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.

The second type of regulation strategy is called response-focused, which refers to the steps an empathist can take once an emotion has been elicited. Of the two types, reappraisal has far less short- and long-term consequences. Efforts to decrease emotions through reappraisal should change the trajectory of the entire emotional response. While suppression leads to deception and takes a great deal of psychological and physiological energy to sustain, reappraisal is strategically superior as it “nips emotion in the bud.”

Steps:

1. Response modification, which refers to attempting influence over emotional response tendencies post emotional elicitation, typically by decreasing expressive behavior (i.e. emotional suppression), as to later initiate step 2.


2. Reappraisal, which is when a person modifies their view in regards to a particular emotion in order to lessen the impact of that emotion.  In other words, “construing a potentially emotion-eliciting situation in non-emotional terms.”

In addition, physical exercise has been found to assist individuals with stress by “acting on the neurohormones that govern the stress response,” which increases an individual’s threshold for stress, whereby making emotions more manageable, along with life in general.

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Source

(Adapted from the book “Empathy: A Quantum Approach - The Psychical Influence of Emotion” by Theresa M. Kelly, MsD.)

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