Customizing
My Emotional Spin Cycle:
Data Analysis
Psychology
409a Fall 2001--G15
Dr. Leon James,
Instructor
By
Sophie
December
2001
Introduction: This
report is the data analysis of the premises described in report 1. This is a study of the threefold self during
emotional events and how oneself can be described in terms of the daily emotional spin
cycle. The spin cycle is described in detail
below as the positive or negative aspects of one's cognitive, affective, or sensory-motor
self. This study utilizes bridging techniques
in the second half of the observational period to help an individual change from a
negative state of mind, physical, or emotional state into positive ones. Self-witnessing is used as a threestep method to acknowledge,
witness and modify ones state after an emotional event.
Self-witnessing proved useful to me in this exercise, as I was able to isolate
things that made me feel negative and analyze my ability to use bridges to bring about a
positive state.
Implications
for this exercise are rather profound as it allows one to understand the threefold self
(thoughts, feelings, and actions) and how these can be affected by positive or negative
settings on the daily emotional spin cycle. Modern
American society now identifies with the weakening of one's immune system, inter-personal
relationships, spirituality, coping mechanisms, and mental stability. An exercise such as the one detailed in this
report allows one to remove negative thoughts, feelings, and actions to help strengthen
any of the weakness listed above. Psychology
is a very useful tool for the everyday person to help gain better control over ones life. The understandings of the emotional daily spin
cycle and how to use self-witnessing and bridging techniques to help change negative
behavior patterns (spin cycle) into positive ones. Such
a useful tool could provide much hope for the future to help create entire cohorts of
emotionally intelligent, rational thinkers that can have control over the setting of their
emotional spin cycle. To create such cohorts,
this technique could be taught in high school and psychology classes and implemented in
any mental-health programs where it would be applicable (road rage class, anger
management, domestic abuse, stress reduction, etc.).
Figure 1. Daily Emotional Spin Cycle (Dr. James, 2001).
The
daily emotional spin cycle is made up of four zones, two red and two blue. Red refers to action with others and blue refers
to actions with self. Red and blue zones are
either negative or positive. The threefold
self is defined in each zone as feeling, thinking and doing. It is a cycle because feeling and thinking within
a zone support the occurrence of acting within that zone.
A person can be stuck within a zone by using positive thoughts to feed positive
feeling, which help create positive actions. The
same is true for a negative spin cycle.
Threestep method is designed by Dr. James to help people self-witness their negative
emotions, especially while driving. The
threestep method is described by acknowledge, witness and modify. Acknowledge is the initial determination to gain
control over ones negative feelings and daily spin cycle.
For the purpose of self-witnessing the individual must acknowledge when they are in
a negative zone. For example if the person is in the negative one zone he/she must
acknowledge that they are raging. The same
is true if the individual is being pessimistic or self-defeating in the negative blue
zone. Witness is the self-monitoring of the
threefold self (cognitive/thinking, emotional/affective, and sensory-motor/doing) during
an emotional event. The witnessing questions
used for the self-witnessing for this report included:
what happened to cause this feeling?, what is the feeling?, what are the thoughts I
had while I felt that way?, did I say something to myself or aloud while I felt this way?,
what is my bodily sensation? Am I hot,
sweaty, tight, frowning, etc? Modify is the
change of your threefold self from one zone in the daily spin cycle to another. When an individual is in the negative zones (1 and
2) the first objective is to modify any destructive behaviors and put the actions into a
more relaxed state. This may range from not
performing a destructive act to simply relaxing one's shoulders and mouth. Once the body is in a normal state, the
modification can be focused onto the cognitive zone where positive statements of
determination (red bridge) or resistance (blue bridge) get the mind from thinking
negative, often emotionally charged, thoughts to thinking rational positive thoughts. Once the thinking is in the positive zones (3 and
4) then the emotions can follow. The
affective will support the cognitive and once the mind knows what is best in an emotional
event, the emotions will follow in a positive way.
Bridges
are used as part of the sampling method during week 2.
For individuals who find a certain event sets their daily spin cycle to a negative
zone would benefit most from sampling during these events.
