Most of us have periods in our lives when we are troubled by intense emotions. While this is often a good time to seek the help of a mental health professional, there are times when this is not really necessary. Self-help books have proliferated to assist people in learning more about themselves and their emotions. Self-help software attempts to do the same thing. One such program is called Emotions Manager 2000. It appears to be more useful than a book, because it helps you record your emotions, think about your emotions, and review the history of times you have had similar emotions. If it lives up to its promise, this software can also be a useful adjunct to therapy. I’ve explored this product and I think it has promise.
The opening screen of Emotions Manager allows offers you the following options: Resolve, Review, Graphs, Analysis, and Print. When you first use the software you will be using the "Resolve" option whenever you experience a strong emotion. You are then forced to choose among a short list of emotions. You will need to label your emotion as either happy, sad, angry, anxious, disappointed, shame, or hurt. Where did this list come from? I’m not sure. There are theories, such as Affect Theory, which state that there are a finite number of basic emotions or affects – but their list is different than Emotion Manager’s list. Affect theory usually lists the following: interest/excitement, enjoyment/joy, surprise/startle, fear/terror, anger/rage, distress/anguish, shame/humiliation, disgust, and dis-smell. I’m not completely satisfied with Emotion Manager’s forced choice of emotional labels, but some narrow choices are probably needed to allow the program to track these emotions over time.
After you have chosen an emotion from the list you are asked some additional questions. You are asked what area of your life is involved. This is also a forced choice, but the selection is wider and you are allowed to choose "other". Then you are asked the following about your experience:
Describe the event or thoughts you had just before experiencing the Emotion. Describe some positive things about this event. If your fears came true, what’s the worst thing that could happen? If the worst thing did happen, what steps could you take? At this point the program appears to be taking a cognitive approach. Cognitive psychologists see emotions as interactions between events in your life and beliefs or expectations that you have. While not explicitly asking about beliefs or expectations, the program gets you to think about your feelings and the events that led up to them. This alone will be useful for many people.
The program’s real power is only evident when several week’s worth of emotions have been entered. The option to "review" allows you to browse through prior entries to "identify trends or scripts which are limiting your life." You can browse all past entries, entries involving a certain emotion, entries involving a certain arena in your life, or a combination of emotion and arena (such as "anxious" about "spouse"). Here the power of the computer is used to used to help you see trends that might not otherwise be evident.
That power is even more evident when you graph or analyze your data. Simple bar graphs present trends in the data in intuitive fashion. Here you can see your "overall emotional makeup", the trends in your emotions over time, your emotional makeup for a particular arena of your life, the progress you are making in different arenas and with different emotions. You can print the graphs in black and white or color.
An additional "Print" option allows you to print various permutations of your data. This is another useful way to explore patterns in the data and to learn more about your own emotional life.
The help system is quite useful and it gives you tips about how to use the software to "correct false scripts" in your life. This is another concept shared by affect theorists and cognitive theorists. Emotions Manager simplifies this theory and makes it useful.
Who will benefit from this software? It helps if you are a detail-oriented person – someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. In order to benefit you will have to diligently enter information about your own feelings every day for several months. If you are not willing to do this, then the program will not be very helpful. If you are, you may find patterns that you would not otherwise see, and you might be able to make changes in your emotional life that would otherwise remain stagnant. The program can work hand-in-hand with therapy if the therapist is open to the idea. Bringing the printouts to a therapy session would add a dimension that would not otherwise be available. I highly recommend this program to those who are committed enough to enter the data on a regular basis. For much less than the cost of a single therapy session you can have a tool that will help you over a period of months or years.
