Conscious Emotional Bonding: What It Is And How It Is Applied In Education
Emotions greatly influence our behavior and the way we perceive our environment. Depending on what mood we feel when we find ourselves in a certain situation, we will act in a more or less appropriate way.
Traditionally, the need to accept our emotions and know how to manage them when they appear has been raised, but what if we could choose them deliberately? That is, what if we decided to feel the most appropriate way according to the situation we have to face?
This idea is the main one in the conscious emotional attachment approach, a very useful model in life in general but, above all, in the educational field. Next we are going to see what conscious emotional attachment is and how it understands the broad human emotional spectrum.
Emotional intelligence is something that has been talked about for a long time, and it is not surprising since more and more people understand the great role that emotions have in our lives. Knowing how to manage the broad emotional spectrum, that is, being emotionally intelligent brings us psychological well-being, success and allows us to face adversity without it overwhelming us.
One of the most common actions taken by those who talk about emotional intelligence was to focus efforts on helping people identify their emotions, name them, and manage them when they appear. This strategy is very necessary and useful, but it is also necessary to train the ability to make the emotions that interest us come to us. That is, it is advisable to acquire the appropriate skills to create an emotional climate that brings us advantages.
Conscious emotional engagement (VEC) is a strategy related to emotional intelligence that allows us to deliberately connect with our internal states That is, applying this strategy allows us to relate to our emotions in an intelligent way. This requires a process of self-knowledge, learning notions of self-management and emotional leadership. Its fundamental usefulness is above all to influence a group in our charge, such as a classroom or a business office.
This model was developed by clinical psychologist Roberto Aguado Romo, based on both his professional experience and numerous neuroscientific findings. Because this strategy is extremely useful for attracting more productive emotions depending on the situation experienced, it has become one of the most used tools to achieve well-being and personal and social success for many people.
The right emotions and the wrong emotions
Generally we distinguish between positive or “good” emotions, which are those that make us feel good; and negative or “bad” emotions, which are those that we find unpleasant to feel. This vision is very different from how the VEC model conceives emotions, in which a different classification is made. Here emotions are categorized as appropriate emotions and inappropriate emotions.
Appropriate emotions can be defined as those that are appropriate and functional to deal with a certain context For example, feeling fear when there is a threat nearby (e.g., a fire or a robbery) is adaptive, as this emotion motivates us to get away from danger or ask for help.
On the other hand, inappropriate emotions are those that do not help us to face a certain situation functionally, and can even harm us in the form of limitations and new problems. For example, the same fear in the previous case, if it appears in a situation that is harmless (e.g., giving a lecture or taking an exam) is a dysfunctional emotion, since it does not allow us to carry out a certain task or necessary action. .
The VEC model maintains that People, at least most of us, are born with a repertoire of basic emotions that we are prepared to feel by nature: disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and joy. As we grow and interact within our culture, we learn to associate these emotions with specific situations. If this learning is not appropriate, such as associating fear with social contexts, we will end up suffering unpleasant consequences.
The main premise of conscious emotional attachment is get the people with whom it is applied to unlearn the dysfunctional relationships between emotions and depending on what situations in order to be able to establish new associations again, this time in a functional way. The idea is that the individual feels sadness when this emotion is appropriate, fear when it is necessary to flee from danger, or joy when the opportunity is right. In order to learn when it is necessary to feel one emotion or another, as happens in childhood, it is good to have the appropriate reference.
Application of the VEC model in the educational field
Conscious emotional attachment is especially useful in educational contexts, obtaining very good results for both teachers and their students. So, The VEC model applied in the educational field has the objective of creating an emotional climate that facilitates learning For this, two types of emotions are distinguished, which facilitate or hinder teaching and learning.
TRAM emotions
TRAM emotions are:
TRAM emotions are one of those that do not show much in an educational context Whether the teacher or the students experience sadness, anger, disgust or fear while in class, it will be very difficult for them to learn in a meaningful way, much less for the knowledge to be integrated.
This is especially visible in the case of students with good aptitudes, as is the case of highly gifted boys and girls. They are children who have a natural facility for acquiring certain knowledge but who, if they are not motivated enough, find the subject boring, uninteresting and prefer to focus their attention on things that do give them pleasure.
The teacher or the parents themselves, unaware of the importance of motivation in the educational process, end up saying “the child can, but he doesn’t want to,” attributing a certain rebellion or negativity. But the child really does want to, what happens is that he can’t because During the course of classes, emotions arise that do not facilitate learning in the least
Emotions HOME
CASA emotions are curiosity, admiration, security and joy, and they are precisely the emotional states that we want to occur in educational contexts These emotions motivate both the teacher and his students, facilitating the teaching and learning process. Students feel capable of learning, experiencing true interest in the subject and the way it is taught. Significant learning occurs and knowledge is acquired in a simple and natural way.
Related article: “How to control anger: 7 practical tips”
The importance of VEC
All human emotions have an adaptive purpose, otherwise we would not have preserved them after thousands of years of evolution. We should not see emotional states as positive or negative based on how they make us feel, but rather conceptualize ourselves as adaptive or maladaptive depending on whether they make us adapt and overcome the situation or context in which we find ourselves. Anger is useful when we have to defend ourselves, fear is necessary when there is danger, and joy is adaptive when we are with other people and we want them to have a good impression of us.
For all this, the VEC It is a very good tool for learning in an educational context but also functional for life in general By consciously connecting with our emotions we can get the most out of them.
