Empathy

Emotional Regulation and Empathic Processes

	by Theresa M. Kelly, MsD
	Professor of Scientific Parapsychology, Researcher, Technical Author

Empathy is the psychical influence of emotion via experient influence over the emotional basis of consciousness and the mental and physiological processes associated with a wide variety of emotional experiences.

In regards to emotional regulation and psychical empathists, there are two primary types of regulation strategies, one with a specific point prior to emotional stimuli, and one subsequent to emotional stimuli. These strategies can be utilized to modify one’s own emotions regardless of the source by influencing the emotions they experience, when they experience them, and how they experience and express those emotions. 

The first type of regulation strategy is called antecedent-focused, which refers to what an empathist does prior to experiencing a particular emotion and can influence their physiological and behavior responses (e.g. viewing a failure as an opportunity to try something new).

Steps:

1. Situation selection, which refers to approaching or completely avoiding particular people, places, or things as a means to regulate emotion. Here the empathist must evaluate what situations are negative verses positive alternatives, necessary and unnecessary (i.e. assessing consequences and importance), and short- or long-term emotional benefits (i.e. short-term emotional benefits with long-term negative consequences, or vice versa).


2. Situation modification, which refers to changing a situation to soften emotional impact when ones feels or thinks they are on the verge of entering into a situation that will have a negative emotional affect. An example of this modification would be when a friend prompts the empathist for emotional support when the empathists is emotionally fatigued and the empathists prompts themselves to change the subject until the empathist is well rested. 


3. Attentional deployment, which refers to selecting one of numerous aspects of the situation the empathist will supply their focus. For example, the empathist may chose to focus on the “the big picture,” on the positive aspects of a distressing conversation or distract him or herself from a conversation that they find distressing by thinking about something else (e.g. counting in-mind, thinking of a pleasant memory, checking or responding to text messages, etc.). This can also include the empathist devising a plan to leave the situation (e.g. “I have to make a call”).


4. Cognitive change, which refers to selecting one of numerous meanings he/she will correlate to the aspect they find negative (e.g. in regards to the distressing conversation, the empathist may remind themselves that it is “only their opinion, not necessarily the truth”). In other words, cognitive change is utilized to decrease emotional response.

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