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Hi, thanks for joining me today on calm your caveman episode three. Remember last time we talked about why you need an anxiety master key, and we outlined four questions. That the master key would help us to answer, four doors that it would help us to open. The first was to know when emotions are helpful and when they're harmful. The second was how to cultivate the helpful kind and down-regulate the harmful kind, or the basic principles behind that cultivation. The third was knowing how to choose strategies: once we had know how cultivation works, knowing how to choose the strategies to get us where we want to go. And number four was how to implement those strategies. Well today, we're going to talk a little bit more about how the appraisal theory helps us to answer questions one and two.

Question one about determining when emotions are helpful and when they're harmful. Why is this question so important? Well, before we go changing things, we need to know what needs to be changed and what doesn't. We need to understand what constitutes helpful versus harmful emotions. And so that we can understand what needs to be changed. The first question is really about what to change, because first we have to know where we are. And understand where we want to go before we start trying to change things before we start trying to move somewhere.

The second question about how to cultivate the helpful kind of emotions, and down-regulate the second kind. It's about understanding a basic idea or model of how regulation works, having a map, which helps us to understand how to get from here to there. A map or overview is kind of like opening up the hood of the car and helping us to understand the way that it works and what's happening inside. It helps us to understand the inner workings, the different parts that are in there, how they function together and how we might be able to change or influence the processes that are happening under there. And we're going to talk about how the appraisal theory. Helps us to do just that.

And then question three about knowing which strategies to choose. We already know that we can regulate if, and change, if we plug strategies into certain points in this model. But there are lots of options and ways to interfere. And so we need to know how to choose the right strategies, the right interference to produce the outcome that we want. This is an outcome oriented question. It's about what specific intervention will produce, the specific outcome that I want.

And then question number four is where the rubber hits the road, where we figure out how to implement the strategy that we have chosen.

So the appraisal theory helps us with what to regulate and how to regulate. And the first question that we talked about tells us what to regulate, and the following three questions talk to us about how to regulate: how regulation works, what the model of it is, what the map of it is, how to choose a specific intervention and how to implement that intervention.

So we're going to get in now to how the appraisal theory helps us to answer questions one and two better. Now the first question about. How do we know when emotions are helping and when they are hurting? Well, in order to answer that question, we have to go to a different question, which is why do we have emotions? What purpose do they serve from an evolutionary perspective? Well, appraisal theorists advocate that emotions evolved to help us to adapt to ever-changing environments. To help us understand how emotions give us an advantage in a changing environment, we can compare ourselves to simpler species that don't have emotions, that only have reflexes. Like for example, a sea anemone. When a change happens or there's some kind of stimulus of danger in the environment, the sea anemone basically just has some rigid reflexes that it uses, things that it always does in response to stimuli. It might bring in its tentacles to protect itself. It doesn't have a wide range or a flexible palette of responses. It simply has a few rigid reflexes that it uses to respond to every change. Now, the weakness of this is that most of the time, maybe this does help the anemone to just bring in his tentacles and protect itself. But other times there may be a predator who can get around that particular response. And so that reflex doesn't actually protect the anemone. So reflexes are rigid. And that makes the species more vulnerable because they cannot adapt to changes in the environment. Emotions, on the other hand, help us to respond in ways that are more flexible because emotions can change according to changes in the environment. And according to changes in information that we get about our environment. And so they help us to respond in more adaptive ways.

Let me give you two examples, two imaginary examples. Imagine someone walking along and all of a sudden, a heavy object hits them on the head at high speed. The person immediately assumes that someone threw something at them, and they wheel around trying to find this person to confront, to yell at, to fight maybe. And as they're wheeling around, they see an apple fall to the ground and they look up and realize they're under an apple tree and that what hit them on the head was not thrown by a person, but it simply fell from the tree. They felt anger previously at the person, the imaginary person who had been aggressive toward them. But now they recognize that there was no aggression involved. It was simply an apple falling that hit them on the head, and their anger changes to a different emotion. Maybe bewilderment, maybe irritation, maybe even they feel like it's a little bit funny. And they might feel like they want to get away from the tree, but they don't feel like they need to confront an aggressor. So there's a silly example of how emotions can change depending on the information that we get from the environment and help us to respond in ways that are more adaptive to what's happening in the environment.

