Six things you don't know about play but need to
Most people don’t know that playing is a biological need and drive. In fact, PLAY is one of the seven basic emotion systems that our entire emotional lives are built on (in other words, PLAY is one of the seven basic tools we inherit at birth in order to survive - it's not trivial to play it's a necessity). All of this means that the PLAY system (when PLAY is capitalized it is referring to the brain system that produces an emotion, not an emotion itself) is a vital part of being a mammal and being a human. Here are six facts about playing that you might not know:
Even though play can come in tons of different forms (we can have intellectual play, sexual play, dramatic play, witty banter, etc.) its basic biological form is “rough and tumble play”. This is the chasing, wrestling, and physical type of play that we see the most in children (and maybe if you get down on the floor with your dog!).
Playing is a well researched option for helping to manage ADHD. The research suggests that incorporating rough and tumble play into the life of a child with ADHD can have strong positive affects on concentration and focus.
We learn how to live together through playing. Playing teaches us where the line is. Most play ends up in tears if you let it go long enough. That’s because eventually we lose the “as if” feeling when a line gets crossed. Those experiences teach us how to read each other and how to understand limits and rules that we later apply to living in society. We also try on roles in playing that we use later on. Often you see kids playing house or playing different parts of social hierarchy (e.g. cops and robbers, etc.). Playing prepares us for life together.
Empathy evolves out of playing. We develop our capacity for empathy from the PLAY system. Playing is governed naturally by a 60/40 rule. If someone is winning more than 60% of the time the other person will lose interest, feel bullied and disengage. The bully may take the toy but they won’t get the joy.
We need to play everyday otherwise our need for play builds up. If we don’t play today we will need to play twice as much the next day.
Playing produces social joy. Social joy combats despair. Making play a really good medicine for feeling down.
How emotions become memories (AKA the building blocks of your personality)
By: Aaron Mitchum
Most of life is based on emotions, memories and predictions. In fact, every day you are telling the story of your life without even knowing it. Here’s how it works. We have seven basic emotions: anger, sexual arousal, care, sadness, social joy, fear, and enthusiasm or anticipation (see Jaak Panksepp's work for more on this). We are born with these seven basic emotions because they motivate us to get what we need to survive. These basic emotions are below thinking and the foundation for all our other emotions. Because they have natural needs and instincts built into them basic emotions allow us to interact with the world without thinking. This is helpful because in the first part of life our basic emotions are all we have to navigate the world since our cortex (the thinking part of our brain) and our left hemisphere (the main part where speech comes from) are not fully developed yet.
As we take in the raw experience of life through our senses we experience emotions and those cause us to react with instincts and reflexes. The result of those reactions are remembered and we learn from them (privileging the results that felt most adaptive). After a while our brains transfer these experiences into long term memories and creates prediction models from them. This is to conserve energy. If we can build models that predict how to handle a certain kind of moment we can automate actions and reactions so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every day. These patterns have to do with every day experiences like walking down the stairs or safety experiences like how to react to strangers vs loved ones, etc. In fact, we stop using feelings in those automated experiences. As long as the predictions our automated models are making keep being accurate we don’t even notice things. If our predictions fail however (e.g. the way we walk down stairs normally isn't working because the stairs are now icy), that’s when emotions come in. We start to feel in reaction to not knowing what to do. We have to feel our way through as the neuropsychoanalyst, Mark Solms is fond of saying.
To summarize, life excites feelings and feelings cause instinctual and reflexive reactions of which the results are remembered and then used to build prediction models to save energy. As those predictions cause feelings and behaviors to be repeated again and again the feelings and behaviors become habits and eventually engrained as automatic ways of being that we don’t think about any more. These are the building blocks of our personalities. So when you wonder why you use the tones of voice that you do on the phone vs in the store, why you react to good news and bad news in the ways that you do, why you judge or don’t judge the way you do, or why you hold your face and body posture in the ways that you do, you can know that it all comes from your history (i.e. how your genetics, dispositions and environments interacted with your basic emotions, instincts and reflexes to cause adaptive reactions which were remembered, repeated and automated).
A take away from all of this is, personalities are constructed. In addition, because our brains are changeable (thanks to neurplasticity [see Norman Doidge’s work] and the memory reconsolidation process [see Karim Nader's work]) it means that personalities are changeable too. The older we get and the more complexities our story has the harder major change can be but we do know that change is possible across the entire life span. Meaning, just because you have a personality type (a lot of people like to know their Enneagram number for example) it doesn’t mean that’s “who you are”. It means that’s what has been constructed. So if you struggle with your automatic reactions to life perhaps it’s hopeful to think that the end question is not necessarily, “what’s my story?” it’s potentially, “what do I want my story to be?".
