Beacon Humanist Meeting notes (2025-04-27): Regulating emotions with and without music

At the Beacon humanist meeting on April 27, 2025, which takes place over Zoom, we will discuss what emotions and moods are, and how we regulate them with music and other strategies.

outline of the meeting

We will

  1. share some of our strategies for self-regulation of emotion.
  2. discuss what can go wrong when one fails at self-regulation of emotion.
  3. share our conceptions / definitions of mood, emotion and related concepts.
  4. discuss self-regulation of moods and emotion with music.

General Emotion regulation approaches (other than music)

There are methods in clinical psychology that can be applied by individuals. Here are some approaches:

There are many other resources on those frameworks. You can ask ChatGPT for more information.

Concepts from some of the sources below:

  • Resourcefulness
  • Resilience
  • Learning how to feel bad in a functional way
  • Emotions tend to be triggered by other people, or at least relate to other people.
  • Simultaneous activation (coexistence) of multiple affective states , including emotions.
  • Motivation vs. affect

Affective concepts

  1. Affect
  2. Moods
  3. Emotions
  4. Attitudes/ preferences
  5. Some personality dispositions
  6. reactive vs. proactive self-regulation strategies

Affect is the superset of points 2 to 5 above. The key feature of affect is (and this sounds recursive, but not all recursion is a problem [cf. Gödel, Escher, Bach]) affective valence. No valence no affect.

Patrick Juslin’s 2025 definition of emotion:

emotions are complex phenomena, have evolutionary origins, are shaped by sociocultural factors, serve as an interface between the organism and its environment, perform a number of important (social) functions in human interaction, are elicited by some kind of information-processing in the brain, have several subcomponents (e.g., expression, physiology, action tendencies), and produce mental and bodily changes that are centrally represented as subjective feelings, which may be labeled by emotion terms (p.2)

Example emotion regulation strategies

  • “Peace is not finding calmer seas. It is building a better boat .” (Ryan Soave)
  • “Peace is knowing that when distress comes you’ll be able to tolerate it. It is not having no distress.” (Ryan Soave)
  • Eva Hudlicka agrees with above but adds that emotions can serve a purpose and shouldn’t be avoided.
  • Breathing techniques (Yoganidra/NSDR; psychological sigh; breath meditation), applied throughout the day. (Activate the parasympathetic system.) [Personally, I’ve put posted notes throughout the house to remind me to take one minute to breathe deeply. In addition, I do body scan meditation daily.]
  • Body scan
  • From cognitive defusion to non-self
  • Distancing and objectifying
  • Having role models
  • Connecting with others: Friendships: happiness and health
  • Physical exercise, including dance
  • Gut microbiome health? Diverse diet.
  • The initial effect of a severe stressor is normally to freeze the forebrain. Try toeact to stressors and painful emotions, if possible, by giving yourself 25 seconds to respond calmly. Stoic morning meditation can help prepare for stressors.
  • Gardening, being around flowers, and walking through woods (biophilia and attention restoration hypotheses).

Keys to resilience & happiness from Redirect

In his book, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, Timothy D. Wilson expounds on 4 keys to happiness and resilience that are based in social psychology:

  1. Finding meaning: being able to tell a coherent, meaningful story about one’s life.
  2. Understanding life’s setbacks in a way that preserves a sense of self-efficacy and growth. We discussed this in a 2018-03 humanist meeting.
  3. Hope and optimism. Not blind positivity, but grounded optimism.
  4. Sense of purpose. Feeling one’s activities serve a larger goal—whether personal, relational, or societal.

All of the above underscores the importance of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in relation to the world.

Tools from Ethan Kross’s Chatter book

To deal with “chatter” (negatively valenced self-talk)

  1. Use distanced self-talk
  2. Imagine advising a friend.
  3. Broaden your perspective.
  4. Reframe your experience as a challenge.
  5. Reinterpret your body’s chatter response.
  6. Normalize your experience.
  7. Engage in mental time travel (in the future).
  8. “Change the view/perspective.” Adopt the perspective of a fly on wall or a third-party perspective.
  9. Write expressively.
  10. Touch, or be touched, affectionately (but respectfully of course).
  11. “Be someone else’s placebo.” Provide optimistic counsel to someone else.

This book is not explicitly about emotions. However, chatter is akin to mental perturbance (which Aaron Sloman referred to as tertiary emotions).

Stoics

They have a morning and an evening “meditation” (not in the Eastern sense of meditation, but in the sense of reflection).

Morning meditation:

  • View from above
  • Meditate on possible challenges, (very) bad outcomes, and encounters with unvirtuous people. Remember your job is to respond in a virtuous way.
  • Focus on what you can control: Your thoughts, choices, and attitude — not the behavior of others or external events.

Evening meditation: Daily review

  1. One’s errors of commission & forgiving oneself.
  2. One’s errors of omission & forgiving oneself.
  3. What did one do well?

