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WHAT ARE EMOTIONS.pdf
Everything in the universe is made up of energy. If you remember from school, there is kinetic energy which is energy in motion or potential energy which is stored energy. There is even a theory in physics about negative energy which basically describes a force acting in opposition to that of positive energy. One thing about energy is that it cannot be created or destroyed but only changed from one form to another.
A lot of people describe emotions as being energy in motion (e-motion). “Your emotions aren't abstract concepts floating around in your mind. They're whole-body experiences (programs) involving your nervous system, hormones, facial expressions, posture, breathing, and more. Each emotional state has its own unique signature in your body.”c Many describe these emotions as having different frequencies or vibrations. They describe positive emotions like joy, gratitude, and love as having higher frequencies (like the higher notes on a piano) and emotions like fear, anger, and shame having lower vibrations (like the lower notes on a piano). There was an interesting experiment where they took a jar of water and spoke words to it. They then took the water from the jar and froze it and looked at the shape of the crystals that formed. Words like love and peace created beautiful shapes. Words like hate and war created some irregular and ugly shapes. (Remember we are made of 60-80% water.)
A lot of experts describe what is often called the law of attraction which states that you will attract things that vibrate at a similar frequency to you. Which is why they say the rich appear lucky, the poor seem to have bad things happen to them, the depressed have unfortunate accidents, etc.
Another reason people talk about emotions being energy in motion is because at the root of every action is a feeling. It is feelings that provide the motivation to move or do things.h You may argue that it is thoughts that create action but how many times have you thought about doing something and did not? Darwin proposed that the fundamental purpose of emotions is to “initiate movement that will restore the organism to safety and physical equilibrium.”d Some teach that emotions are just programs that the mind believes will help ensure our survival. However, what the mind thinks is best for us is not always what works best.b
Some people describe emotions as good and other emotions as bad. However, Hal Elrod pointed out, “all emotions serve us. All emotions can have a purpose or a benefit …. you could bucket like anger, sadness, grief, depression, resentment like those are all what you might bucket as, … ‘negative emotions’, but they’re not really negative unless they are controlling you.”a Some point out that negative emotions are usually associated with a fear of survival or a fear of losing something.
There are many TED talks all about emotions. One speaker pointed out that emotions aren’t what most people think.c They are not hardwired in our brain when we are born, but they are learned.b,c She said, “emotions are guesses. They are guesses that your brain constructs in the moment where billions of brain cells are working together, and you have more control over those guesses than you might imagine that you do.” She pointed out that when something happens, “Your brain is sifting through a lifetime of experience, making thousands of guesses at the same time, weighing the probabilities, trying to answer the question, ‘What is this most like?’ not ‘What is it?’ but ‘What is this most like in my past experience?’ And this is all happening in the blink of an eye.”c Your brain then puts all this together and comes up with what neuroscientists call “predictions.” This is the basic way that your brain works.
She then gave the following example, if you were to “walk into a bakery, your brain might predict that you will encounter the delicious aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies… And our brains might cause our stomachs to churn a little bit, to prepare for eating those cookies. … which would be a really good thing.” However, if “that churning stomach, if it occurs in a different situation, it can have a completely different meaning. So if your brain were to predict a churning stomach in, say, a hospital room while you’re waiting for test results, then your brain will be constructing dread or worry or anxiety, and it might cause you to, maybe, wring your hands or take a deep breath or even cry. Right? Same physical sensation, same churning stomach, different experience.”c Gary Lineman suggests that your body sends out hormones and chemicals but then your mind uses its perception of the experience to decide which one of two emotions you will experience. For example, he argues sadness and joy have the same chemical signature in your body. This is why many people cry when they are sad or sometimes when they are happy. Anxiety and excitement are another pair as well as anger or compassion.l
Here is the crucial lesson, “emotions which seem to happen to you are actually made by you. You are not at the mercy of mythical emotion circuits which are buried deep inside some ancient part of your brain. You have more control over your emotions than you think you do. I don’t mean that you can just snap your fingers and change how you feel the way that you would change your clothes, but your brain is wired so that if you change the ingredients that your brain uses to make emotion, then you can transform your emotional life. So if you change those ingredients today, you’re basically teaching your brain how to predict differently tomorrow, and this is what I call being the architect of your experience.”c
Difference between thoughts and emotions.
Difference between thoughts and emotions.
Thoughts lead to emotions and emotions lead to thoughts, but they are different. To the subconscious mind, a thought it just a thought. It makes no distinction between good or bad. Thoughts are actually things that are made up of energy and also have form.b,f The more we focus on a thought, the more energy we give it.b Some teach that many of these thoughts are caused by repressed feelings.b It is estimated that the average person has somewhere between 40,000 and 90,000 thoughts a day. For many people, a lot of these are the same thoughts each day and many of these thoughts are negative.
“Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds."
THE SUBCONSCIOUS
THE SUBCONSCIOUS
There are many books, videos, and talks that go into more of the anatomy, physiology, science, and psychology in how the brain works, how we think, how we perceive, emotions, etc. I am going to keep this simple, but there are some basics we need to understand in how the brain is set up and how it works.
The brain has things that it controls voluntarily (like speaking, playing sports, etc) and others that it controls involuntarily (like controlling our blood pressure, digestion, releasing hormones, etc).o Breathing is an interesting one because most of the time it is done automatically, but we can also consciously control our breathing. This is part of why breathing can and is used in so many techniques for healing because it can be used as a bridge between the voluntary and involuntary parts of the brain. Some have taught, “95% of our decisions, thoughts, beliefs & actions are subconscious, meaning the part of our mind that we are not consciously aware of dictates our behavior. So, the only way to change our behaviors is to become aware of our subconscious mind.”
The brain develops and functions from the bottom to the top and the back to the front. At the bottom of the brain is the brain stem. Many people call this the reptilian brain. This area of the brain is responsible for all the things that a newborn or reptiles can do – eat, sleep, breath, etc. This area is all about survival and safety. The midbrain is sometimes called the mammalian brain. This has some more advanced functions that help us live in groups. This area has more to do with emotions and connections. Many people put these together and call them the emotional brain.d The neocortex and especially the frontal lobe is where we have the higher processes that allow us to think and use logic. Some people call this the rational or thinking brain. This is in the front of the brain so it is the last area to develop which is why kids and teenagers don’t always make logical choices. (Interestingly, many techniques will use the eyes and other cranial nerves to help stimulate the brainstem and midbrain to then access and improve the function of the neocortex.)
One of the main reasons it is helpful to know the basic anatomy of the brain is because when we are thinking and acting emotionally, we are only using those lower parts of our brain and we act like animals or toddlers. If you treat people in this state more like a scared animal or toddler you will make more progress with them than what most people do. However, many people will try to talk to them using logic. You can’t communicate logically to someone speaking emotionally because it is two different parts of the brain and it is like they are two different languages. This leads to many difficulties in marriage and other relationships as well as politics and other areas. In contests between emotion and logic, emotion always wins. Even if I get the other person to physically agree with me or get them to do what I tell them to I will not have changed their mind until they change how they feel about the subject.
One person compared the relationship between the rational brain and the emotional brain to that of a rider and a horse.d Some people have more experienced and stronger riders and some people have more wild and stubborn horses. Many people can manage the ride as long as the weather is calm, the path is smooth, the horse is rested and fed. However when there are unexpected sounds, the weather is bad, or the horse is tired or hungry; then the rider has to hold on for dear life and gets dragged wherever the horse takes off to. (Most friends and family will shout instructions or get frustrated or something, but a far more helpful thing to do is to remove the source of fear and find a way to calm the horse.)
There is also a part of our brain called the amygdala that decides whether the incoming information is a threat to our survival or not. This happens even before we are consciously aware of the information. Many people compare this to a smoke detector.d When it detects smoke (or danger) an alarm goes off. However, just like a real smoke detector it can be triggered to go off even when there is no danger (like if the oven just needs to be cleaned). Sometimes it is just malfunctioning and goes off even when there are no triggers (like when the batteries are running low). When the alarm is going off (whether there is real danger or not), your body responds like there is real danger. This is great when you need it but imagine a fire alarm that is going off 24 hours a day 7 days a week for years.
PERCEPTION
PERCEPTION
Many people will teach you that your experience and reality are not the same thing. We experience the world through our perception of our experience. The body sends information from the five senses to the brain where it then combines the information with our past experience to make sense of the information.l This is part of the reason why everyone in a lecture, or watching a movie, or an accident, or a natural disaster can have the same thing happen to them but come out with completely different experiences. This is also why what you say to someone is not what they hear. To make it more fun, your brain is not good at distinguishing between imagination and reality.f
“We do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.”
– Stephen Covey
“You hear with your ears, but you listen with your emotions.”
– Bob Proctor
The perception we have leads to the interpretation the brain makes which leads to the response it sends to the body. An easy example would be if you are on a hike and come across a snake.l If you love snakes your body might produce dopamine or oxytocin and you might try to pick up the snake or play with it. If your hiking buddy is afraid of snakes, their body would produce stress hormones and would probably have their heart start racing, their muscles tense up, and they would be getting away from the snake. Many people would blame the snake for this reaction, but it is not the snake. You can get the same response if you see a piece of rope out of the corner of your eye that looks like a snake. Or if you are asleep and a snake slithers past your head but you are never aware of it, your body will not have a response.
