Where do emotions come from?
Are they hard-wired reactions to what is going on around us?
Do people and circumstances provoke the same emotions in everyone?
What can we do to manage our emotions, so they don’t run us?
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett says that we are the source of those emotions that seem to take us over.
And not everyone reacts the same way in a certain circumstance.
Instead of being victims to emotional reactions, she shows that we create emotions out of our body state and what has happened in the past.
How are emotions made?
I am simplifying, and of course, leaving out a lot of subtlety of what she says in her book How Emotions are Made, The Secret Life of the Brain.
In fact, I am only presenting one segment of what she says in order to emphasize a point: that we are not the victims of emotions, because, in fact, we generate them.
Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research shows that the body is communicating constantly to the brain and the brain registers a whole-body affect in the mind.
Affect is the general feeling that we experience through the day. Our minds receive our brain’s representation of all sensations from our internal organs and tissues, the hormones in our blood, and our immune system. Then the mind registers it as affect, which are simple pleasant and unpleasant feelings. When it is intense, we can interpret it as emotions.
Affect is a fundamental aspect of consciousness experienced by the human nervous system. A network managing affect comes from these body sensations in order to stay alive and well by regulating what is called “body budget.” Our affect, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, calmness and agitation, are summaries of our body budget.
Affect is a summary of body budget
Our body budget is like an accounting of our body’s energy needs. The body budgeting system tracks the spending of our resources to run our organs, metabolism and immune system. Then like a good accountant, it wants the resources replenished by eating, drinking, sleeping, relaxing, and socializing in order to balance the budget.
We make a budget ahead of time, projecting what our body needs through a specific neural network. The budget is based on past experience. It calibrates what energy was needed, by what oxygen was needed through breathing, how much blood sugar to burn, how fast to pump the heart, and so on. Then this body budget network in the brain controls the body’s internal environment according to the projected budget.
Our affect, the total input of body sensation, is always running in the background. It influences everything we do, think, and what we perceive. Sometimes it is turned into emotions. You can see how we might get into trouble with a projected budget.
For example, if we are low on energy and have not eaten, the deficit in body budget is apparent in our affect. We may think we are hungry, seek food, and perhaps more clearly notice the fast food places as we drive down the street. Alternatively, we may get irritable, think our partner is to blame and start an argument. All from a deficit in body budget.
Any event can significantly impact our body budget as well when we attach meaning to it. Someone’s presence can trigger our internal expenditure of energy. It can also be triggered by simply imagining that someone or a situation relevant to us. Either of these can easily affect our body budget and drive emotions.
How can we manage emotion?
Because we are the source of emotion, we have the power to manage them as we manage our physical requirements. In addition, when our physical requirements have not been managed well and we have unpleasant feelings or strong emotions, we can still use the power of the mind to watch them and not succumb to their effects.
When we were babies, we could observe the world, experiencing body sensations and input from the world, then releasing them. As we grew, we learned to manage our body budget, but some of our learning proved to not serve us.
We still have the ability to cultivate that alertness and presence in this moment, observing sensations as they come and go in a non-judgmental way. This is the backbone of meditation. It can be practiced with our eyes open as well as with our eyes closed. By observing our affect, our pleasant or unpleasant, aroused or calm background state, we have the power to change our experience of life. By not attaching our experience to what state we are in, we let go and are free to so what serves us.
It is possible to simply start by realizing that thoughts, feelings, and perceptions began as physical sensations, and let them pass. After all, we can’t take it personally that our digestion is active, or we need more fuel for energy, or our immune system is dealing with a virus. It is simply the state of our body budget balance.
For some, what may work is cultivating the experience of awe, the feeling of being in the presence of something magnificently greater than ourselves. This gives us distance from the fixation on affect and how it influences our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
In so doing, by freeing ourselves from the rule of affect, we in turn modulate the brain centers that product the affect. It has been shown that meditation has potent effect on brain structure and function in these areas. In fact, the control networks are larger and the connections are stronger between them in people who meditate. And these effects are seen soon after beginning meditation training, we do not have to spend a lifetime meditating in a cave to benefit.
Being at a meditation retreat for a week, I get to practice what Lisa Feldman Barrett has researched. I clearly see that by not taking anything personally, it passes, leaving me with a peaceful life.
Is there something you do to let sensations, thoughts, and emotions go by so they do not run your life? Please comment below.
