Positive emotions

Although the therapeutic relationship and positive emotions are clearly important, there are many instances of the placebo effect that they cannot explain. They cannot, for example, explain the effect of placebos in research settings in which students or other healthy volunteers have been asked to participate in return for money or course credit. In these studies there is no therapeutic relationship. Most importantly, emotions cannot explain the specificity of the placebo effect. 

Chesney, Margaret A., Lynae A. Darbes, Kate Hoerster, Jonelle M. Taylor, Donald B. Chambers and David E. Anderson, Positive Emotions Exploring the Other Hemisphere in Behavioral Medicine , International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 12, no. 2 (2005) 50-58 Churchland, Peter M., Matter and Consciousness, Cambridge, MA MIT Press, 1984... 

People in treatment often begin to notice improvement in quality-of-life issues as well. You may begin to notice that you are not as irritable, and that your patience is returning. You also may notice that your positive emotions come back if they have been blunted over time, or you may notice that you are not feeling like you are on an emotional rollercoaster as often. Most people notice after successful treatment that emotions begin to stabilize. And if they do not, then it may be a sign that other types of therapy may be needed, perhaps related to another condition that escaped diagnosis before. 

Selye s basic assertion was that inappropriate negative emotions can be physically destructive. If that is so, then what can positive emotions do In 1964 that very question popped into the mind of Norman Cousins. The well-known writer and editor had developed a form of arthritis that attacks the body s connective tissue. Ankylosing spondylitis is a terrible disease... 

Pharmacology and psychology are thus in a three-way interaction with physiology that determines the form of conscious experience. That form shapes and constrains its content. And much of this process appears to be due to chance. If positive emotions predominate, my dream or LSD trip will be psychedelic and possibly even ecstatic. If negative emotions prevail, my dream will be more or less nightmarish and my LSD trip more or less monstrous. 

Indeed, it is an empirical fact that lucid dreamers experience less negative emotion and more positive emotion in their altered states... 

The most obvious hypothesis is that in mania, as in dream psychosis with elation and grandiosity, it is possible to raise to very high levels the general activation of the brain and the specific activation of the positive emotion generator in the medial septum and other limbic regions. Because this effect can be artificially accomplished by taking amphetamines, it is reasonable to propose that excessive endogenous dopamine release (or increased receptor sensitivity) may be involved. 

But whatever the neuromodulatory status of mania, it makes sense to reason that the exuberant positive emotion, emanating from a hyperactive limbic system, is unchecked by a relatively impoverished dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Hence, the poor judgment and the disastrous social indiscretions are the result of takeover of the brain by parasitic internal stimuli just as occurs in epilepsy and in dream psychosis ... 

Tip 2 View laughter as therapeutic. Just as negative emotions can produce ulcers, headaches, and high blood pressure, positive emotions such as laughter can relax nerves, improve digestion, and help blood circulation. 

Job satisfaction can be defined either as an emotional response (the pleasurable or positive emotional state... 

Harmer, C.J., Hill, S.A., Taylor, M.J., Cowen, P.J., and Goodwin, G.M. (2003). Toward a neuropsychological theory of antidepressant drug action increase in positive emotional bias after potentiation of norepinephrine activity. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 990-992. 

For example, more positive emotion is found in post-awakening reports, indicating that we normally sleep right through our more pleasant dreams, whereas our unpleasant ones are more likely to awaken us and tilt the scales towards negative emotion. 

What kind of brain activation causes nightmares rather than pleasant dreams The obvious answer is that it must be the emotion centres of the brain that mediate negative emotion that are activated in nightmares, and activation of the emotion centres that cause positive emotion determines the pleasant nature of other... 

Conditions that may increase the effects of pain include an inappropriate activity level, anxiety, depression, focusing on the pain, and boredom. Conditions that moderate the effects of pain include medications, counterstimulation (e.g., massage), positive emotions, relaxation, distraction, and involvement in life activities. 

If you want to use an image, choose one that clearly conveys an action and inspires positive emotions. Also remember the following tips ... 

I return to these connections in IV.2, from a different perspective. There, 1 argue that emotional life may be a succession of episodes, each of which has an internal structure, rather than a simple succession of experiences. The disturbance of an initial equilibrium generates a negative emotion, which in turn induces an action tendency, a desire to reestablish the equilibrium, the fulfillment of which generates a positive emotion. Plato and Aristotle took the further step of assuming that the last step can be foreseen and thus generate pleasures of anticipation simultaneously with the occuirent pains. But as indicated in the parenthetic observations in the previous paragraph, the restoration of equilibrium may be impossible or prohibitively costly. In such cases, and perhaps also when restoration is possible but unlikely, there may not be any pleasures of anticipation. Conversely - a more controversial point - when the future satisfaction is certain there... 

Pridefulness a positive emotion triggered by a belief about one s own character... 

Emotional experiences with positive valence ("positive emotions/ for short) may serve as the goal of behavior The link between behavior and outcome may be provided either by intentional choice or by the reinforcement properties of the experience. Example Solomon s case of a woman who was willing to take a financial loss in order to get the pleasant feeling of righteous indignation. 

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