Keywords: college students; Emotional management; Current situation; Countermeasures
First, the status quo and causes of emotional management of college students
Among college students, because their minds are not yet fully mature, they often have negative emotional experiences such as anxiety, inferiority and depression when facing problems such as study, life, emotion and work pressure. Nowadays, the most common mantra that college students hear is "depressed". On the eve of College Students' Mental Health Day in 2008, a survey of 6 universities in Beijing/kloc-0 showed that the incidence of depression among college students was 23.66%, not less than100000, and the proportion of dropping out of school due to mental illness was 37.9% and 64.4% respectively. Mental illness is the main reason for college students to drop out of school [1]. The sudden onset of mental illness is caused by emotional distress that has not been adjusted in time. I have done some questionnaires among college students in Jingzhou. I sent out 600 questionnaires and collected 560, including 298 females and 262 males. The following is a set of data in the survey results:
As can be seen from the chart, 92% of college students have experienced emotional distress, and about 63% have experienced serious emotional distress. There are some differences between men and women in intensity, time and way, and the form of distress is close to 50%. Taking the semester as a unit, most students' emotional distress is "sometimes" or "occasionally", which shows the characteristics of less frequent, but the emotional distress of girls is several percentage points higher than that of boys, and most students' emotional duration is "more than one day" or "a few days", while in the long-term emotional distress, boys are slightly more than girls. There are some differences between male and female college students in the present situation, intensity, form, frequency and duration of distress, but there is no significant difference. This survey shows that college students' emotional distress is a common phenomenon among college students.
As shown in the above picture, the emotional situation of college students is worrying. In addition to the inevitable negative emotions in society, college students also lack the ability to manage their emotions. Some researchers have investigated the emotional management of 1000 college students in Chongqing. The results reflect the emotional management ability of college students from several aspects.
As can be seen from Table 2, the five dimensions of college students' emotional management are all between 3.0993 and 3.9847, and the total questionnaire is divided into 3.5744, which shows a positive trend, indicating that with the improvement of college students' cognitive level, they can rationally adjust their emotions and control their thoughts of venting negative emotions at will in most cases, but their internal development structure is unbalanced. College students scored the highest in the dimension of "controlling negative venting ability" and the lowest in the dimension of "positive remedy ability". The five dimensions are divided into the following order: controlling negative venting ability, rationally controlling emotions, seeking external support ability, controlling demotion suggestion ability and positive remedy ability [2]. This shows that college students can deal with negative emotions in a relatively rational way, and will actively seek some help, but they are easily influenced by negative emotions, and their ability to actively remedy bad situations is relatively weak, which needs to be actively improved.
Table 1 Table 2 shows that all college students have certain emotional distress and their emotional control ability is not ideal. "Emotional management" has become a topic of social concern in recent years. For college students, bad emotions will do great harm to their physical and mental health, make them lose confidence, lack vitality, and lead to inner conflicts. In severe cases, it will lead to psychological barriers and hinder their mental health development. Because cultivating students' emotional management in colleges and universities is of great practical significance for improving students' mental health, fully developing students' intelligence and emotional will, making them develop harmoniously, forming a complete personality and enhancing students' adaptability to reality.
American psychologist James Gross put forward the theory of emotional regulation in 2002, and there are different emotional regulation in different stages of emotional occurrence [3], as shown in the figure:
In the model of emotion regulation process, Gross divides the process of emotion production into five stages, and each stage will produce emotion regulation, namely, scene selection, scene correction, attention distribution, cognitive change and response adjustment. Scenario selection means that individuals approach or avoid someone, events and occasions to adjust their emotions. Individuals will use this strategy to reduce the occurrence of negative emotions and increase the chances of positive emotional experience. People with social anxiety will try to avoid going to public places to reduce the occurrence of anxiety. Correcting the situation is to initially control emotional events and try to change uncomfortable situations. For example, when the relationship between individuals and classmates is tense, try to improve the tension. Attention distribution refers to paying attention to one or some aspects in emotional events, including trying to focus on a specific topic or task and paying attention to leaving the original topic or task. For example, when an individual talks about an unpleasant topic, he will change the subject and pay attention to other things. Cognitive change is to choose possible explanations and views on the meaning of emotional events, so as to achieve the purpose of regulating emotions. The interpretation of the personal meaning of emotional events will have a strong impact on the psychological experience, behavioral performance and physiological response of emotions in a specific situation. Cognitive changes usually change the nature of emotions. If someone bumps into you, you will avoid getting angry if you interpret it as unintentional. Response regulation refers to the influence of emotional stimulation on emotional experience, behavior and physiological response, which is mainly manifested in the behavior of reducing emotional response. If someone bumps into you, he won't apologize. Although angry, I will try my best to control my anger, which belongs to reaction regulation.
Aristotle once said, "If you are troubled by external things, it is not the thing itself that bothers you, but your own judgment on it." Therefore, regulating emotional cognition is an important method to regulate emotions. According to the theory of emotional ABC founded by American psychologist Ellis, the first English letter of the trigger event A (an activation event) is the cause of the event, B (belief) refers to the evaluation and view of the event, and C (consensus) refers to the final result of personal emotions and behaviors [4]. As shown in the figure:
Every cause has consequences, but the same cause A has different consequences, such as C 1 and C2. This is because there must be a bridge B (belief) between cause and effect. This is belief, which is our evaluation and explanation of the situation. Because, in the same situation (a), different people have different ideas, evaluations and explanations (B 1 and B2) and will get different results (C 1 and C2). Therefore, everything that happens is rooted in our beliefs, evaluations and explanations. For example, they also applied for band 6, but they all failed. One person doesn't care, and another person is heartbroken. Why? That is to say, there is a view and explanation of the induced event A between the induced event A and the emotional behavior result C. One may think that this exam is just an attempt, but it doesn't matter if you fail. Come again next time. Another person may say: I have carefully prepared for so long, but I failed. Is it because I am stupid that people will look down on me? So different B's bring different C's. Whether an individual's belief in how to evaluate stimuli and events is reasonable directly affects emotional experience. In his research, Dr. Conway concluded that children with emotional adjustment difficulties will take aggressive behavior, men will have voyeurism and antisocial behavior in adulthood, and women will have more anxiety and depression in adulthood, both of which will eventually lead to mental health problems [5]. Lopez and other studies also pointed out that good emotional adjustment can transmit social information, exchange ideas, communicate emotions and coordinate social friction [6]. Therefore, correctly and actively regulating emotions and expressing emotions and behaviors will establish good social relations, win positive interpersonal relationships, reduce conflicts and hostility, increase peer support and positive emotions, and have a healthier psychological state.