Here's another example. And this is one that has been used by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. Imagine a person walking along. All of a sudden they hear a furious, ferocious, huge dog right behind them, barking like crazy. The person's response is terror. But as they turn around, they notice that there is a fence between them and the dog, a chain link fence. And there's no way this dog is getting out, even though the dog is jumping and barking and throwing itself against the fence. The person is not going to be attacked. And so their emotion of terror might instead change to uh, surprise or irritation at the dog, but they won't be motivated to immediately run away. They might still want to get away from the dog because they're irritated by the barking, but they don't feel terror anymore. It's a different emotion and a different response. So here's two examples, silly little imaginary examples that help us to see how emotions can change depending on information that we're getting from the situation or depending on the situation itself changing. So we need to remember that the purpose of emotions is adaptation to help us to adapt more flexibly to our environment, which is constantly changing. And that's to help us to become a more successful species.

So returning to that first question, how do we know when emotions are helping and when they're hurting? The answer lies in understanding whether it's adaptive or it's maladaptive, whether it is actually furthering our concerns and our goals, or hindering them, whether it's giving us benefit or harm? And of course, in order to answer this, we have to, we have to be able to determine what our goals are in the specific situation. Don't worry, we'll talk much more about how to determine your goals and how to determine your own personal hierarchy of goals as an, as an important step in emotion regulation. But just to give you some basic information about how the appraisal theory helps us to answer that first question, helps us to know when emotions are helping and when they're hurting, we need to understand that emotions developed in order to help us to adapt to changing circumstances. And we know if an emotion is helpful or hurtful when we know if it is helping or hurting toward our priorities, toward our goals. And we can ask ourselves since the purpose is adaptation, if this emotion is adaptive, if it is helping us towards our goals, then we'll keep it. If it's maladaptive, if it's hindering what's most important to us, then we'll work on changing it. So there's a little introduction. To the appraisal theory, helping us to answer that first question, the what to do in emotion regulation, what needs to be regulated and what doesn't need to be regulated.

So we'll move on now to question number two, that helps us to understand how to regulate once we know what we want to regulate. Question number two was about understanding the basic principles behind emotion regulation, or in other words, getting some kind of a model or a map, an overview. Basically opening the hood of the car so that we can see under the hood of our emotions and understand the parts and how they work together, and see what happens in there. Well, one of the most important things that the appraisal theory teaches us about our emotion processes, is that they are processes. They are not states. They are not rigid reflexes. They are processes that are constantly changing in response to changes in the environment. And appraisal theorists teach us that it is not the external event and the external situation that actually causes the emotion. Because the same situation can trigger different emotions in different people. And even in the same people, as we saw with the example with the person with the dog. It was the same situation before and after the person saw the fence. But it was not the actual situation that caused that caused the emotion. It was the appraisal of the person, the appraisal of the situation. That's why it's called the appraisal theory. It's because appraisals are the central organizing component of an emotional response. Appraisal is basically your assessment of how this is going to affect me, how this is going to affect my goals, my needs, my desires, how it's going to affect me.

So back to the example of. The story about the apple and the story about the dog. How did appraisals function as the central component in these stories? So in the example of the person under the apple tree who originally was hit on the head and thought someone threw something at them, and then realized that it was just an apple that fell from the tree, in their first appraisal, they thought that someone was being aggressive to them and they felt that they needed to protect themselves. And that organized an emotional response that included a feeling of anger. And in the second scenario or the second part of the scenario, when they recognized that , that it was nobody's fault, that the fruit simply fell from the tree, then their appraisal organized a different emotional response. They didn't feel that they were being attacked anymore. They simply realized that it was an accident and that they might need to move. And they had maybe a sense of bewilderment or irritation. But the appraisal organized a different emotional response triggered by the person's assessment of the situation and how it was going to affect them.

