Week 6

       Europe is rich in history, especially Germany. This history causes me and the rest of the world to feel many emotions. This  past week in Berlin, I visited the Holocaust Memorial and Buchenwald concentration camp, a couple weeks before that. In chapter five, we learn about emotion being a process. While I was visiting these sites, I have many feelings come over me. "Sometimes  it seems you are suddenly in the middle of an emotional experience. We're likely to think of  our emotional experience once it's full blown, once we've realized we're sad, happy angry or disgusted. In reality, however, we have gone through many steps before we get to that point of feeling (Remland, 2015)." 
      The process begins with something that gains our attention. The second I stepped foot  in the concentration camp, I knew I was going to feel many things. But what really hit me was when I was standing in the crematorium in the camp. Once, I realized where I was standing, which the book defines as an appraisal, I evaluated this event. As I heard the tour guide speak to another group of the horrors that happened in that room, I could do nothing but shudder. My eyes were watering and my nose began to run. This is the third step in the process known as having a physical reaction. The next step is called action tendencies or the motivation to express the emotion. In that moment, I was feeling so many things. I was feeling shame, anger, disgust, and sadness. All of these emotions usually lead to my silence. So I did not take anyone action, I exercised emotional regulation in the fifth step. I wouldn't engage in action tendencies in this location because it would not be respectful. I didn't have family members who died in that camp or the holocaust. This camp is supposed to make you feel all of these things and I could self reflect on that in the moment because this is how we are supposed to remember.
      "Emotion tells the "truth" abut what we value, think is bad or good, what we believe is right and wrong (White, 1994)."  
          

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