Emotion Differentiation as Resilience Against Excessive Alcohol Use — Psychological Science

Emotion Differentiation as Resilience Against Excessive Alcohol Use — Psychological Science

'Some people are adept at using discrete emotion categories (anxious, angry, sad) to capture their felt experience; other people merely communicate how good or bad they feel. We theorized that people who are better at describing their emotions might be less likely to self-medicate with alcohol. During a 3-week period, 106 underage social drinkers used handheld computers to self-monitor alcohol intake. From participants’ reported experiences during random prompts, we created an individual difference measure of emotion differentiation. Results from a 30-day timeline follow-back revealed that people with intense negative emotions consumed less alcohol if they were better at describing emotions and less reliant on global descriptions.'

Todd Kashdan is doing some fantastic research.  This study suggests that if we don't want our kids to binge drink in response to painful emotions then we need to teach them to be able to accurately name what they are feeling. 

Digging into that  - what exactly do we need to teach them?

1. To be good at getting present with themselves - dropping in on themselves and noticing their thoughts and feelings
2. To have a diverse emotion vocabulary - not just angry but also frustrated, irritated, bored, furious, resentful, bitter, exasperated, indignant, offended - and to know the subtle differences between these feelings

And how do we teach it:

1. Be open and curious and present with them - ask them about how they are feeling and help them tease it out, so they get good at being open and curious about their emotions
2. Model appropriate expression of painful emotions. Don't just pretend that everything is OK.  When you feel painful emotions talk it through with them - what you feel and what triggered the feeling
3. Model appropriate responses to painful emotions - show them that we don't have to act out or suppress painful emotions. We can feel the emotion, be compassionate to ourselves and  pause before we choose actions based on what is important to us.