Understanding emotions: a deeper look

Emotions are complex and intriguing aspects of our human experience. They're not inherently good or bad; they simply are. Let’s explore what emotions really entail and how they influence us.

The Purpose of Emotions

Dr. Antonio Damasio, a renowned neuroscientist, suggests that emotions are essential for our survival. They provide feedback about the health and sustainability of our bodies, our relationships, and our environments. Emotions prompt us to act, helping us adapt to our current circumstances and ultimately, relieve emotional tension. For instance, sadness might encourage us to seek comfort through tears or hugs, while anger might provoke reactions like yelling or expressing frustration physically.

The Basics of Emotions

Emotions start as physical sensations in our body, akin to how our body regulates temperature. If emotional stimuli are too intense or too subtle, they cross a threshold, making us aware of our feelings. These sensations—like a twist in your stomach or a flutter in your heart—can evolve into conscious emotions if they're not overwhelming or suppressed due to fear.

Emotions and Trauma

Trauma can trap emotions in the physical body, leading to avoidance of bodily awareness. This avoidance is a defense mechanism against re-experiencing discomfort or pain.

Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness

While emotions are crucial for survival and adaptation, not all emotional reactions are beneficial in a social context. Some can isolate us or cause trouble. Moreover, trauma can skew our perception of the present, making us relive past threats and perpetuate pain. This highlights the importance of being both attentive to and cautious with our emotions.

The Brain’s Pathways for Emotions

Our brains process emotions in two main ways: the slow road and the fast road. The slow road involves thought and reflection before action, allowing us time to assess whether our responses are appropriate. The fast road is instinctive and immediate, driven by primal urges. Both pathways are adaptive, depending on the situation.

Navigating Trauma and the Present

By spending time with ourselves, we can learn to distinguish between being present and operating automatically—a mode often influenced by past trauma. Mindfulness—recognizing how we feel, rather than simply experiencing emotions—empowers us to differentiate between past triggers and present realities.

Practicing mindfulness isn't an instant solution but a gradual process that builds the awareness necessary to make conscious choices. This awareness can lead to new behaviors and healthier automatic responses that are more aligned with our current needs.

In Conclusion

Emotions are not just reactions but signals that guide us through the complexities of life. By understanding and managing them, we can lead more fulfilling and adaptive lives.

The 5 Reasons therapy or counseling is actually valuable for you!

Therapy or counseling is often under sold or over sold. When it’s under sold people say it’s just talking to someone and that helps you feel better. It’s much more complex than that with a well trained and experienced therapist. When it’s over sold it’s put inside of marketing language that says it will solve all your problems instantly: all of a sudden you’ll be great with money, relationships are a breeze, you feel balanced emotionally all the time and you find $20 in your pocket. Obviously that’s not right either. So what makes therapy or counseling actually valuable?

Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to feel seen and known.

Don’t under-estimate this. Feeling seen and known is important for everyone and it causes us to feel better. It helps our emotions to express and feel relieved. It helps us feel like we’re not an alien and that we’re not alone. It helps us feel connected. All of this moves us into a place where we can be ourselves more naturally.

Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to change the memories that are responsible for the automatic ways you interact with yourself and the world that are a problem for you.

Likely the brain mechanism at the core of any real change in therapy is something called, memory reconsolidation. When we go through something enough times or intense enough one time we remember it and our brain creates an automatic way to “adapt” to such a moment. This includes what emotions to feel, the meanings we make about ourselves and others, how to hold our body, what to do with our voice and our gaze, how intense to feel, what to do behaviorally, etc. This automatic thing becomes unconscious and then starts to control our lives around those situations or similar situations that still activate those automatic ways. Impacting those memories (whether they are memories we think or memories we just feel) causes new automatic ways to begin to be made.

Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to gain skills of self regulation.

This is not easy and a lot of therapies don’t teach this well enough. Knowing how to regulate your emotions and re-balance your nervous system is not intuitive to most. Learning this skills can change your life. In therapy we learn these skills both through education and practice together but also through the co-regulation of being with the therapist’s nervous system. Having a steady AND open person with you when you start to feel deeply helps you hold and manage your feelings better.

Therapy or counseling offers you the chance to learn about yourself.

Who doesn’t like to learn about themselves!? In therapy we come to know things about how we really feel or think or what desires we have that might be tough for us to come in touch with on our own or in our normal life. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me or I have said myself in my own therapy, “I am just realizing this right now as I say it…”. Would you rather be on auto pilot or know what you really want?

Therapy or counseling offers you the chance to make sense of your life.

There’s something calming to the brain when we can name what emotions we’re feeling, when we can put together a narrative that helps us make sense of why we feel the way we do or why we do what we do, etc. In therapy we work towards this often so your brain can calm down and be more present.