Posted by Damos on December 6, 2005, at 16:02:18
In reply to Re: » Damos, posted by alexandra_k on December 5, 2005, at 19:36:23
> oh. was i over-generalising ;-)
You're allowed, there's nothing wrong with the occassional gross over-generalisation ;-)
> :-(
> yeah, thats how i felt...Rightly so too. Given how rigorous you are about the process and quality of your thinking, to slap you with that label ws just plain insensitive and counter-productive.
> but then... is that because i'm sub-consciously endorsing yet another cognitive error???
Ah but you see that is not the point. The point is that by saying what they did all that was achieved was to create another strong reaction in you that in fact had the effect of moving you further away from a helpful outcome. They actually increased your resistance.
>
> > Yep the circles are a problem,
>
> yeah.You know, I think what I was saying about assumptions has a big part in the circles. Because all the stuff we think about ourselves colours the thinking that goes on in the circles. And because 'we' are at the centre of the circle our 'gravitation pull' as it were keeps pulling the stuff in toward us so we can't let it go.
Yeah I've read about that SGR stuff. They've done stuff with responses to spoken words too and apparently it can take 2-3 seconds to register the response and the subjects weren't even aware they were having an 'emotional' response to what was said.
> I saw a book a while back called "emotional intelligence". I thought it was a bit of pop-psychology crap but have seen a few academic references to the notion of emotional intelligence. I don't know what book I'll find with the link... And I don't know whether it was that book in particular they had in mind or whether more academic work has been done on it.
We were severely beaten about the head with 'EQ' for about 18mths a few year ago, like we were with Myers-Briggs and any number of other things. I think there are grains that can be taken from most of them, but that on their own none of them are 'it'.
One of the few things that has really stuck with me came from Covey "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by way of Victor Frankl. Basically it says that in reactive behaviour ther is no separation between stimulus and response but in proactive (I hate that term with a passion) behaviour we exercise our freedom to choose our response according to our values and that we do this through Self Awareness, Imagination, Conscience and Independent will. And I think the self awareness is the bit that really makes the difference in extreme emotional responses. The awareness that I am not my emotions or my thoughts and that I can choose to 'observe' them and respond in a 'conscious' way. Inserting the pause between the stimulus and the response is really hard at first but does get easier.
> The thought is that we communicate via language to inform other people of our inner states (e.g. of our beliefs...
>
> And we communicate via expression of emotion to inform other people of our inner states ( our emotions) so they know how we are likely to behave.
>
> And thus... The function of emotions... Might be communicative.
>
> Hmm.I think there is a lot of truth in that - especially when you think that so much of a babies communication is non-verbal and that somehow they are able to read and interpret our behaviour and in term modify theirs. Hmmm indeed.
Good thread Alex, really got me thinking about lots of things, lots of things :-)
poster:Damos
thread:575153
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20051205/msgs/586156.html