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 state of mind 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 in the most appropriate way according to the situation we have to face?

This idea is the main one in the conscious emotional bonding approach., a quite useful model in life in general but, above all, in the educational field. Next we will see what conscious emotional bonding is and how it understands the broad human emotional spectrum.

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What is Conscious Emotional Bonding?

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.

Know how to manage the broad emotional spectrum, that is, be 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 concentrate efforts to help people identify, name, and manage their emotions when appeared. 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 convenient to acquire the appropriate skills to create an emotional climate that brings us advantages.

Conscious emotional bonding (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. For this, a process of self-knowledge is necessary, learning notions of self-management and emotional leadership. Its fundamental utility is above all to be able to influence a group under 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. Thanks to the fact that this strategy is extremely useful to attract more productive emotions depending on the situation experienced, it has been become one of the most used tools to achieve the well-being and personal and social success of many persons.

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The right emotions and the wrong emotions

We generally distinguish between positive or "good" emotions, which are those that make us feel good; and negative or "bad" emotions, which are what we find unpleasant to feel. This view is very different from how the VEC model conceives emotions, in which a different classification is made. Here the emotions are categorized as adequate 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 (p. 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 cope with a functionally determined situation, and can even harm us in the form of limitations and new problems. For example, the same fear of the previous case, if it appears in a situation that is harmless (p. 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 holds that most of us, at least, are born with a repertoire of basic emotions that we are naturally prepared to feel: 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 according to what situations in order, thus, 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 adequate, fear when it is necessary to flee from danger or joy when the opportune occasion is. To be able to learn when it is necessary to feel one or another emotion, as happens in childhood, it is good to have the right reference.

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Application of the VEC model in the educational field

Conscious emotional bonding is especially useful in educational contexts, obtaining very good results for both teachers and their students. A) Yes, the VEC model applied in the educational field aims to create 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:

• Sadness: if the teacher or student feels sad, unmotivated or distressed.
• Anger: anger towards the obligation of having to be in class and do homework.
• Disgust: when the subject taught is boring, unpleasant and unattractive.
• Fear: the student feels unable to learn or fears not being up to the task.

TRAM emotions are those that do not interest that they manifest 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 it to be learned in a meaningful way, much less for the knowledge to be integrated.

This is especially visible in the case of students with good abilities, as is the case of children with high abilities. They are children who have a natural facility to acquire certain knowledge but who, if they are not sufficiently motivated, they find the subject boring, uninteresting and prefer to focus their attention on things that are he give them pleasure.

The teacher or the parents themselves, unaware of the importance of motivation in the process educational, they end up saying that of "the child can, but he does not want to" attributing to him a certain rebellion or negativism. But the child really does want to, what happens is that he can't because during the course of the classes emotions arise that do not facilitate learning in the least.

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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 a true interest in the subject and the way it is taught. Meaningful learning occurs and knowledge is acquired easily and naturally.

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The importance of the 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 let's find. Anger is useful when you have to defend yourself, 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 linking with our emotions we can get the most out of them.