative emotions, we try to explore where these emotions come from? Do these emotions have something to do with past/current situations? What are the correlations between thoughts and emotions? Once we have a better understanding of the causation, using various psychological/therapeutic tools, we can then begin our work towards finding calm and peace.

Reference:

Gross, J. J. (2008). Emotion regulation. In M. Lewis, J. M Haviland-Jones, & L. F. Barrett (Eds), Handbook of emotions.New York, NY: Guilford Press