Seneca, in his Moral Letters (Letter 83), described it almost like a court session where you are your own judge:
“When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent… I examine my entire day and go back over what I have done and said.”

Reframing

DAVID D. BURNS, “feeling good” podcast (mentioned below):

  1. Why is this feeling appropriate?
  2. How does it help me?
  3. What does it show about my core Values?

Emotion regulation failures

Here we discuss what can go wrong with one’s emotions; failures of self-regulation of emotion.

There are different conceptions of emotions, e.g.,

  • Aaron Sloman’s notion of primary, secondary, and tertiary emotions.
  • Tertiary emotions are likely only experienced by humans. They are better referred to as mental perturbance. This concept resembles the concepts of repetitive thought and Kross’s chatter concept, with subtle differences.
  • According to Michel Aubé, and I agree: emotions tend to involve social commitments On The Relationship-building Proclivities of Human Nature – CogZest.

Music and emotion

  1. Aesthetic emotions
  2. Other emotions experienced during music.

Patrick Juslin’s BREC-VE-MAC model outlines eight mechanisms through which music can induce emotions. The 2008 model was expanded to include musical expectancy and aesthetic judgment more explicitly.

BREC-VE-MAC Mechanisms (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008; updated later)

  1. Brain Stem Reflexes:
    Automatic responses to sudden, loud, or dissonant sounds.

  2. Rhythmic Entrainment:
    Synchronization of internal bodily rhythms (e.g., heart rate) with the music’s rhythm.

  3. Evaluative Conditioning:
    Music becomes associated with positive or negative experiences.

  4. Contagion (Emotional Mimicry):
    Listener mirrors the perceived emotion in the music.

  5. Visual Imagery:
    Music evokes mental images that carry emotional content.

  6. Episodic Memory:
    Music triggers personal memories and associated emotions.

  7. Musical Expectancy (newer addition):
    Emotions arise from fulfilled or violated expectations in musical structure (e.g., harmonic resolution, timing surprises).

  8. Aesthetic Judgment (newer addition):
    Emotions derive from the listener’s evaluation of the music as beautiful, profound, or moving.

  9. Cognitive Goal Appraisal (newer addition):
    “musical events could also occasionally induce emotions due to their implications for the listener’s goals, plans, and motives in daily life”

Key Idea:

Each mechanism is distinct—they can operate in parallel and contribute differently depending on the listener, context, and music. The model emphasizes the multi-component nature of emotional experience in music listening.

Readings and podcasts

Here are some podcast episodes and readings on emotion regulation. It’s not a complete list, and please feel free to use your own readings and podcasts instead of this. No expert owns this space.

I’m including Apple Podcasts and Spotify versions of some podcast episodes.

I highly recommend:

Andrew Huberman

Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave – Huberman Lab. This is not just about addictions. It’s more generally about how to regulate emotions. Addictions is a dysfunctional emotion regulation strategy. Lots of good stuff there.

Ethan Kross

Patricia Zurita Ona

DAVID D. BURNS: Feeling Good podcast

Summary of Ethan Kross’s Shift book generated by Google AI:

  1. Reframing Negative Emotions:
  • Challenge vs. Threat:

Learn to see difficult situations as challenges rather than threats, which can lead to more adaptive coping strategies.

  • Positive Framing:

Focus on the positive aspects of an experience to shift your perspective and reduce the intensity of negative emotions.

  • Future Perspective:

Consider how you will feel about the current situation a year from now to gain distance and reduce emotional reactivity, says NetGalley.

  1. Perspective-Taking:
  • Third-Person Perspective:

Imagine observing yourself from a third-person perspective, which can help reduce emotional intensity and promote self-compassion.

  • Advising a Friend:

Envision yourself advising a friend in a similar situation, which can lead to more objective and helpful thoughts.

  1. Mind-Body Connection & Sensory Shifts:
  • Sensory Shifting:

Use music, touch, and your environment to regulate your emotional state. For example, listening to calming music or spending time in nature can reduce anxiety.

  • Physical Sensations:

Pay attention to physical sensations in your body and use them as anchors to bring you back to the present moment and reduce internal chatter.

  1. Harnessing the Power of Your “Chatter”:
  • Understanding Chatter:

Become aware of the internal dialogue that influences your emotions and learn how to manage it effectively.

  • Distant Self-Talk:

Talk to yourself using your name and the second-person “you,” which can help you distance yourself from negative thoughts and emotions.

  • Strategic Attention:

Learn to direct your attention away from negative thoughts and towards positive ones or other aspects of the situation.

  1. Building Emotional Resilience:
  • Advance Planning:

Develop a proactive plan for managing difficult situations by anticipating potential challenges and preparing coping mechanisms.

  • Mindfulness and Self-Compassion:

Cultivate mindfulness and self-compassion to reduce emotional reactivity and increase resilience.