Many people rely too strongly on their senses and are controlled by the outside world.f They don’t realize that our senses are not 100% accurate all the time. Interestingly, that is how magic works. The magician knows how most people’s senses will respond, and they manipulate that to their advantage. It is pretty interesting when someone shows you how a trick works. This is also a big part in the psychology of media and advertisements. Some of these people specialize in manipulating your senses to encourage you to do something they want.
It’s never the object outside of you that causes the body’s reactions. It’s the meaning your mind applies to the object or experience.e,a You may feel unworthy or unlovable because your husband divorced you. It’s not the divorce, but the meaning you attach to the divorce. (Another woman may only feel relief and hope from the divorce that they are finally free and can move on and find someone who loves them as they should.) You are not a workaholic because your dad left when you were four. It’s not your dad leaving that affected you, but the meaning that you attach to it. Marisa Peer has helped many people through these situations. She says, “what I’ve found with clients time after time again is that something happens when they're three or four or five and they make sense of it as a three-year-old could. They make sense of a scene with a life experience of a four-year-old. When they're 44, they are still holding on to that memory and still reacting as if they were four.”e
TIME
TIME
We briefly mentioned that the brain can also be divided into the conscious mind (those things we are aware of and control) and the subconscious (sometimes called unconscious) mind. An interesting thing about the subconscious mind is that there is no such thing as time.b,e Unfortunately, “most people spend their lives regretting the past and fearing the future; therefore they are unable to experience joy in the present.”b Not being fully alive in the present just further keeps people imprisoned in the past.d However, we can use this lack of ability to conceptualize time to our advantage and can “choose at any time in the present to heal the past event.”b
Because the subconscious cannot tell the difference between reality and imagination, it does not make a distinction between real threats that are actually happening to you and a memory you are reliving from the past or an imagined threat in the future. That is why when something reminds traumatized people of their past, the brain reacts as if the traumatic event is happening in the present.d Time often freezes so the danger feels like it is going to last forever. Often when people experience this, they will look for something to blame for their very real symptoms. (Their husband took too long to do something, the weather, their child never listens, etc) For real healing to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and learn to live in the present.
THE BRAIN IS NOT COMPLICATED
THE BRAIN IS NOT COMPLICATED
Marisa Peer points out that many people overcomplicate the mind and make it seem impossible to learn and subsequently impossible to work with. She argues that really the mind is simple.e
Our brains are designed and focused on doing its most important job – keep us safe and alive.d, g However, what the mind believes will help ensure our survival does not mean that it actually will or that it is the best option.b Also, what it subconsciously thinks is best for us and what we consciously want are not always the same. This can be frustrating as we can say we want something, but our subconscious will find ways to make what it wants win. There is a rule that “the body obeys the mind, therefore the body tends to manifest what the mind believes.”b This gets a little tricky because the mind does what it thinks you want it to do.e How does it know what we want it to do? A lot of it comes from the words we say,e from our past experiences, from what images and messages we subject it to. Many of this is unintentional but the brain doesn’t know the difference. You may not really mean it when you said “man I am stupid” or “that’s my kind of luck” or “bad things always happen to me” or “my job is killing me”….
Marisa Peer explains this pretty well. She said, “This is probably one of the most powerful rules of the mind. Your mind goes, ‘Oh, you keep telling me that something is killing you. It appears to be your job or your commute. Why don't I just give you a lovely ulcer and then you can stay at home and avoid that place that's killing you?’"e Often the solution that the mind comes up with to solve our problem is really unhelpful in so many other ways, but as long as it achieve its objective it thinks it wins.e Kind of like the puppy who is wagging his tail all excited because it brought you the paper – it just happens to be your neighbors paper, is soaking wet and unreadable because it dropped it in a puddle, and the puppy left a trail of mud and water all through the house bringing it to you.
The same areas of the brain are activated with physical and emotional experiences (injuries, bad things, and good things).j As we have already mentioned, the brain also doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. These are powerful ideas that most people don’t know or appreciate. There are many studies that show you can get similar benefits from visualization as you do from actually doing the task. There are also many resources out there that show how emotional injuries can lead to emotional scars or how negative thinking leads to poor outcomes.
