Frontiers Friday #95: Emotions (Part I) ⭕
Frontiers Friday #95. Emotions (Part I)
You don't have to be an "emotion-focused" therapist, or an "emotionally-focused" therapist to work with emotions. In fact, avoiding the topic of emotions in psychotherapy is like a fisherman avoiding the waters.
This week and the coming few, we will be talking about the life-blood of our human experience, that is, the inner-life of Emotions.
Today we have one new post and a string of recommendations from the esteemed psychologist, Lisa Feldman Barrett.
🎁 New from My Desk: Why You Need a Guide To Go Deep
In this new post, I shared my experience about being at a therapy workshop, what I've learned from Les Greenberg, and why a slow, soft and singular focus is needed in approaching difficult emotions in therapy.
📕 Book-Read: How Emotions Are Made
Hands down, this is book by Lisa Feldman Barrett is probably one of the most important (and current) text on the topic of emotions.
While compiling this, I found out from another version of this book that Dan Gilbert called Feldman Barrett "...the deepest thinker about this topic since Darwin."
After you've read this book, you'd know why. Feldman Barrett turned my world upside down.
Key Grafs:
- An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.
- Contrast the classical view of emotions, the theory of Constructed Emotions is
- "Your emotions are not built-in but made from more basic parts. They are not universal but vary from culture to culture. They are not triggered; you create them."
- "Emotions are real, but not in the objective sense that molecules or neurons are real. They are real in the same sense that money is real — that is, hardly an illusion, but a product of human agreement."
- "You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions."
- Variation is the norm.
- Body budget: "The most basic thing you can do to master your emotions, in fact, is to keep your body budget in good shape... If they aren’t, and your body budget gets out of whack, then you’re going to feel crappy no matter what self-help tips you follow. It’s just a matter of which flavor of crap."
👓 Web-Read: Facial Expressions Do Not Reveal Emotions
One of the most compelling arguments Lisa Feldman Barrett makes is in Chapter 3, The Myths of Universal Emotions. Here, she challenged the classical view in the likes of Paul Ekman universal facial expression.
In this American Scientific article, LFB provides a glimpse into this argument. Worth reading.
Key Grafs:
- “There’s also considerable evidence that facial movements are just one signal of many in a much larger array of contextual information that our brain takes in. Show people a grimacing face in isolation, and they may perceive pain or frustration. But show the identical face on a runner crossing the finish line of a race, and the same grimace conveys triumph. The face is often a weaker signal of a person’s internal state than other signals in the array,"
- "People may indeed widen their eyes and gasp in fear, but they may also scowl in fear, cry in fear, laugh in the face of fear and, in some cultures, even fall asleep in fear. There is no essence (on Essentialism).”
- "Other scientists point to a mountain of counterevidence showing that facial movements during emotions vary too widely to be universal beacons of emotional meaning. People may smile in hatred when plotting their enemy’s downfall and scowl in delight when they hear a bad pun."
🎧 Listen: Balancing the Body Budget
If you prefer to listen, check out several of LFB podcast interviews. This is one of them on The Knowledge Project by Shane Parrish.
Key Grafs:
- When it comes to emotion, as with almost everything in biology, variation is the norm. There isn’t one anger. You have a whole population of angers that you can feel and your brain doesn’t conjure them randomly. It conjures them according to your brain’s best guess of what’s going to work in a particular situation.
- The brain: most expensive metabolic budget (20%). When brain depletes, less budget for the body to move.
- Fallacy that emotions trip you up: Sometimes thinking trip you up too; false dichotomy of logical vs emotional brain... "you have one brain."
⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
"The body doesn't keep the score. Your brain keeps the score. Your body is the score."
~ Lisa Feldman Barrett
Reflection:
HALT. Take a moment to check your body budget. Are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired?
(hat-tip to Emma D)
We make all kinds of psychological attempts to improve our wellbeing, and often fail to ask a more fundamental question. How is our body feeling?
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