Diary of Emotions

Experiencing different emotions have been a normal part of my daily life and thus having to take notice of it and be keenly aware of the physiological and psychological aspects of the emotion made me think of how difficult it is to fully explain emotion. Usually, what stays with our memory are the emotions that are intense and powerful, like anger, sadness and happiness, while the fleeting emotions of annoyance, impatience, worry and anxiety are taken for granted.With the emotion diary I was acutely aware of what I was feeling but rather had difficulty in naming what I felt or in identifying what kind of emotion I was feeling. A number of theories have tried to explain human emotion. Since emotion is a subjective experience and that mush of it is experienced physically, then the theories that explain emotion do so by looking into the biological and psychological components of emotions.The James-Lange (Atkinson, et. al. , 1996) theory says that the biological component of emotions suc h as physiological arousal and facial expressions are most influential in producing the subjective experience of an emotion. The theory argues that because perception of autonomic arousal constitutes the experience of an emotion and because different emotions feel different, there must be a distinct pattern of autonomic activity for each emotion.Thus, when my heart beat races and the hairs at the back of my neck rise, I feel fear and so I cower in my seat or close my eyes as I watch a horror movie. On the other hand, the cognitive appraisal theory of Schachter and Singer (1962) espoused that cognitive appraisal are sufficient to determine the quality of emotional experience, thus if people could be induced to be in a neutral state of autonomic arousal, the quality of their emotion would be determined solely by their appraisal of the situation.Hence, upon observing my surroundings wherein I was in front of the TV inside my house with all the doors and windows locked, I would feel tha t being afraid of the movie is childish and hence I would stop being afraid. Based on my experience, I could say that to be able to have a complete understanding of emotions, one must take into account the biological and the psychological aspects of the emotion. With the various intensity and kinds of emotions that we go through in a single day, it is unrealistic to say that emotions are entirely biological or physiological or that it is purely psychological. Diary of Emotions The Diary of Emotions made me realize that a person could feel a number of emotions in a single day and that each emotion is triggered by different situations and it affects us physically and mentally (Cornelius, 1996). Based on the entries on my diary of emotions for three days, I more or less felt happy during those times and also had several anxious periods. When I felt happy, I had a smile on my face, like someone was tickling me. When I go about my work, I just breeze through it and I don’t worry about anything. I feel that my body is full of energy, that I am not tired at all and that I want to have a good time.Sometimes I feel that my heart beats more than the usual, sometimes I feel warm and sweaty, but in a good way. When I am happy, I think good thoughts and laughter comes easily. But when I was anxious, my body manifested several changes, one was that I was sweating profusely, and my hands had fine shakes. I also felt a little headache and my heart beat was racing a nd it’s almost I am at the verge of tears or exasperation. Then I was thinking of worst case scenarios if ever I was late for class or my friend would not talk to me when I approached her, or when I was waiting for the exam.There was also a period when I was upset and felt guilty. When I was upset I felt terrible, I couldn’t get my thoughts together and I felt like crying. It felt that there was a chunk of wood on top of my head weighing me down. I also kept repeating the event in my head the one I was upset about. After getting upset, I felt guilty that I quarreled with my friend knowing that I should have not snapped at her like that. Guilt though was more difficult to define, the physical changes was quite the same as being upset, but in a lesser degree but I was thinking of how I could patch up with my friend andplanning what to say to her when I see her. Being angry was exhausting, it seemed that my head was bursting and my heart was beating so fast, and then angr y words just came out of my mouth and I felt justified at saying it. I was thinking of how to get even, how to hurt her as much as she did me. After which I felt like water in the pot simmering and still heated up. Fear was actually like being anxious angry but there was something else, I was quiet and trembling all over. I was afraid that I might fail the test and mentally I was imagining what would happen if I failed it.Feeling sad was like the opposite of being happy, I felt heavy, I did not want to eat and move around or to work on anything. Surprise and feeling relieved was like being happy and being interested felt like I wanted to know more about the movie, that I was glad I was watching it, I was attentive to the story, I was listening intently and I think my eyes were very alert then. This exercise actually helped me learn how to identify my emotions and by paying attention to what it is then allowed me to think about how we are sometimes overwhelmed by what we feel in a ce rtain situation.