In the second example of the person with the dog, first, they hear the dog ferociously barking, and it's obviously a very large dog from the sound, and it's furious, and so they feel terrified. Their appraisal of the situation is, there's a dog right behind me that's about to attack me and I have fear, and this is organizing a response that makes me want to run away as fast as I can in terror from this dog. But their appraisal changes when they recognize the fence and they see that there's no way that the dog can attack them. So their assessment of how the situation is going to develop has changed. And that organizes a different emotional response. The person instead feels maybe a little bit of surprise, shock or irritation at the dog, but not terror anymore. And so these two examples help us to understand how appraisals organize our emotions, that it's not the external or internal event that organizes the emotion, but it's the appraisal, it's our appraisal of the event of how is this going to affect my needs, my goals, my desires, my concerns. That's the question that our brains ask. These appraisals often happen so quickly and unconsciously, milliseconds, but nevertheless, our brain does appraise the situation and how it's going to affect us, and organize an emotional response to help us to adapt to the situation.

So understanding that appraisals organize emotions. Helps us understand that when we want to regulate an emotion, when we find an emotion that's maladaptive and we would like to change it, we're going to have to focus our attention on this appraisal, on our assessment of the situation, on the story that our brain is telling about how the situation is going to affect me. Now, appraisal theorists teach us that there's more than one way to work on an appraisal. Yes, you can work on it directly. You can work on changing the way that you see the situation, changing the way that you're telling the story in your head. Or you can work on changing the situation itself, which will then trigger an indirect change in the appraisal, because now you have a different situation, and so it's a different situation being appraised. So for example, changing the way that you see the situation: we saw that in the story with the dog, the person first thought the dog was about to attack them, then saw the fence and realized the dog was not going to attack them. And so the information, the additional information the person received about the situation changed their appraisal. At first, they thought that they were in danger and second, they realized they were not in danger. And so their appraisal, the way that they saw the situation change. That was a direct change in the appraisal. An indirect change in the appraisal might've happened in the following manner: let's say the person's back is turned. The dog starts barking. It's huge. It's furious. It causes fear. It triggers that. Appraisal, which which triggers an emotional response, that includes fear. But then all of a sudden, the dog stops barking. For some reason, the situation has changed and you can see how the person's appraisal at that point would probably change. They might feel surprised. Something has changed. Something has happened to the dog. It doesn't sound like it's about to attack anymore because it's suddenly quiet. So the person might feel surprised. They might feel curious. They might still feel a little bit afraid, but it might be mixed with a different emotion. So we can see here's an example of how changing the situation could then change indirectly change the appraisal because it's changing the situation, which is being appraised. It doesn't change the fact that appraisal is still organizing the emotion, the person's experiences, but it can be indirectly changed by tweaking the situation that your brain is appraising.

You can also work on indirectly changing your appraisal by working on your emotional, your physical, emotional response itself. Here's an example: a performing musician is about to go out on stage and they're so nervous that their hands are shaking. And seeing this handshake is making them feel even more anxious because they feel like they're not going to be able to control their hands out on stage and execute this complex piece of music in front of everybody out there. One solution that some musicians rely on is taking a beta blocker. It's a medication that can reduce your heart rate and sometimes reduce the physical shakes. The musician may take something that directly works on this bodily response, this physical response of anxiety, which includes the shaky hands, and the medication may calm the shakes in their hand. And then this in turn may change the musicians appraisal of their situation then, because they may feel, "oh, my hands are not shaking. I'm in control. I think I'm going to be able to do this." And so their anxiety levels may be more manageable at that point. So there's another example of how to indirectly change a situation by working on the bodily response. Another way to indirectly change the situation is by working on our attention, because that manipulates the information that is coming into our brains on which we're basing appraisals. But the point is that appraisals can be manipulated. Appraisals need to be manipulated if we want to modify our emotions. And we can work on them either directly, or indirectly. Directly changing appraisals is not the only way to change an emotion. We can indirectly change them by changing the situation in some way, by manipulating our emotional, physical, emotional response, and by manipulating the way our attention is used in a specific situation. And in future episodes, we'll talk in a lot of detail about interfering in these different indirect points that can influence our appraisals. But I just wanted to introduce you to the idea of. Emotions being organized by appraisals. And that appraisals can be modified both directly and indirectly if we decide we want to modify our emotions.

