By Masako Uematsu

26 November 2001

Introduction

Data Collection and Analysis

Discussion

Conclusion

References

My Report 1 defines what the emotional spin cycle is.  Emotional spin cycle is a integrated form of emotions, feelings, threefold self, and hierarchy of needs.  Threefold self consists of three levels: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor.  What we do is a result of threefold self.  When we feel any emotion, we automatically and often unconsciously go through from affective level through sensorimotor level.  These three stages are sequentially integrated: affective stage determines cognitive stage, and cognitive stage determines sensorimotor stage.  For example, when you are driving, some driver cuts you off.  This driver's behavior makes you angry (affective level is now in angry mode), and you think you need to retaliate or punish this driver in some way (cognitive level).  As a result, you speed up and as you pass the driver's car, you make a nasty face at the driver (your action=sensorimotor level).   Emotion is an internal reaction to something happened in the world around self.  It is often associated with physiological change.  Everyone (unless you are brain injured) experience emotion with almost the same intensity, but expression of emotion varies from person to person.  Feeling is similar to emotion, but what I think different is how we realize it.  To me, emotion is something very strong and very noticeable.  For example, when I get mad, I know it.  On the contrary, feeling includes subconscious and conscious level.  For instance, when I beginning to like someone (guess in romantic way), do I notice it right away?  I guess not.  Maybe my heart is pumping a little faster, I feel excited, or I sweat a little when I see that person.  Then I realize, ?oh, I guess I like him.?  That?s when I realize my feeling.  Hierarchy of needs is a order of needs of self.  When  needs in the first level are satisfied in some way, I can go on to satisfy next level of need.  When all of those things occur inside me, my behavior is created. 

In today's society, many of us are in hurry and full of stress in general.  Parents have jobs and have to take care of their children.  Children have schools that demand competition.  Some children, especially those who belong to competitive schools, are living in great pressure.   I had a chance to talk to a person who teaches in one of the competitive and prestigious high school in my area.  He said that many children were feeling pressure from their parents, teachers, and peers in various ways.  According to him, they feel like they HAD TO be among the best students in certain area such as test scores, music performance, and athletic team, and sometimes those feelings are so intense that it overwhelms children, then some of them develop eating disorder or suicidal thoughts.  College students often have work and go to school.  I am a full time student with a demanding job, and I am always worried about deadlines and just keep running without slowing down during a  semester.  The dilemma I have is that when I am very tired and need to slow down and relax a bit,  I am busiest and cannot find such time, so it becomes more and more stressful, like a snow ball.

On the road, especially during morning or evening rush hours, it is obvious that almost every driver is stressed behind wheels.  Everyone wants to get to their own destinations as fast as possible, but they are stuck in heavy traffic.  Frustrated drivers often engage in dangerous behavior such as frequently and abruptly changing lanes and dangerously closing gap to cars in front of them.  Not only these behaviors are dangerous and increase likelihood of accidents, they also frustrate other drivers even more.  This snowball effect of creation of frustration cause road rage and aggressive driving.  Road rage can happen to anyone instantly.  Sometimes feeling of rage overwhelm people and they engage in very dangerous acts that they wouldn't do otherwise.  When people are already frustrated, meaning their emotions and thoughts are irrational, it is more likely that rage takes over drivers' emotions.  Therefore, in those situations, they are more likely to experience road rage.  In addition, given that people in today's society are generally stressed by their busy schedules and daily tasks, it is safe to conclude that it is one of the major reasons for increasing number of road rage incidents in recent years. 

This is a diagram of Emotional spin cycle created by Dr. Leon James.  Dr. James explains that when we experience emotion of anger or rage, we go through the sequence shown in this diagram, from 1, negative red feeling to 12, positive red doing.   Each zone has threefold self; feeling, thinking, and doing. 

Under stressful situation, or with strong stimulation, people's emotions are more likely to stay in negative zone, and as a result, they repeat level 3 and 6, aggressive or destructive behavior towards others and self-destructive behavior.  However,  with appropriate training, we can control our emotional spin cycle.  In other words, we can be emotionally intelligent.  When we gain control over our emotions, we can go from 1 through 6 without dangerously engaging in destructive behavior or experiencing stress or frustration and enter positive sphere of emotional spin cycle. 

In the future, we expect that our lives will become busier and more stressful.  We might become less friendly to strangers.  Aloha spirit that we have in Hawaii today might disappear as we become more and more preoccupied and overwhelmed with our own business.  In those situation, I expect to see more road rage on the road.  That means there will be more accidents, injury, deaths, property damages, and economic losses.

In order to prevent such a waste, we need to train ourselves.  Since daily emotional spin cycle is influenced by cultural aspects, we should engage in life-long practice of creating emotional intelligence.  As Dr. James promotes, life-long training that starts in kindergarten can effectively create strategy to control our negative emotions and diminish emotionally controlled destructive behaviors.

Three step program is designed by Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl to support driver's personality makeover.  The first step of this program is to acknowledge that I do not have enough control over my emotion when I face negative-emotion provoking experiences.  By acknowledging my poor emotional control, I will feel the need to improve it.  Then, I witness myself being out of control by self-observation methods.  Finally, I modify my negative behaviors in each emotional spin cycle level, one at a time.  