The subconscious mind communicates with us through physical reactions.d We can communicate with our mind a few ways. One way we do this is what we show it through our body.o There are many tricks people use to help their mind. For example, if you improve your posture or take a shower and clean yourself up, you will often find your mood changes. If you swish some saliva around your mouth, it helps you not be nervous. This is because your brain says when you are nervous you have a dry mouth but since your mouth is not dry you must not be nervous.e Another way we communicate with our mind is “the pictures we make in our head and the words we say to ourselves.”e This affects the way we feel about everything whether we are consciously or unconsciously doing it. Pick something you are afraid of or really do not like doing. (Public speaking, needles, enclosed spaces, heights are common.) Not everyone has the same reaction to these situations. What do you think is the difference in the pictures you see in your mind and the words you say to yourself when you are facing this situation compared to someone who enjoys that activity? (i.e. To a person who is scared of heights, the diving board appears much bigger and higher than it really is.)
Another thing to understand about the mind is that it craves the familiar and resists the unfamiliar.e It doesn’t matter if the unfamiliar is something amazing and the familiar is negative. That is why “scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening.”d
We have already pointed out that emotions and experiences are just things. It is us who gives them meaning based on context, our past, etc. “Humans are meaning making creatures, we have a tendency to create some sort of image or story.”d So that guy that cut you off in traffic recently. What went through your mind? Was he mad at you for something you did, are all young people reckless jerks, was he in a bad mood….? The only thing that we know for a fact is that he cut in front of you closely. Everything else is your brain trying to make sense of what happened. But our stories seem so real that we count everything else as fact as well. (Maybe they didn’t see you because you were in their blind spot, maybe they were rushing their pregnant wife to the hospital, maybe …).
For some reason we are so sure that we know the whole story and everything is accurate. Just the other day I had a patient who showed up about half an hour early. I thought I should tell him he was early and what time his appointment was, but I didn’t. He had been early for his past few appointments and he could see I was working with another patient. He sat in the waiting area on his phone and seemed fine. About three minutes before his appointment he stormed out the door and down the hall. I felt bad because I was sure he was mad at me for ignoring him and making him wait. Luckily he came to his next appointment, and it turns out he realized he had looked at the time wrong, but he got a text about an emergency that he had to leave quickly to take care of. We are sure we know the whole story even regarding things that happened long ago (you married people know what I am talking about.) We all know how fickle other people’s memories are as their stories are constantly revised and changed (that fish just keeps getting bigger every time they tell it).d,j However, we are convinced that our memories are accurate.
NEUROPLASTICITY
NEUROPLASTICITY
Another important thing to understand about the mind and body is that it is always changing and can change – for the good or bad. For the brain, this is called neuroplasticity.k Your brain and body are always making new connections and building new cells. It is also breaking down and “pruning” other parts – hence the phrase “use it or lose it”. This is not random but is a result of your choices and actions -intentional, unintentional, conscious, or subconscious. “Meaning that what you repeatedly think feel say and do literally reshapes you.”k This also means you have far more control over your mind, body, actions, reactions, hormones, etc than you or most people realize.
Every time you perform an action or put stress on a structure, your body responds in a way that makes it a little stronger. For the brain we often use the analogy of a path. So when a group of neurons fire, it is like it is making a little path. The more you fire those neurons, the more the path gets used and the clearer the path becomes. It progresses to a dirt road then a paved road and eventually a highway. That is why these actions become quicker, more efficient, and automatic. If you are training for a sport, this can be very beneficial to help you score more points or be more accurate. The brain doesn’t distinguish between good or bad. It just knows you use that pathway a lot, so it is going to make whatever you use the most faster. This is how you get bad habits that you do without even thinking or knowing you are doing them.
Sounds simple enough, we just have to change a thought or action that we don’t like, right? Sometimes it is that easy, but it usually takes time and consistency to stop some of these automatic programs. It also takes time and consistency to make the new programs or paths strong enough.k
Another saying regarding neuroplasticity is “what fires together, wires together.” We use this in therapy all the time. If we can stimulate some parts of the brain that are working well, we can tie it in with a part of the body that isn’t working as well and get it working better.
In the next section, we are going to talk about trapped emotions. One way I think some of these emotions get trapped is this firing together principle. Let’s say you are angry while you do something that hurts your back. They are unrelated but just happen to occur around the same time. Your brain doesn’t know the difference, it just puts in the program that back pain and anger go together. Now when something makes you a little angry, your brain says your back is also supposed to hurt. Or when you are lifting something it activates some nerves in your back and your brain reminds you that you are supposed to be angry and you yell at your son for something little. I know that is very simplified but if you look closely you can probably start to recognize some of these match ups in your life. There are many that believe certain organs are the seat of different emotions. So if you have trapped anger, maybe that is why you have symptoms associated with liver problems. Maybe when you worry you have to pee more or get bladder infections because worry centralizes in the bladder.
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