Changing Emotion with Emotion, Leslie Greenberg (2021)
Emotion Theory Introduction Greenberg defines emotion as “a complex reaction pattern involving physiological, experiential, and behavioral elements.” The function of emotion, he continues, is to “aid survival.” That is to say, we seek emotions that feel good and promote survival and avoid emotions that feel bad and do not promote survival. Emotion aids survival by performing three major tasks: (1) providing us with an action tendency, (2) providing us with information about our needs in the situation at hand, and (3) communicating our state and intention to others. Fear, for example, provides us with an action tendency (to flee) and information about our need (we’re in danger and need to get to safety) and throughout our action tendency and physiological changes communicates itself to others. Each emotion is triggered by a stimulus, and once it’s triggers, the emotion follows a five-phase sequence: “(1) emergence, (2) entry into awareness, (3) ownership by the individual, (4) expressi