Now I'm going to give you a little exercise that you can do this week to try and really incorporate this understanding that emotions are processes, and that they are governed or organized by appraisals, and your appraisals can be directly and indirectly modified. This is how this exercise would work. You may remember that in our first episode, the introductory episode, we talked about how awareness is always the first step in emotion regulation. This exercise will help you. To develop your awareness from moment to moment. You may have some awareness of different emotions in your life that you feel are not adaptive, including anxiety, but you may not be aware of the fluctuations in those anxiety levels from moment to moment, and how your emotions are processes, how they're always in flux. And so I'm going to suggest an exercise to help you to develop this moment to moment awareness.

It's simple. This is how it works. You set an alarm on your phone or some other way to alert yourself, ideally four times a day, you can do it less, but four would be ideal. And when this alarm goes off, you need to ask yourself, how do I feel? What is the emotion that I'm having right now? And record it. And you can either do this by physically writing it in a notebook, or you can use an app that I would suggest. I don't have any affiliation with this app, I simply think that it's a good app for this exercise. It's an app called How We Feel. I've looked at different emotion recording apps and I think that this one is the best one for what we need in this exercise. As I said, it's called how we feel. You can set the app to alert you at the number of times per day that you choose. It will send you a notification and then it gives you a series of choices to help you to describe how you're feeling. And some people like this. Some people have trouble when they ask themselves how they're feeling, they have trouble with generating the words and the descriptions. And this app gives you many different choices to describe what emotions you might be feeling. And you can simply choose between the options that are there. And some people find that easier than having to generate the description on their own. In any case, it gives you a couple of different stages to describe how you're feeling. You choose different buttons. And then it asks you to, to describe why it is that you think that you feel this way. And you don't have to type it in with your thumbs. There's a recording button. You can do it with the microphone. You can just speak your version of your story of why it is that you think that you're feeling this way. But of course, if you choose to do it in a written notebook, you can do it the same way. You can simply just write how you're feeling. And then try and write why you think that you're feeling this way. Now, what will this exercise do for you? This is an exercise to help you start to see your emotions from a distance. You may remember in the introductory episode, how I talked about how I started to feel like I was up on a hill and I could look down on my emotions from a far and see what was happening, and understand what needed to be done and understand how it could be done. Well, this is an exercise that helps you to get distance and perspective on your emotions and start to get up on that hilltop so that you can see them from far away. It will help you to recognize that your emotions are processes, because when that app goes off four times a day, you will not feel the same. You will not feel exactly the same every single time it alerts you. You will feel slightly different. There will be slight differences in your emotions from moment to moment. Even if they tend to be negative from time to time or throughout the entire day, you will notice that there are differences in degrees and amount and quality and mixture of emotions as you start to record them. And so it will help you to recognize that your emotions are processes. This is the first thing. And then writing down, why you think that you feel this way helps you to recognize that an appraisal is behind the emotion that you're feeling, and it helps you to see what your appraisal is. As I mentioned, most appraisals are unconscious. We don't even know what our brain decided, what story it decided to tell about this particular situation, which triggered a particular emotional response. So writing down why you feel a certain way helps you to begin to see your appraisal behind your emotion. It will start to help you be aware that your emotion is a process, and that is organized by an appraisal, and to learn what that appraisal is that is organizing that emotion that you're experiencing. And then of course, the next step which we'll get into later is about learning how, if you decide that your emotion is not adaptive, it is not helpful to you then you can learn how to manipulate, how to modify that appraisal, that story that you're telling about the situation that is organizing the emotion that you're having. And we'll talk about many different strategies to be able to both directly and indirectly modify that appraisal, which is organizing your experience in the moment.

So that's it for today. There's our bite sized concept and a bite-size exercise. I encourage you to try it. It will help you to become more aware and able to see and understand your emotions from a distance and give you those first tools to be able to change your emotions when you decide that they aren't helpful.
Tune in next week where we'll talk further about appraisal theory concepts that help us with our personal emotion regulation processes. Thanks and see you next week.