Getting past the breakers: finding and taming your emotions
By: Aaron Mitchum
Growing up in Kansas, as a skateboard kid of the nineties, the southern California surf and skate culture was the dream. So it was no surprise that I set my sites on going to college in LA. When I arrived at university I became obsessed with learning how to surf. I went twice a week for two years. My friends and I would wake up at 4:30a Tuesdays and Thursdays and drive 45 minutes out to Huntington and Newport Beach to surf before class. Alas though no matter how hard I tried I never got good at surfing. To this day I suck at surfing. It wasn’t a loss though, I did learn something. I learned about getting past the breakers. The breakers are the part where waves crash. To surf you have to get behind that part to where the swells come in before they become waves. That’s where you can catch the waves as they form. Getting past the breakers can be really hard. They push you back. They push under. You take on water. You get disoriented. You get cold, it’s exhausting and a little scary. As you are ducking and diving the crashing waves everything in your senses is saying “this is clearly not a good idea”. It’s a lot like learning to access your emotions when you have really struggled with that or like learning to tame your emotions when you’ve really struggled with that. It just feels like going against the momentum and it’s hard to intuitively feel why it’s worth it.
When I finally did get past the breakers though it all became clear. I had a totally different experience. Things got calm. My perspective changed. I could see and feel why it was worth it. Sitting out past the breakers, taking in the sun rise and being with my friends are some of my favorite memories in life (this was all just before I would try to actually ride a wave and totally eat it in front of everyone, revealing my midwest roots). Getting access to your emotions or healing emotional overwhelm is like getting past the breakers. It’s not quite as final as that, we are always in a process (there are always going to be breakers to swim past) but it is similar in that you almost have to go through it to understand what it has to offer you. Finding the energy and vibrancy of a rich emotional life will help you feel alive and authentic in new ways. Likewise, finding the strength to heal emotional overwhelm leaves you feeling empowered to take on life in courageous new ways. Both require getting past the breakers though. So if you’re in the struggle (and the struggle is real make no mistake) know you are not alone and take hope, there is another side.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF EMOTIONAL AFFAIR
By: Aaron Mitchum
Having split off emotions and needs is like having an affair. Your vulnerable emotions and their needs are kept out of your regular life. You go on with your day, your friends, spouse, kids, job, etc. without your vulnerable emotions and needs being involved. In fact, the people close to you don’t even know about your vulnerable feelings. Those feeling are kept in exile, in hiding. They are not to be acknowledged. That said, you do visit your feelings...in secret. Just like an affair you meet them at the "hotel" for a rendezvous. The "hotel" in this situation are habits like: pornography, alcohol, drugs, eating, intensities like extreme sports or exciting adventures, shopping, watching sports, etc. In those spaces you can feel the permission to have emotions you can’t usually. These places help you feel things like: relaxed, loved, seen, alive, wanted, excited, confident, sexual, soothed, etc.
Side Bar: You might notice that a lot of those things can become addicting. In psychology addiction is often understood as an attachment disorder. Meaning, we have come to use these things to meet attachment type of needs (i.e. seen, soothed, safe, secure, etc.) instead of seeking those things through relationships (i.e. opening up to those we’re close with or seeking a hug, etc.) or self help (e.g. mindfulness meditation, yoga, massage, etc.). We establish these patterns out of stressful times (usually when we are young) in which don’t have the help we need. Eventually these things become patterns and happen automatically. In other words, without much thought or awareness we grab that next beer not realizing that we are doing that because we are hungry to feel loved in that moment.
Back to our metaphor…we may meet our feelings in the hotel and get a fix but soon it’s back to our regular lives (perhaps with some guilt in the background for behaving in a way, once again, we don’t really want to). And as long as those emotions don’t show up at our door where our friends and family live too (cause that’ll be shocking and painfully messy we fear) we continue to maintain our split lives: a main self that is non vulnerable and doesn’t trouble others with our messy needs (sure we can’t quite connect deeply with others but we compensate with just doing more) and our secret selves that meet with our “messy” emotions and needs on the side.
#emotions #emotionalintelligence #falseself #integrated #wholeself#coaching #selfhelp #vulnerability
Why I love being a therapist.
By: Aaron Mitchum
I can’t shake it. I just think I’m built to be an artist. The arts that I’ve chosen to work in are music and counseling/coaching (I’m bracketing for just a moment that there’s a whole important science side to counseling/coaching and a whole important math side to music).
In music I am passionate about song writing. Keith Richards has said, or was it Leonard Cohen?, I can’t remember, one of them said that writing a song was like putting your ear up to the hotel wall and listening to a radio that’s playing in the next room…you just kind of have to tune in and listen really hard. For me, the feeling of tuning into a song, finding words and melody that match and elucidate something from life that maybe had only been felt up until then is addicting.
In counseling/coaching it’s similar. We work hard together to find a way to harvest the sub feelings of life into words, thoughts, movements and expressions so that people can change in ways that help them feel better and liver fuller. It is truly something sacred. I absolutely love helping people. To get to be on the journey with someone as they: learn about themselves, believe in themselves, change old patterns and beliefs that hold them back, heal from wounds, find forgiveness and hope, etc. is a sacred thing and a gift.
Both song writing and therapy/training are chances to sit with the mysteries of life and bring them into a form that can be shared and thought and be changed by. I can’t think of many things more meaningful for someone like me.