I observed my emotion as objectively as possible for one week.  Table 1 describes events happened in given times and what kind of emotion I experienced.  Colored letters indicate in which emotional zone I was in.  Refer to emotional spin cycle chart for definition of emotional zones.

table1. Events and emotion I encountered during week1.

 I noticed that majority of my negative emotions are frustration.  Other negative emotions are also associated with frustration.  My frustration occurs when things go in a wrong way that disturbs my activities.  Also, when I am not productive, in other words, when I am just lazy, I regret, depressed, and sort of hate myself.  On the other hand, when I productively working, I feel very good about myself, and emotion of satisfaction is usually associated with it.

Then, based on six different criteria, I gave points to each day.  The followings are rating scales:

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)

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)

Points for each day are shown in table 2:

Table 2:  Points for analyzing scales.

This chart shows that my stress level goes high when something disturbed my activity in great deal.  The most stressful event on this week was when my neighbor was very noisy and woke me up in the middle of the night.  I experienced high satisfaction when I was able to work hard and when I enjoyed what I like to do such as practice in Aikido class and going out with my friend.  On Thursday, I scored the highest productivity.  I think this is because I was able to relax and refresh my mind in Aikido class on the day before.  Positive emotion often results in productivity and effectiveness.  Also, positive emotions with low stress level make me think that my future is bright and hopeful.  I tend to notice selfishness of other people when they directly disturbed my life.  When I saw some drivers changing lanes without giving proper signaling or driving in heavy rain or inside tunnels without turning their headlights on, it bothered me, and I thought, "what a selfish driver!", but it did not bothered me as much as when noise of my neighbor woke me up at 3am.  In situation like this, my emotion is stuck in negative sphere of emotional spin cycle.  I always find it very difficult to bring myself to positive side of the sphere.  I think I need to work on improving my ability to control my emotions in this type of situations. 

Sampling in week 2 involves the three step program I described before.  In week1, I witnessed my emotions in various situations and acknowledged that I had poor control over my emotions when my important activities of life such as my sleeping is disturbed.  I believe that is a extremely disturbing situation for anyone, and if I am able to gain control over this emotion, I think I can be a master of controlling emotion.  

The difference of observation week2 is the use of bridge-crossing technique.   This involves adaptation of self-regulating sentence when I find myself in negative emotional sphere, caught in irrational emotion and thoughts.  By saying self-regulating sentence to myself, hopefully I can cross the bridge of negative and positive emotional zone and gain rational state of mind.  

Specifically, when I changed my emotional  state from zone 2 (negative red thinking: emotionally impaired thoughts) to zone 11 (positive red thinking: emotionally intelligent thoughts), I call it crossing red bridge, indicated in this table.  Similarly, when my emotions are improved from zone 5 (negative blue thinking: pessimistic and cynical thoughts) to zone 8 (positive blue thinking: optimistic and realistic thoughts), I call it crossing blue bridge.  Then I witnessed my modified emotion.  The following table describes my observation of week2:

table 3:  Observation of my emotion in week2 and self-regulatory words I used to cross bridge and enter positive emotion zone.  Red letters & numbers show negative zone and Blue show positive zone.  

Compared to week1, I think I did not have much stressful situation to start with, but when I found myself in negative emotional zone, by using self-regulatory words, it took shorter time to calm down cross bridge to positive emotional zone.  If I continue using this technique, I think it helps me to develop self-control ability over my negative emotion.  When I can cross bridge across negative and positive emotional zones with shorter time, that will help me stay in positive and optimistic mood, and therefore, it will increase my overall performance in everyday life.  

As I did in week1, I analyzed my behavior using the same global rating scale. 

Table 4: Points for analysis scales, week2.

To compare how my emotional state changed from week1, without any self-regulatory technique, to week2 with self-regulatory technique, I used global rating scale.  

In summary, positive effects of self-regulatory efforts were seen in three areas: it promoted my productivity and effectiveness; it improved my coping ability to my negative emotions; and I was not as badly negatively influenced by other people's selfish behavior.

After I gathered all observation, I wondered how objectively I was able to observe myself.  My overall mood varied time to time, and it certainly influenced how I reacted to certain events.  Even if I was in the same situation, depending on my mood it is very possible that my reaction would change in great deal.  Therefore, when I compare data from week1 and week2, I used my highest stress levels as baseline.  In order to increase accuracy of points, I think it would be nice to have very clear guideline for points.  For example, if there is a list of bad behavior that I can put check mark if I find myself doing it,  I can simply calculate number of checks, and the number becomes the rating.

I found self-witnessing and the use of self-regulatory sentences helped me gain emotional control.  Before, I just let my emotions control myself.  When some driver made me angry, I tailgated that car.  Now I can tell myself, "don't act stupid.  I am not like other people.  I am taking Dr. Driving's class.  Now, calm down, let him go."  And it works!  I feel I have emotionally grown up through this experience.  I hope many people will have chance to practice this type of technique.  Ideally, this emotional control technique should become mandatory curriculum of drivers education class.

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