Emotions, Stress and Self-Regulation

Objectives and Contextualisation
Emotions are automatic responses that regulate our behaviour. Emotional responses impact decision making, our learning, and our physical and mental health. One of the emotional responses that has received much interest in scientific research is the stress response. Chronic stress is a factor that can increase vulnerability to the development of cardiovascular, brain and immune diseases. 
On the other hand, self-regulation capacity is a higher cognitive function, which is part of the executive processes, and which allows us to manage and modify our behaviour and our emotions to better adapt to the environment, improve our quality of life and prevent alterations in our mental health. In this sense, understanding the scientific bases and the main self-regulation strategies can increase the development of said ability to improve our health, our well-being, as well as our relationships with our environment. The course will be conducted respecting psychological diversity and aims to be inclusive.
The objectives of the course are:
• Understanding the main components of emotions. 
• Acquiring an expert knowledge of stress and its relationship with health.
• Knowing how to identify contextual and individual triggers of the stress process.
• Gaining skills for assessing stress and its impact on wellbeing and health.
• Knowing how to classify different types of coping strategies and analyse their efficiency in different contexts.
• Developing skills for stress and emotions self-regulation. 
• Having the ability to assess positive versus negative attitudes towards stress and health.

Competences

• Act with ethical responsibility and respect for fundamental rights and duties considering psychological and neurological diversity among people’s emotional states. 
• Communicate stress management strategies efficiently, using the appropriate media (oral, written or audio-visual) considering diversity and all elements that may ease communication or make it more difficult.

• Identify and recognise the different methods for assessment and diagnosis in the different areas applied to psychology.
• Make changes to methods and processes in knowledge to provide innovative responses to society's needs and demands to prevent emotional stress.
• Recognise the determinants and risk factors for stress and health and the interaction between people and their physical and social environment.
• Take social, economic and environmental impacts into account when assessing people's emotional responses and stress levels.
• Take sex- or gender-based inequalities into consideration when assessing people's emotional responses and stress levels.
• Work as a team and collaboratively.

Learning Outcomes
1. Evaluate stressful situations and identify its triggers and maintenance factors.
2. Analyse the differences for reasons of sex/gender in evaluating emotional stress, avoiding bias and discrimination.
3. Understand the physiology of the stress response and the main short- and long-term effects.
4. Create the capability to practise self-regulation skills and design activities to improve stress management in others.
5. Apply assessment techniques in health psychology.
6. Describe the models and contributions of biomedical and bio psychosocial perspectives to an understanding of health.
7. Evaluate different assessment instruments and strategies in health psychology.
8. Identify situations in which a change or improvement is needed.
9. Understand scientific articles in the field of health psychology and neuroscience.
10. Identify the main psychological determinants affecting the development of health problems and ways of tackling them.
11. Analyse the social, economic and/or environmental implications of stress levels in academic and professional activities.
12. Recognise the basics of emotional communication.
13. Understand the relationship between lifestyle and the stress response.
14. Create new methods and activities to work as a team and collaborate to achieve a common goal. 

Content
Unit 1. Fundamentals of emotions
1.1 Nature of emotions and feelings
1.2 Functions of emotions
1.3 Brain control of emotions
1.4 Emotions and health
Unit 2. The science of stress
2.1 Stress: the concept
2.2 Physiology of the Stress Response
2.3 Health Effects of Long-Term Stress
2.4 Effects of Stress on the Brain
2.5 Anxiety disorders and depression.
Unit 3. Emotional regulation
3.1 Definition and characteristics
3.2 Brain mechanisms of self-regulation
3.3 Self-regulation and cognitive reappraisal
3.4 Self-regulation and emotional management 
3.5 Lifestyle and self-regulation