IdKid

Today I finally realised why it is I hate the term ‘affect regulation’ so much. Not only because in language terms it represent professional jargon and can exclude people, but also because it seeks to encapsulate and oversimplify the experience of emotion.
I think everyone knows that our emotions are what make us human and the compexity of these emotions is what adds colour to our lives. I feel that our goal should not be to regulate these intense and real experiences, but rather to understand them.

No catch-all phrase or title can explain why it is that we sometimes do the things we do. Why we get tied up in knots and why we create such vivid and amazing things to help us make sense of our worlds.

The term also implies that the emotions and the experience of them is somehow secondary to the need to regaulate their impact on our physical self and our behaviour. I think this ties into that age old battlle between personal instinct and social control. What is human nature and can it be trusted. Does it exist?

Stop me if I’m getting too deep into a simple and well accepted concept. I’d love to get your thoughts on this. It’s something that’s been on miy mind for some time now.
Let’s get philosophical…..philosphical….I wanna get philosophical! Now I just need to find my tights, legwarmers, singlet and headband….oh and my gender ambiguity.