Competent Emotionality, Creativity and Resilience: New Research Approaches to Address Emotional Distress Through “Caring for Each Other”

Contemporary emotion science is increasingly moving beyond models that frame emotional functioning as an individual skill or stable trait. Competent emotionality offers an alternative perspective, conceptualizing emotional processes as dynamic, relational, and context-dependent capacities. Within this framework, creativity emerges not only as a cognitive ability but as an affective and social process through which individuals make sense of, transform, and respond to their emotional environment. Resilience, in turn, is understood as the distinctive capacity of individuals and communities to absorb adversity and emerge transformed from it. Despite growing evidence on each of these dimensions separately, the affective mechanisms that connect them — and how they jointly shape responses to systemic emotional distress — remain underexplored. This Research Topic addresses this gap by foregrounding the emotional and relational processes through which competent emotionality, creativity, and resilience interact under conditions of structural adversity.This Research Topic aims to advance an integrative, emotion-centered understanding of how competent emotionality, creativity, and resilience interrelate to address emotional distress arising from systemic social adversity. Departing from individualistic and pathology-oriented models, we adopt a relational paradigm grounded in mutual care and community, what we call “caring for each other”, to examine how affective competencies and creative processes can foster collective forms of resilience. The Topic seeks to clarify the emotional mechanisms underlying these interactions, to identify how shared affective practices can serve as protective and restorative resources, and to gather empirical evidence on how these constructs operate across populations particularly exposed to emotional distress, including helping professionals, youth, migrants, and educators. We further encourage contributions that examine innovative, preventive approaches in which emotional and creative competencies are mobilized as community-based tools to mitigate emotional suffering and promote affective well-being.To gather further insights into the emotional and relational mechanisms linking competent emotionality, creativity, and resilience, we welcome Original Research, Brief Research Reports, Reviews, Systematic Reviews, Mini Reviews, Perspectives, and Hypothesis & Theory articles addressing — but not limited to — the following themes:•Affective mechanisms underlying the interplay between emotional competence, creativity, and resilience•Emotional bonds and mutual care as protective factors against emotional distress•Co-care emotional ecosystems and the collective regulation of distress•Emotional distress and resilience in helping professionals (healthcare, education, social work)•Existential loneliness and affective vulnerability in youth: developing emotional competencies through mutual care•Transnational emotional competence and affective resilience in migrants and displaced populations•Toward an epistemology of “Caring for Each Other”: emotional reciprocity as a relational construct•Creative emotional practices for collective coping after crises and traumatic events• Prevention of emotional distress and suicidal ideation through emotion-based mutual care interventions• Methodological innovation in measuring competent emotionality, creative affect, and relational resilienceWe particularly welcome longitudinal designs, culturally diverse samples, methodological innovation, and applied perspectives that connect affective science with community-based emotional care. Topic editors: Antonio F. Rodríguez Hernández, Vicente Alfonso-Benlliure, María-Esther Prados-Megías Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81765/competent-emotionality-creativity-and-resilience-new-research-approaches-to-address-emotional-distress-through-caring-for-each-other