Arousal-valence

[cosmolinguist]

I had this tab open before, but I've only gotten around to reading it properly now that it seems to echo that emotional literacy thing.

It's the arousal-valence model.

By identifying your current level of arousal and valence, you can start to build awareness of your bodily sensations and the connection between those sensations and your emotions.

It looks like a good next step for me in "what to do next," like it's all well and good understanding that I'm bad at identifying and acknowledging my emotions, but now what can I do to make this less of a problem for me.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Oooh really useful

[otter]

Hmm. food for thought

[sennashi_dorei]

I am quite sure that my emotional intelligence is low compared to the average human. That is what causes me to freak out and get angry, and it is a consequence of heart defect: regardless of how mentally retarded the doctors want to call me: there are way too many people willing to come to terms with the actual functions of the physical heart.

[silveradept]

Ah, yes, that's a good one. Even if you can't hit the bulls-eye, being able to get in the ballpark is often good enough to get you moving on a direction toward identification and figuring out what you want to do with the emotional state.

Sometimes even having a good vocabulary and a desire for precision doesn't quite beat some of the low-valence, low-arousal feelings, but if I can get to the point where I can go "oh, right, anhedonia," or something similar, I can do what usually works to beat it (food, which also usually works on being grumpy or annoyed at things that doesn't have a specific origin. Weird that hangry and anhedonic often have the same solution, but brains, y'know?)

[cosmolinguist]

Weird that hangry and anhedonic often have the same solution, but brains, y'know?

Indeed. (I'm finding new kinds of being hungry are now happening to me as I meander through my second puberty...) So weird, but also blessedly usually easy to fix a lot of the time.

[silveradept]

Yes, thankfully. So many new everything at a second puberty, but at least it comes with maturity, rather than having to try and do all of that and have your brain maturing more, too.

[cordjostler]

this hits awfully close to home. the valence is prevalent.

[cosmolinguist]

<3