DEFINITION:EMOTIONS AND DEPRESSION

It is pretty obvious that it is our emotions that cause us most pain and suffering when we are depressed. Emotions associated with joy and pleasure are reduced , while those associated with sadness, threats, anxiety, and anger are increased. So let’s take a closer look at how the brain is designed., because this will help us ‘look in’ on our minds. We will then be more able to move between different emotional systems, from those which are less helpful to those which are more helpful.

Basically, we have different types of emotion systems to our brain and these are designed by evolution to do different things. We sometimes call these emotion systems ‘Affect regulation System’ .

* Those that evolved to deal with threats, and are designed to help, protect and defend us(threat system)

*Those that evolved to excite and inspire us to go out and achieve things (incentive/resource/system) .