Meta-emotion is the term psychologists use to describe the emotional reactions we have to feel certain feelings. In some cases, these once-removed reactions can have as much of an impact as the feelings that trigger them. Meta-emotions can increase the risks for using alcohol inappropriately as a coping mechanism. Researchers state that meta-emotions might actually have a bigger influence on inappropriate drinking than a person’s initial feelings. If you already have a severe case of drinking, you can stop it today at an alcohol rehab in Santa Barbara, CA.
People naturally have emotional reactions to the events that occur in their daily lives. Some emotions, commonly labeled as “positive” emotions, tend to make a person feel healthier and happier when they repeatedly appear over time. Other emotions, commonly labeled as “negative” emotions, tend to decrease a sense of health and happiness when they repeatedly appear over time. Meta-emotions are the emotional responses humans have to experiencing either positive or negative emotional states. In effect, they act as reinforcers or amplifiers of these states. Like positive emotions, positive meta-emotions tend to amplify a sense of well-being. Like negative emotions, negative meta-emotions tend to amplify the lack of a sense of well-being.
Adults and teenagers have a range of potential motivations for their initial and continuing involvement in alcohol consumption. For example, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism lists reasons for teen drinking that include genetic inheritance of a predisposition toward alcohol use, preexisting expectations about the pleasures of alcohol consumption, a relative lack of sensitivity to hangovers and other short-term consequences of drinking, the presence of certain antisocial personality traits and a general tendency among adolescents to take part in risky behaviors.
Like adults, adolescents may also start drinking in response to the presence of certain unwanted or unpleasant emotional states. In these cases, the effects of alcohol are intended to act as a coping mechanism that diminishes the impact of negative emotions or otherwise distract a drinker from his or her emotional situation. However, as a rule, using alcohol in this way is both risky and ineffective. Drinkers who attempt to employ alcohol as a coping mechanism can simultaneously decrease their sense of emotional well-being and sharply increase their chances of developing serious problems with diagnosable alcohol abuse or alcohol addiction.
Anxiety is one of the negative emotional states that can lead to the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism. In many studies, the researchers have compared the impact of anxiety on the chances of using alcohol for emotional coping to the impact of meta-emotions that make people feel upset by their level of anxiousness.
As a result of their findings, the researchers state that meta-emotional reactions may actually play a more important role in encouraging the use of drinking as a coping mechanism than the initial emotions that trigger those reactions. In effect, drinkers who use or abuse alcohol for this purpose may have an inability to accept the existence of their unpleasant emotional states. They specifically note the need for future researchers to reproduce their work in larger controlled projects.
