What does ChatGPT want to know about emotions?

More AI-generated questions on emotional health

Last week I answered some questions that ChatGPT constructed for me about emotions. I asked the artificial intelligence chat bot to give me lists of questions people might ask about emotional health. This week I’m tackling another couple.

Leave a comment on the post with your questions about emotions and emotional health for me to address in a future post!

Question 1: How can I improve my emotional health?

Question 2: What role does social support and connection play in emotional well-being, and how can I cultivate stronger relationships?

Question 1: How can I improve my emotional health?

Some aspects of our emotional health can only be done on our own (question 1), and some aspects can only be done in community (question 2).

Some approaches to emotional health need to come from ourselves. We need to do our own work, deal with our reactivity, and heal the wounded parts of ourselves. We need to grow our emotional vocabulary and our emotional granularity. We need to get comfortable sitting with our uncomfortable emotions and letting them exist in our bodies. We can grow our tolerance for letting uncomfortable emotions exist in our bodies without numbing them or pushing them away or distracting ourselves from them or taking them out on other people.

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

Become conscious of emotions—Pay attention to the sensations in your body and the names you are giving them. If you get a rush of heat through your chest and face and shaky hands and thumping heart and ringing in your ears, are you calling that anger? Or fear? Or nervousness? What events or thoughts or experiences might have given rise to these sensations? Why are you categorizing it emotionally as you are? Becoming aware of that fast, mostly subconscious process of emotion construction is the first step.

Learn to name your emotions—Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett has found that having greater emotional granularity (the ability to differentiate between and name specific emotions with great detail) leads to greater skill at regulating emotions. See one such study from Barrett et. al. here. You can learn more emotion words in your own language and in other languages, which will give you more emotion concepts to draw on when you are trying to name, understand, and express your sensations. The free app How We Feel is one tool that can help you become more aware of your emotions and give you new emotional vocabulary to try out.

Practice feeling your emotions—The only way to grow in your ability to tolerate uncomfortable emotions is to practice. The next time you feel a strong emotion, make time to sit still with it rushing around your body. Notice all the various physical sensations you’re feeling. Pay attention to the thoughts coming up. Do not distract yourself or numb yourself or shut down, the feelings. Remind yourself the intensity will likely only last a few minutes and you can allow it to exist in your body. The more you practice this, the more comfortable you will get with allowing your emotions to run their course instead of avoiding them.

Learn to examine them—Emotions have objects; there is a reason you have an emotion, and emotions are about something. Emotions help you prepare to take action toward your goals in ways that reflect your values. Listen to the thoughts that go with the emotion. What are you afraid of? What are you upset about? What is making you happy or sad? Then ask yourself, is what I am thinking true? How can you verify the truth of your thoughts that are giving rise to these emotions? Is your emotion here coming from something currently happening and/or are you reacting to some unhealed wound in your past? Does your emotion make sense and do you want to proceed toward action? Or do you want to help yourself construct a different emotion instead? Do you want to transform this emotion into another one that better fits your evaluation of the situation, your values, and your goals? One tool that can help you learn how to evaluation your emotions is this Untangle Workbook from Marc Alan Schelske.

Learn to express your emotions in healthy ways—Our emotions prepare our bodies to take action. If you can cultivate a pause between your initial experience of an emotion and the action you choose to take, you can leave room for more evaluation and better decision making. Is this situation one you need to escape from? Does something or someone need to be confronted? Do you need to seek out a friend to discuss this with? Do you need to set a boundary to honor yourself?

Regulate yourself so that you can take the best action flowing from your core self and reflecting your true goals and character.

Photo by Mahdi Bafande on Unsplash

Question 2: What role does social support and connection play in emotional well-being, and how can I cultivate stronger relationships?

Some aspects of emotional health need to be done in relationships—one is therapy. There are things you need a licensed counselor’s help to work on because a skilled professional can give you insight into how your brain works and offer psychoeducation. They can ask questions to help you go deeper and examine your struggles from new perspectives. You can talk about your emotional health. They can help you feel safe while you dig into scary and even traumatic memories. They can help you sort through the painful experiences that led you to where you are now and help you make a healthy plan for healing those and moving forward. There is a massive benefit to discussing your emotional life with someone who has a graduate education in these topics and can offer you solutions you may not be aware of on your own.

Then there are some aspects of emotional health that require a bigger community. We need love and acceptance and belonging. We need other people to validate our emotions and tell us what we’re feeling makes sense because we’ve been through difficult circumstances. We need people to celebrate our joyful experiences with us.

Culture shapes emotions. If you are around people who are emotionally unhealthy or emotionally stunted or who denigrate talking about emotions, that will impact you. You won’t be as free to explore your emotions and learn how to express them. Sometimes changing community is an important part of getting emotionally healthy.

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

Increasing your emotional granularity will improve your relationships because you will get better at expressing your emotions clearly and specifically. Learning to regulate your emotions will also improve your relationships because you will be able to avoid alienating friends and loved ones with outsized or damaging reactions or hurtful words. Sometimes we are so overwhelmed that we struggle to regulate ourselves. That’s when co-regulation is helpful. Co-regulation is when another human is present with us, modeling healthy emotional regulation, and helping us calm our bodies and minds. Build friendships with people who are also pursuing emotional health so you can co-regulate each other.

If this was helpful to you, would you forward it to a friend or share it? And don’t forget to comment on the post with your own questions.