To understand emotions today we gonna take a deeper look at the biology of emotions. Knowing where they are coming from and what they actually give us a deeper understanding to also deal with them.
Emotion, in its most general definition, is a neural impulse that moves an organism to action,
prompting automatic reactive behavior that has been adapted through evolution as a survival mechanism to meet a survival need, and we share those basic emotions with animals. Research in rats and mice shows that just like us their behavior is steered by
emotion.
Take a look here for an in-depth look into the limbic system related to our emotions.
When you break it down simply: emotions are energy, energy in motion, e-motion.
This energy pulses through your body constantly even when you are not aware of it.
Let's take a look at the evolution of our emotional programming and processing.
Emotional competence is a developmental process that has 3 components: 1) emotion expression; 2) emotion knowledge; and 3) emotion regulation As we grow up we go through different levels of cognitive ability.:
As a newborn baby, we are not aware we exist, emotions are purely based on survival, to influence our caregivers and surroundings.
Often you can see on a baby's face how nature trains the right muscles to communicate the emotions they will need to express themselves later in life.
Around 2 years old, the magic happens, the emerging of the emotional self separate from the parents or caregiver,
our emotions are fully erupting and tantrums prove that,
our emotions are no longer a mean of survival,
still, we are not fully conscious yes.
This happens when we are approximately 3 years old, we now have a conceptual self, a sense of identity.
We are fully conscious and this starts to blossom between 3 and 6 years old. Here language is the concept, the noise we make to communicate
with others, we label our surroundings and the world around us starts to make sense.
Emotions are now triggered by a stimulus outside ourselves with an immediate reaction.
Smile, laugh, anger, cry...
Between 6 and 9 years old we reach what we call concrete consciousness, we start to learn the rules about governal concept.
We learn to adapt and to accept the ways of the home, school, and the society we live in,
we are taught to control our emotions, to hide them if needed and we become aware of the emotions we can evoke in others.
Only in our teenage years, we make an attempt to go beyond the rules, teenage conflict is a developmental stage, a way of testing the rules.
This will bubble on for a few years and is almost always suppressed by our parents or caregivers.
It is a period of deep and strong emotions: our body changes, hormonal changes, conflicts with authority, and first love.
Between 21 and 25 the frontal lobe of our brain is fully developed and the transverse of our teen years fades and we go back into concrete consciousness, we can predict the consequences of our actions, we can make decisions, we know the benefit of following the rules, our life becomes stereotypical,
We are aware of our own emotions and read the emotions of others through body language, vocal tone, and facial expressions. All of us know how to trigger emotions in others in a positive or negative manner.
Here we have covered everything of 2 of the components, expression, and knowledge, now about emotion regulating
Mindfulness of emotions can be challenging to navigate. They come and go with the same impermanence as waves yet often carry the same brute force like a storm at sea. We can find ourselves overwhelmed by their force, whether the emotions that come are in the form of anger, fear, sadness, disgust, anticipation, joy, or any other feeling. Our emotional landscape when heightened can be an intricate intermingling of numerous feelings and sensations that often boils down to an indescribable experience of unease and discomfort. In this melting pot of emotions, we can find ourselves unable to find clarity, peace, and stillness.
The message of our emotions is strong, so it is very important
to listen...
It is also important to be able to control them where needed.
And here we arrive at an important step for our well-being.
Aristoteles (a Greek philosopher and scientist) argued that the proper regulation of emotions is a defining feature of wisdom.
Why is it so hard to control our emotions?
Let's look at an example:
You are 3 years old and there is a cookie jar on the table.
The mind goes into a state of wanting.
You reach for the cookie and your mom says no, you can not have it
The feeling of wanting something and not being able to have it is hard to deal with
This feeling is very confronting when you do not have the cognitive ability to think about it logically.
You do not understand that the cookie is not the best nutrition at this moment.
You explode into emotion as an immediate reaction
What you see here is a 3 step process:
A stimulus
the stimulus sparks an emotion
and the emotion sparks a reaction
Stimulus: Cookie, I want it but I can not have it
Emotion: Frustration, anger, sadness
Reaction: Crying and screaming
Sadly that is how most of us operate today and if you are emotionally reactive you will
feel a lot of pain and you will cause a lot of pain.
Take a look at the world around us, there are many things that are quite negative,
many people are operating from a very negative place,
there are really hard circumstances in many people's lives, in many places.
Life is suffering for most humans on earth.
All those things are going to cause you emotional reactions if you don't have the cognitive ability to regulate your emotions. It is the reactive model of emotional processing.
As a grownup, the great struggle with emotions is often not the raw emotion itself but is largely the story that accompanies it and the mood that results. Of course, raw sensations can be very challenging to navigate in and of themselves, but our cognitive processing of events that led to the emotion doesn’t usually take us deep enough to nourish the root of whatever is arising. When mindfulness of emotions arises we may unconsciously decide that they are too unbearable – too powerful – to sit with and so attempt to deal with them in a variety of ways.
