Information Overload 141
emotions, awareness and insight into the strategies you use,
and the ability to monitor and f lexibly modify strategies as a
situation demands (Gyurak, Gross, and Etkin 2011). These
explicit processes work together so that you can f lexibly use
one or more strategies to purposefully inf luence your
responses to your emotions.
Along the same continuum, you also use implicit, or
automatic and unconscious, processes that help you regulate
your emotions. Implicit processes operate largely outside of
your awareness and without deliberation or mindful atten-
tion (similar to your breathing or the beating of your heart).
Implicit emotion regulation processes also underlie many
maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. For example,
have you ever thought it might be relaxing to have a cold
drink after a long day at work or to eat a pint of your favorite
ice cream to cheer yourself up when you were feeling down?
If so, even though you may have actively chosen to engage in
that specific behavior, it probably resulted from a well-
established and instinctive habit that you developed over
time to cope with certain emotions.
Practice Take a moment to consider some of your explicit and
implicit emotion regulation responses, and record them on a piece
of paper for later use. Since these can be hard to identif y, especially
implicit strategies, try to think of responses to emotional experi-
ences that you’ve had during the past few days. For example, if you
had a big presentation coming up at work that made you feel quite
anxious, an explicit response to this emotion would have been to
call in sick the day before to avoid the experience altogether. A n
implicit response might have been a tendency to avoid eye contact
with audience members while giving the presentation because it
temporarily made your distress less intense.