All emotions are, essentially, impulses that direct us to act, commands from our brain that evolution has granted us and that make us react automatically, so in every emotion we find the instinct to act.
For this reason, during this workshop we work on identifying, first of all, using diagrams; the parts of the brain responsible for regulating emotions, their close communication with the rational mind and the emotional mind and how this relationship between the two minds produces what is called "neural hijacking" and how to identify and manage it in order to avoid irrational behaviors that lead to conflicts.
Exercises were carried out to learn what an emotion is? What a feeling is? And their differences. Through playful activities, the 6 basic emotions were covered; happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust (Goleman, 1995) and how each of them plays a unique role in our emotional repertoire. We shared with them strategies of self-knowledge, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and how to make this a habit to properly manage the relationships they have with all the people around them.
This workshop benefited 9 women in the Barrientos prison for 6 weeks, with a duration of 100 minutes per session, during the months of February and March 2020. Of the 9 women benefited, 6 reported improving their emotional self-knowledge, 6 reflected having better emotional self-regulation skills, 4 increased the ability to remain self-motivated, 5 women in total reflect a significant improvement in the ability to establish good relationships and to interact smoothly and effectively with others. Finally, 6 women reported a significant improvement in emotional training, which means that; they developed skills to recognize emotions in others, they are more assertive in expressing their emotions and are able to contribute to conflict management within their group.
