Excitement refers to the intensity of affective experience and can be associated with both positive and negative emotions. It is linked to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and measurable physiological effects (increased heartbeat, pulse, perspiration and adrenalin level). Excitement influences our thinking, decisions, behaviour and emotional reactions. In many cases it is not emotions that cause trouble, but their intensity. This is why being able to manage excitement may come in handy.

The effects of excitement

Excitement is a surge of additional energy developed primarily to enable an organism to act more promptly. However:

• Excitement can be experienced even if an action is not needed or before it is needed. This usually happens when we expect or imagine something, and it may lead to a slippery slope if excitement and these images create a vicious circle.
• Intense excitement can diminish attention and concentration as well as lead to distorted perception and judgements.
• It can also amplify emotional responses (so joy becomes euphoria, fear becomes panic, anger becomes rage).
• Excitement affects self-control, can cause unpredictable reactions and increase susceptibility to influence.
• A persistently high level of excitement may even affect physical and mental health.
• Moderate excitement is desirable though, often sought to counter boredom. What would life be without getting excited? However, if excitement becomes a need or an end in itself, it can be addictive and lead to prioritising intensity over quality – which, in fact, increases boredom in the long run.

Evidently, excitement plays a complex role in our lives, so let’s see what we can do about it.

Emotions (e.g. crying, laughing, blushing, trembling, running away, shouting) are reactions to our feelings, so they are normally involuntary. However, most of our emotional reactions can be channelled in different ways, which will be the focus of this area.

Decoupling feelings and emotional reactions

The introduction to this Affective group highlighted the difference between feelings and emotions. Understanding this difference is important because it can help you gain greater control over your emotional reactions. Let’s say you react with anger whenever you feel hurt. If you realise that these two are not the same, you won’t need to react automatically any more. You will be free to react differently when you feel hurt or choose not to react at all. Now we can turn to those reactions themselves.

The ways emotions can be channelled

Emotional reactions are neither positive nor negative. They can facilitate or disrupt an activity, which depends on the way they are directed. Several such ways are suggested below (they apply to both pleasant and unpleasant emotions). This diagram can make it easier to remember them:

• Suppression or blocking emotional reactions can be useful if a situation or leaving an impression have priority over your inner state (e.g. when dealing with an accident or at a job interview). However, this should be only temporary as it has well known psychological and even physiological consequences(1). This exercise can help with unblocking suppressed emotions:

Feelings refer to the experiential, receptive aspect of an affect (e.g. feeling hurt, happy, confused, nervous etc.). The capacity to feel is one of the main distinctions between the animate (people, animals) and inanimate (computers, robots, cars). This is what it means to be alive! A common view is that feelings are spontaneous and irrational, and that we are at their mercy, but in fact we can, at least to some degree, be in charge of our feelings. There are four stages in this process (reflecting four already covered areas):

• Notice what you feel (Self-awareness)
• Accept what you feel (Relating to oneself)
• Evaluate your feeling (Self-evaluation)
• Affect the way you feel (Personal change)

Notice

We have a natural tendency to ignore or block our awareness of feelings that may not be pleasant. This indeed may be justified in some situations (e.g. in an emergency), at least temporarily. Generally, though, it is a good idea to be aware of what you feel for several reasons:

• Feelings are trying to tell us something that may be important.
• Ignoring feelings doesn’t make them disappear. Their influence just becomes unconscious. So, for example, you may start avoiding certain situations, thinking in a certain way, or develop some body symptoms, and you won’t even know why.
• Deadening unpleasant feelings deadens pleasant ones too. So by doing so you reduce your capacity to feel at all.
• We can’t do anything about our feelings if we are not aware of them! Awareness is the first step of being more in charge. For example, feeling hurt is often behind our angry reactions. If we want to have a choice rather than acting automatically, we need to acknowledge that underlying feeling first.

There are two types of self-value: acquired and innate. The former is linked to self-esteem, and the latter to self-respect. Self-esteem feels good when high, but it can also be so low that we feel as if we are falling into an endless pit. This is why it is important to have something to hold onto in these situations, something that does not depend on our successes, or the way we look, or how others see us. This is self-respect. In this area we will examine and discuss both self-esteem and self respect.

Self-esteem

We have all heard of self-esteem and its importance. So let’s examine what self-esteem actually is. To esteem anything is to evaluate it (as in ‘estimate’); so self-esteem is about evaluating or judging ourselves. When we have high self-esteem we think well about ourselves, we hold ourselves in high regard. Conversely, having low self-esteem means not thinking highly about oneself. Self-esteem has much to do with personal achievement and success, but it also depends on our expectations. If our realisations exceed our expectations we will have high self-esteem; if our expectations are greater than our achievements we will have low self-esteem. For example, if you don’t expect to win a medal at the Olympic Games but actually win bronze, your self-esteem will be high. If you expect to win gold but actually win silver, your self- esteem will be low, even though you objectively achieved more than in the first case. So, higher self-esteem can be brought about either by achieving more, or by lowering our expectations.

The effects: self-esteem influences how we feel about ourselves. Research indicates that people with high self-esteem are happier and more effective; they are also likely to be more assertive, independent, and creative.4 However, as we all probably know, there is also a flip side to this, to which we will turn now.