Regulation Of Emotions In Health Workers

Regulating emotions in healthcare professionals helps them to recognize the usefulness and transient nature of emotions . In addition, it helps them deal with the effects of thoughts and ensures that they do not fall victim to emotional attachment.

In general, regulating emotions means having the ability to recognize, control, and control your emotions. Psychology defines it as a basic process of emotional intelligence that is essential for developing communication skills, which are necessary when working with patients.

However, in order to practice emotion regulation if you work in a health environment, you must first understand what the process entails. Training in emotion regulation is “the ability to be open to both pleasant and unpleasant emotions”. (Fernandez, 2010).

Hervàs’ model for regulating emotions based on emotion treatment (2011) divided this process into several tasks, or stages, which one must complete in order to achieve the said regulation:

• Transparency. To identify, live and express one’s own feelings.
• Emotional attention. The ability to recognize your feelings and be aware of them.
• Marking or identifying emotions and “naming” them.
• To accept or embrace the feelings you experience.
• Analysis. To reflect and understand the meaning and consequences of emotions.
• Emotion regulation.

The relationship between thoughts and feelings

It is a two-way relationship between emotions and thoughts. Both complement each other, and if one fails, the other is at risk. Thus, a constant negative thought you can not disconnect affects the way you feel. In the same way, a negative emotion that does not reflect reality affects your thoughts.

A common example of this among healthcare professionals is to think that they cannot take care of a patient properly due to lack of time. Dissatisfaction like this leads to feelings of frustration, stress or helplessness. At the same time, these emotions “feed” the mind and make the situation even worse.

One solution to this problem would be to change the situation by acting on it. However, this is sometimes impossible, especially in health settings where workers have to cope with patients who do not get better or patients with fatal diseases or limited resources.

Therefore, it is necessary to have mechanisms that help deal with emotions. This is the only way healthcare professionals will be able to offer quality treatment to their patients.

Emotion regulation: Stress in healthcare professionals

Several studies establish a negative relationship between emotional intelligence and professional stress. Furthermore, research says that more training on emotional intelligence leads to lower stress levels and prevention of burnout (Bajo Gallego and González Hervías, 2014).

The benefits of mindfulness in patients

Mindfulness means awareness, which consists in focusing on the present moment and putting one’s attention on the here and now. However, it is important that you do so:

• Without judging.
• Without expectations.
• By opening your mind to everything that surrounds you.
• From a learning point of view and with the thoughts of a beginner.
• With self-compassion.

It has been shown that mindfulness increases the regulation of emotions. In addition, it also improves the relationship between employee and patient. More specifically, mindfulness:

• Increases general well-being and reduces dysfunctional emotional states and physical symptoms of chronic diseases.

• Prevents further exacerbation of Alzheimer’s patients.
• Patients suffering from stress, anxiety and depression benefit.
• Counteracts the negative effects of chronic stress in cancer patients.
• Improves physical function, body pain, general health, social function and mental health in patients with fibromyalgia.

The purpose of mindfulness is not to get rid of your thoughts, but to accept them and your feelings in order to detach yourself from them. Mindfulness helps you understand that you are only going through transient emotional states that do not define who you are. Therefore, if you practice mindfulness regularly, you will become an expert at regulating your own emotions.