Do you feel like you control your emotions, or do your emotions control you? What scientists call "emotion regulation" turns out to be one of the most important life skills we can possess. It's essential in dealing with setbacks, in balancing risks and rewards, and in maintaining successful relationships. This week, psychologist Ethan Kross explores the growing and fascinating science of managing our emotions. He explains why our feelings so often go astray, and shares insights into how to reel them back in.In this episode, you'll learn:*How to coach yourself through emotionally intense moments. *Why certain types of personal writing can help with your thorniest problems or challenges. *How to use music and your physical senses to regulate your mood. *How to use the technique of "selective avoidance" to shortcut emotional spirals and "what if" thinking.Hidden Brain is about to go on tour! Join Shankar in a city near you as we explore lessons we've learned in Hidden Brain's first decade. For more info and to purchase tickets, go to https://hiddenbrain.org/tour/.
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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Some months ago, I brought seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain to live stage performances in San Francisco and Seattle. The evenings were electric. We got so much positive feedback from those two sold-out shows that we've decided to launch a tour to more than a dozen cities in the coming months.
I'll be coming to Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. To snap up your tickets, please go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. You can also sign up to say hello and get a photo with me. In some places, you can sign up for an intimate chat with me and a handful of other fans.
I'd love to see you there. Again, go to hiddenbrain.org slash tour. Okay, on to today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The 19th century naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin is best known for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. He described the theory in his book On the Origin of Species, one of the most important publications in the history of science.
Less well known, but also scientifically important, was the biologist's research on emotions. Charles Darwin's view, which has since been adopted by contemporary scientists of emotion, is that our feelings are adaptations that help us survive and thrive in a complex world. Fear guides us to avoid things that can do us harm. Anger girds us for battle and conflict.
Love pulls us toward mates, family and friends. But if emotions are so useful, why do they so often seem to get us in trouble? Why do we lose our cool and yell at our kids or mope around for weeks following a professional disappointment? Why do we lie awake at night worrying about some imagined catastrophe?
How is it we get carried away when everyone around us is losing their heads and lose ours too? Most important of all, when we do get swept away by our emotions, how should we get back on track? Today on the show, we look at the growing and fascinating science of managing our emotions. What scientists call emotion regulation turns out to be one of the most important life skills we can possess.
This skill is essential in dealing with setbacks, in balancing risks and rewards, in maintaining successful relationships. Harnessing our feelings, this week on Hidden Brain. All of us can recall moments when we acted in ways that made us feel ashamed afterwards.
When we look back at these moments with a clear head, we cannot for the life of us understand why we got so angry or greedy or frightened. At the University of Michigan, psychologist Ethan Cross studies the science of emotions and techniques to help us manage them. Ethan Cross, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Thanks for having me. It's a delight to be here.
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