After performing the threestep method, a bridge is used to change one from a
negative setting to a positive setting. Bridges
are identified as red or blue, to be defined shortly, and any self-regulatory sentences or
personal mantras are recorded. Then the
subsequent state of the threefold self is then recorded after the bridge is complete (how
do you think, feel, act now?). A red bridge
helps one go from negative red thinking to positive red thinking. A blue bridge allows one to cross from negative
blue thinking to positive blue thinking. By
observing when one enters a negative spin cycle during the first week of observations, a
bridge can be prepared for future use. The
bridge is essentially changing the threefold self from a negative to a positive state. The determination bridge to create positive red
thinking will help give rise to positive red feeling.
Positive red doing (the highest setting) cannot really occur without the
combination of these two settings. The
resistance bridge from setting 5 to setting 8 is achieved by eliminating negative thoughts
and replacing them with realistic positive ones.
Data Collection and Analysis:
Observations
were taken in the morning, afternoon, and evening of each day over a two-week period. Observations were taken at a random time when
there was some relatively, or very, strong feeling occurring. Most observations occurred while I was working or
studying. Some observations were also taken
while driving, shopping, looking for parking, broken down on the side of the highway, or
while relaxing. In most observations I was in
a solitary state, as I work mostly with animals. Data
of each day's events were written out as soon after the observation (within 5 minutes) as
possible and then entered onto an Excel spreadsheet and a daily total was taken at the end
of each day for the following categories ranked 1 to 10.
These
are referred to as the Global Ratings,
which were then averaged at the end of each week. (Week One Raw Data and
Summary
and Week Two Raw Data and
Summary).
1)
What was my strongest stress point today? (1=very weak; 10=extreme)
2)
What was my strongest level of satisfaction with myself today? (1=very weak; 10=extreme)
3)
What was my best level of effectiveness or productivity today? (1=very weak; 10=extreme)
4)
What was my best level of coping successfully with my feelings today? (1=very
ineffectual; 10=extremely effective) Here I
chose 5 for neutral on days where there were no observed negative thoughts, feelings or
actions
5)
What is your current level of hope for the future? (1=little hope or brightness;
10=extremely hopeful and bright)
6)
What was the worst level of negativity or selfishness of some other people around you?
(1=almost no negativity or selfishness observed; 10=extremely strong negative or selfish
behavior observed)
Errors
are associated with self-sampling as an individual might tend to observe certain emotional
states that an unbiased observer would or would not.
For example, an individual cannot see that they are exhibiting stress in traffic (a
frowned face and tight hands) while an observer could.
Self-witnessing is also difficult in that many people deny when they are
emotionally charged in a negative way. Part
of negative thinking is often filled with self-importance, which may lead to denial of
what is really going on. An example is
someone who is driving aggressively and thinks that they drive fine, but was simply
running late. The
effectiveness of the bridge can only be truly determined if the observer records how he or
she feels, thinks and acts and not what is believed to be the correct response.
Discussion: There
did not appear to be any negative spin cycle in my daily routine. At this time I am living a rather comfortable and
stress-free life. I can understand how a
daily spin cycle could occur for someone who has daily stress driving to school or work,
or has a difficult time in relationships at home, work, school, or in public. Though I did not have a daily spin cycle, I did
experience three very negative things during my two-week observations. Two of the incidents had to do with my job, which
consists of maintaining the health, sanity, and training of all the animals at a small
family ranch (5 horses, 5 dogs, 5 cats, and assorted fowl).
The third incident was probably more typical for a negative experience as I was
terribly late to a very important test because of traffic.
I used either the red or blue bridge in each case, which did help me remain in my
normally positive mood, mindset, and routine.
The
first was agreeing to let a turkey that I raised from a chick to be given away for a
Thanksgiving dinner. I agreed to him being
eaten, but ended up having to take care of this myself.
