I am Dr. Bruce Hutchison, a retired Clinical Psychologist.

Welcome to the conversation.

We experience feelings and emotions in our personal lives every day. In this blog and let's have a conversation about how to keep the emotional temperature in society lowered to a manageable level. To do that, let's talk how to manage and regulate feelings and emotions about social and political issues. The focus here is how to talk about political and social differences while keeping emotions manageable. There seems to be no place available to do that, yet psychologists help their clients manage and regulate the emotions in their personal lives regularly. Let's talk about how to do that in a social and political environment.

Politics

Current Events

Commentary

Community

The Purpose

Of Bruhut

In following the news about various events in American society, as well as in Canada, the U.K., and elsewhere, it occurred to me, as a psychologist, that the human behavior being described in the troubling interpersonal, social and political events that are depicted are significantly influenced by psychological factors such as feelings and emotions. We know that emotions and feelings are an important part of life, living and relationships. We fall in love, we get anxious, we experience joy, we feel happy, we get sad, we worry. Most of us can relate to this. We experience these and other feelings and emotions every day.

Contagious Emotions

Are all around us

Feelings and emotions like these seem to spread easily among us. Emotions can be infectious, can have an effect on everyone and make them want to join in. Happiness begets happiness. Sadness begets sadness. When you see someone smile, it can make you smile and then make you happy. If your friend tells you about something sad that happened, you are likely to feel sad too. Emotions can affect you so that you somehow can develop the same emotion as the person you are with, the person you are near, the person you are watching, or even the person giving a talk. In a sense, you can “catch” the emotion from that person, so then you have that emotion also.

In this way, emotions are contagious. The phenomenon of emotional contagion is becoming more well-known. Emotions spread from one person to another, they are infectious, so you can get infected by emotions when you are around people. It occurred to me, as a psychologist, in watching the news, that the troubling interpersonal, social and political events of our times must also be affected by the spread of emotions. We are still people and have the same characteristics and psychological processes inside us wherever we are. So there is no reason why they would be exempt in these social and political situations, since emotions spread from one person to another, from one group to another, no matter what. So this blog and my book Emotions Don't Think describe how to manage the impact of emotions and feelings at this time of turmoil to lower their impact.

raising awareness

on the power of society

Although I am not an expert on research conducted in emotional contagion, a field in social psychology, as a clinical psychologist I have dealt with this phenomenon throughout my 50 year career. I became aware while doing psychotherapy that a type of personal experience often occurs in a therapy session apart from observing the verbal, emotional, mental and behavioral expression of the participant. Sometimes I could feel my patient’s emotions and feelings directly, as if they moved across the room to touch me, as opposed to only detecting and observing them. This is something that one becomes aware of while being in close proximity to others who are discussing personal, subjective, meaningful experiences in an emotional way.

Certainly, this transfer of feelings also occurs in many life situations when others interact in similar close, personal situations, but likely goes unreported or unrecognized. This transfer also likely happens in daily life, including in large, public venues where excitement and turmoil flows. I wanted to explore this and write about it, and this book is the result. We can see feelings especially in crowds, at parties, churches, concerts, sports events, and especially when there are groups who get emotional and who protest. We feel the electricity in the air in a large, excited crowd. It feels like something is happening. Feelings and emotions have a real impact. It is like a kind of intuitive harmony, for example, being swayed by the emotional impact of a band in a large audience. It flows toward us and around us. Music adds to their flow. People can certainly feel the flow of excitement and adoration during concerts and sports events, where feelings flow.

emotions are normal.

how we react needs to change.

It makes sense then that feelings will also flow during negative public situations, such as protests, riots, shootings, election campaigns, the pandemic, and many other situations. They are contagious. We may feel angry, empathetic, or have other emotions when we observe a protest or riot on TV or on video. Emotional contagion has a very significant role in producing the emotional turmoil involved in the public reaction to these events.

In this blog and in my book we will strive to help people understand and manage emotional contagion so as to lower it, and so contribute to a lowering of the emotional temperature in society, I will discuss ways to manage prevailing emotions so they will not spread and magnify through society where they can be destructive. We welcome your input, suggestions and ideas as how to stop, prevent and overcome emotional contagion.

bio

I understand people

Born and raised in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, I was educated in Winnipeg, as well as in Ottawa, Ontario. I attended the University of Manitoba (United College), now the University of Winnipeg, where I received my B.A., and then did Graduate Studies and received my M.A. in Psychology from the University of Manitoba. I later studied in Ottawa, Ontario at the Faculty of Psychology where I received my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Ottawa.

As a clinical psychologist with 50+ years experience, I understand people, emotions, allegiances, social trends, needs, thoughts, behavior and what makes people tick. I have worked as a psychologist providing counselling, psychotherapy, consultation and assessment to thousands of people in three Canadian provinces. I have worked in psychiatric units and general medical units within general hospitals, in community mental health settings, in prisons, in rehabilitation settings, and in private practice. I have worked in private practice for the past ten years. I have served on boards of psychology in two Canadian provinces and on a national basis in Canada. I have received awards for leadership and advocacy. I was Head of Psychology in an urban Canadian hospital for 18 years. I have been a Clinical Associate in the Department of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta, an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba Clinical Health Psychology Program in the Faculty of Medicine and have supervised and trained student psychologists.

I specialized in treating depression and anxiety and offered psychological assistance with a variety of areas including building relationships, overcoming marital and couples conflicts, overcoming anger, managing stress, helping with adjustment to health problems and rehabilitation needs and changing life patterns. I also treat conditions of adjustment issues, loss, grieving, trauma, low self-esteem, career dissatisfaction, and issues related to these conditions.