The stories we tell ourselves about prior events leading to the feelings at hand can easily become entangled with the raw emotion itself. Thoughts, memories, worry can easily catapult you instantly in an emotional state.
Emotions often turn into their longer-lasting cousins: moods, you become irritable, sour, feeling blue, etc. The little signals of facial expressions during emotions leave a print on your face, so you look tired, angry, or sad.
From there it becomes a personality trait easily, you are known for your anger to others for example, or you feel shy or timid, or you feel mostly aversion towards others and have an inflated sense of self.
Today neuroscientists see distinct psychopathologies with persistent behaviors related to each emotion.
For example Intermittent Explosive Disorder impulsively aggressive, anger. Anxiety Disorder and PTSD with persistent fear and uncontrollable thoughts. Fear.
Anorexia, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Bulimia, body, food, eating. All strongly related to Disgust.
Depression, Bipolar related to sadness, etc
So being able to be aware and regulate your emotions is very important, it is the very cognitive ability that leads you towards a stable life and helps you navigate the troubles life throws at all of us at a certain point.
Does this mean you should live your life with only positive thoughts and positive emotions?
Not at all, I am not here to share a fairy tale with you.
Life is suffering for most human beings, so sadness, anger is as much part of you as love and happiness.
Mindfulness will be your oars to navigate the storm of emotions, to get you through more easily and in a shorter time, and important to even avoid reactions triggered by useless and superficial people and events.
The first step is becoming aware of what you are actually feeling.
To see things more clearly.
We have a common tendency to move away from difficult emotions, which serves us as a defense mechanism. The emotions then stay as energy in the body unprocessed.
SO try effectively turn towards it. Take a deep breath and open yourself to whatever is present.
Detach the story from the emotion, move all the 'I am because...' to the side for a while, and simply witness the emotion. Open to its energy with compassion and curiosity, when your mind intervenes with judgment come back to the emotion with an open heart.
Now scan your entire body step by step to see where you feel increased and decreased activity. Where do you feel sensations or how does this emotion present itself in your body.
Doing this creates a distance between yourself and the energy moving through you.
It is no longer: I am sad
Now it is sadness makes me feel a sensation in my stomach and chest.
You realize you can witness your emotions from a quieter and more peaceful place.
The next step:
Become aware of the impermanence of this state.
Let me shock you! In healthy, well-adjusted, emotionally intelligent adults an emotion lasts on average 90 seconds.
Just as your thoughts, they come and go, as the waves of the sea.
Arise, peak, and dissipate on their own.
I will share a texture with you from Finnish research where emotions trigger sensations in our bodies. These results are universal no matter where you are born.
Now if you repeat the thoughts of the story or event that triggered the emotions, it becomes your mood.
So please see the remarkable difference you can achieve by just sitting with your emotions for a while, aware and present without judgment.
Mindfulness adds a step to the processing of emotions and it is not terribly difficult
CHOICE
Instead of stimulus-emotion-reaction,
you have stimulus-emotion-exploration-choice.
Choices are powerful. Choices are made with consciousness in a way that brings you FORWARD in life regardless if it's a hard choice, a negative situation, or a positive situation.
It doesn't matter.
When you are making a choice,
you are ALWAYS moving forward.
When you are reacting, maybe sometimes it works out well for you,
most of the time it does not.
Reactions are almost entirely out of ego.
Choices are almost entirely out of consciousness and being aware.
Accept and explore the negative emotions that overwhelm you
and recognize where they reside inside you
it is one of the most powerful tools of Mindfulness
because it means you will end a lot of suffering for yourself
Just letting them be as they are without trying to change them in any way.
In mindfulness, acceptance is a very important cornerstone. When you are able to tolerate and
accept difficult emotions you have more energy to focus on
effective strategies that actually help you to manage the problem causing the emotions
You learn and therefore become free to make a choice
and bring your life forward without getting stuck in the emotion.
And here I can add for you this little task: when your emotions are sparked in a negative manner, by something or someone practice this golden rule to count to 10 in your mind before reacting. It gives you time to make a choice
how to react and it also lowers the strength of your emotion.
Our face not only expresses our emotions but also communicates our facial movement to the brain. So if you force a smile on your face, your brain thinks a smile! I must be happy! and influences your emotions.
So time to do something about that bitchy resting face!
Exercise: Put a pencil between your teeth to force a smile (not between your lips, that is a frown)
Draw a smiley on your wrist and every time you see it smile and pull those shoulders back and sit or stand up straight and I promise you it will make you feel better.
Watch this YT here on the power of not reacting!
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