GEC 11: EMOTIONAL SELF
6.
Marsha Linehan – stated that emotion is a full system
response.

He explains that emotion does not only include the
way we feel but also the way we think.
The Emotional Self
McKay, Wood and Brantley – are signals within your body
that tells you what is happening.
There are emotions that cause common response or
reactions in human beings, but individuals respond to
emotional situation differently.
Burkitt Ian – “emotions are themselves patterns of
relationships, processes of embodied evaluation that tells us
what or whom is of importance to us in the various situations
that compose our lives”
Seek pleasure
Primary emotion – our initial reaction to a situation.
Secondary Emotion – our response to the primary emotion.
We cannot control our immediate feeling towards
the situation. What we need to control is how to respond to
the extreme feelings that we are experiencing.
Eich – posited that emotions are not positive nor negative,
nor it is good or bad.

All emotions are normal part of being a human.

Emotion does not last forever as it naturally come
and go.
Recognizing our emotion is one of the best
responses when we are experiencing heightened emotion.
This kind of response help us to effectively decide on what to
do with our situation.
When one experience an emotion, the natural response is to
try to get rid of that emotion. However, this is not being
realistic for emotion plays an important role in our life.
Adolescent Emotions
What makes Emotion important?
Dialectic Behavior Therapy of Linehan:
1.
2.
3.
Communication – emotions help the individual be able
to communicate well to others.
o Through facial expression and body
language.
Motivation – Emotions according to Dijk (2012) prompts
a person to act. It tells the individual to “act” and to “stay
focused” in certain situations.
o When one sees a mean dog, it won’t take
long time for him/her to think and run
away from the dog.
o Emotions like fear saves us when life is
threatened.
Information – Emotions can be signals or alarms in
certain situations. It proves the individual with
information even before the brain has process the
situation.
o When walking in an eerie place and saw a
shadowy figure ahead, your brain signals
you to be afraid. But before it can process
what it is, you run away from it.
o This emotion is said to be what has helped
us survived in threatening situations.
Mckay, Wood and Brantly (2007) explains that emotions are
signals that help the individual do to:
1. Survive
2. Remember people and situation
3. Cope with situation in daily life
4. Communicate with others
5. Avoid pain
The research of Offer and Schonert-Reichl in 1992 suggests
that:

80 to 85 percent of adolescents experience a
relative happy youth marked by mostly good
relationships with both peers and parents.

Another 15 to 20 percent of adolescents experience
a difficult, tumultuous adolescence marked by
serious emotional of behavior problems.
During childhood, boys are more likely to have problems
than girls. From the onset of puberty, however, severe
episodes of depression, eating disorder (anorexia nervosa),
several kinds of anxiety conditions, and suicide increase tenfold.
The increase rates in depression, anxiety, and eating disorder
are mostly in girls.
Parent-Adolescent Relationship
Factors of family environment:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Constellation of the family (completeness,
numerousness, sibling constellation)
Social status of the family (occupation, employment,
finance, and material source)
Age and personal characteristic of the family members
The quality of the marital relation
The relation among the family members
The factors as emotional warmth, conflicts, and cohesiveness
in the family can also influence risk behavior of adolescent.
Most studies cited that during adolescence problems focus
on parent-adolescent conflict (Smetana, 1995). There is also
evidence that conflict between adolescents and parents,
especially mothers, increases around puberty.
It was once believed that this conflict subsided as
adolescence matured; however, there is now less certainty
that parent-child conflict declines in later adolescence.
Peer Group
Adolescence is a time of drifting and sometimes of breaking
away from the family unit.