I had to take responsibility because the others who could do it left for vacation
without making the arrangements. I was the
one who picked up my friendly turkey while his feet were bound and he was placed into the
bed of my friend's truck. I cried so much and
felt very bad for the turkey's girlfriend. I
was in the negative blue feeling as I felt responsible for his death and I could not
justify it. The blue bridge I used was that
the turkey was too big to walk and enjoy life and that he would no longer appear to be an
unhappy animal on the ranch. I was also glad
that I gave him to a friend who would kill him quickly and that the turkey would feed my
friend's family. The bridge was successful
in that I felt better, but I am still crying writing this now after three weeks. I did not want to be the one to send him to his
death and I did not think enough about how it would make me feel. I cannot use the justification of eating turkeys
is good as a bridge because I have not eaten turkey at all for over six years. The female turkey follows me everywhere like a pet
dog and I feel that if there were some way for her to know what I did, she would have bad
turkey emotions (if they exist) towards me. I
cannot seem to form a bridge strong enough to carry me into positive blue thinking or
feeling on this issue. I am considering
writing a poem about my pain to see if that helps me release my guilt, anger and sadness. I am also considering sending money to a save-the-turkey foundation when
I have some money after the holidays. Doing
these things may strengthen my bridge to where I will be in the positive blue feeling,
thinking and doing.
The
weekend after Thanksgiving was a dog obedience trial.
As part of my job I am training each of the dogs so they can get their American
Kennel Club Companion Dog Title. I was to
take Pinky, who was doing well at the last two shows and I was a bit worried about how
we'd do since there has not been any group obedience calluses for us to practice at. I use positive blue bridge in the morning to quell
my worries so we could have a good day together. I
got to the show early and practiced for an hour before waiting for our class. When we finally went into the class, the dog was
not very well behaved. She was not so bad as
to not pass the class and she was better than she had been before on certain exercises. When it came time to do a group long sit, the dog
laid down. This is automatic failure and I
knew that she would do better. I was in the
negative red thinking and feeling zone, as I wanted to go across the ring and physically
hurt her for being so naughty. I held my
composure and used the red bridge to release my anger and tell myself that she will do
better next time and that we had improved in some areas.
I knew that no punishment; only practice would help for the next show. I was in the positive red zone after using the
bridge and praised the dog and felt resolved to better next time. It is generally very easy for me to forgive others
and I try not to ever harbor bad feelings as I feel they only hinder my mind and health.
I
had been preparing to take a standardized test for graduate school for over a month. I spent $1000 on a review course and had studied
well the week before the exam. Whenever I
felt unsure of myself I used blue bridges to feel good about how much I had studied and
how well prepared I would be. I got plenty of
rest and left the house on Saturday morning to get to the testing center a little early. If I was late, I would be locked out and the next
test was not unit February. I was driving
from Kahaluu and what usually takes 10 minutes to get to the Likelike took 30 minutes. I was running very late and I had to fight
stressing out. I used a mantra of
"please let me make it to this test and I'll do fine". I was blaming myself to some degree not to have
left earlier, which is a negative blue thought. I
screeched into the parking lot, parked illegally and ran to the test center, only to just
make it in time. I was very relieved and used
a blue bridge to convince myself to be calm, focused and proud of myself for being so
prepared. I then banished the rushed feelings
I had on the way to the test and relaxed. The
blue bridge worked very well as I was determined to be in a good state of mind during the
test.
When
reviewing the weekly summaries of the global ratings and overall positive, neutral, or
negative aspects of my threefold self it is noted that my observations show me to be
overall positive or neutral (90% for week 1, 80% for week 2). I recorded utilizing one red and seven blue
bridges during week 2. There was no
difference of my weekly global ratings greater than 0.4.
Conclusion: The
self-witnessing done for this report has proven to be a valuable tool in forming ways to
reduce negative zones of the daily emotional spin cycle.
I feel that this technique is a great way to understand the premise of the
threefold self, the emotional spin cycle, bridging for negative to positive, and
self-witnessing. I would recommend this as a
program to everyone to help himself or herself establish a positive thinking routine. I believe that positive thinking is the key to
positive feelings and behaviors that will allow a person to live up to their full
emotional potentials.
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