The Student Association of the Physics Department, FMIPA UI, class of 2020 held an online community service activity on Sunday, (31/01) through the Zoom Meeting platform. The activity invited UI satellite clinical psychology expert Diana Rahmawati, M.Psi. as a resource person, and involved 304 participants with a background of UI and non-UI students as well as teenagers from the general public.
Aryo Haris Wirakusuma, as the chief executive, explained that the purpose of this program is to help the community deal with the COVID-19 pandemic by maintaining mental health.
“For more than a year, the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) pandemic has infected the world including Indonesia. This situation has triggered the emergence of multidimensional problems. One of them is in the impact on health, namely mental health, which is a condition when someone will experience stress such as uncontrolled emotions to disorders of healthy thinking,” said Aryo.
In her presentation, Diana explained that in essence, emotions have existed since infancy, shown through certain movements. Emotions arise because of our assessment of an event. Emotions will arise when the event touches someone’s concern and well-being. If the stimulus is as expected, positive emotions will arise. Conversely, if the stimulus is not as expected, negative emotions will arise. Negative emotions, if not controlled, will be destructive and affect a person’s life, for example anger. Anger can be caused by: feeling blamed, treated unfairly, feeling betrayed, lack of control, and so on.
“Anger can be shown by attacking someone, damaging things beyond expectations (Open Aggression), tending to blame oneself, being cynical (Passive Aggressive), and expressing firmly and calmly (Assertive). In aggressive people, it seems that the reaction to emotional stimuli is excessive. According to cognitive theory, the center of emotion comes from the limbic system in the brain. It is the amygdala that works as an emotional regulator. When the amygdala is dominant, the ability to think in the Prefrontal Cortex will decrease,” explained Diana.
There are 3 main problems that underlie emotions such as difficulty solving problems (not trained to think critically, so more often emotional), repeated pressure, and poor communication (difficulty expressing what is in your heart to others). Regarding how to stabilize emotions, he shared tips with the participants, the first step is relaxation. Relaxation can be done by placing one hand on the upper chest and one hand on the stomach, then inhale and exhale comfortably and as relaxed as possible, the next step is Neutralize the situation (neutralize the situation), then Remember 6 second rule (think of reasons to be angry for 6 seconds), Count your blessings (count how grateful we are for the blessings we receive), Reflect (anticipate things that make us angry so that the same thing will not happen again) and Mindfulness training.
Not only emotions, Diana continued. There are other factors that can disrupt a person’s mental health, namely erroneous thinking. The erroneous thinking in question includes All or Nothing Thinking (suggestion that anything will not be as expected), Overgeneralizing (suggestion that everything will end badly/feel inferior before acting), Disqualifying the positive (not wanting to see the benefits of a problem, considering positive events unimportant), Personalization or excessive responsibility (blaming yourself as the person responsible), to Should statements (using too high requirements for yourself and others). These erroneous thinking must be avoided and eliminated in order to maintain mental health. The methods that can be applied by someone to avoid erroneous thinking are Ask yourself calmly, then Observe yourself, and Measure yourself.
