Essay On Self Reflection

Emotions Self-Reflection Journal

Emotion facilitates human survival through evolution and serves as an adaptation in both intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects. For instance, emotions not only allow people to self-regulate their thoughts and behaviors in face of challenges, but they also provide opportunities to share feelings and foster relationship with others (Shiota & Kalat, 2012). In my self-reflection journal, I would like to share my emotions, particularly anxiety, grief, and hope, relating to my past experiences. These experiences triggered strong emotional responses which tapped into my inner feelings. Basically, emotions comprise physical arousal, emotional expression and cognitive process (Ciccarelli & White, 2012). Recall of these events provides me an insight into both experiences and reactions for better understanding of own emotions.

Anxiety

I feel anxious for almost every semester in university. However, this emotion was the strongest for present semester because of the academic burden. According to Kumaraswamy (2013), university education can be a stressful period in which students begin to develop self-sufficiency and the academic pressure often leads to anxiety (Wahab et al., 2013). I have gradually improved my academic performance and maintained as a scholarship holder. I should be proud of my achievement. Indeed, my previous academic excellence had exerted overwhelming pressure on myself to set even higher expectation and at least sustain my performance because I have this personality of striving for the best. Besides, handling several assignments while ensuring the best performance are very challenging tasks because it may result in suffering on each task. All these situations triggered anxiety in me. Sto...

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...showed the effectiveness of using multiple emotion regulation strategies, but it also provided me an insightful understanding of the role of emotion in human development. For example, anxiety is a negative emotion, but optimal level of anxiety motivates and directs effort to reduce the tension. While for grief, despite of the risk in developing depression, it builds resilience in people by integrating the loss into their lives. Correspondingly, Yerkes-Dodson law suggested moderate level of arousal can enhance the performance rather than impairment (Ciccarelli & White, 2012). Sustaining hope is beneficial, still we have to be aware of the goal achievability to avoid unrealistic hope. In brief, any emotion, either positive or negative, at its optimal level can have beneficial impact in enhancing our development from various aspects such as social and psychological.