Here’s what I found out about emotions from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s interviews and her book “How Emotions Are Made.” I want to share a few points that made me see things differently. What I learned here totally changed how I see and deal with my emotions. I hope it does the same for you!
” Don’t let butterfly freeze you, let your butterflies flying in formation!” – quote from a martial arts instructor (in an interview with Andrew Huberman).
It liberated me!
Why Brain? What I initially wanted to know is how to get rid of this uncomfortable anxious feeling creeping through my body, where it’s coming from, and why we have those feelings. In order to have those questions answered, we need to comprehend how the brain works because it’s the one that senses what’s happening. The body sends sensory signals to the brain, and it’s the brain that processes and creates feelings. As Dr. Barrett describes, the brain is the scorekeeper and the body is the scorecard.
So let’s go over a few key takeaways on how the brain works.
First, what the brain knows about the world is through the sensory surfaces of the body. However, the detailed information we receive through our body (sensory information) becomes a high-level summary when it reaches the brain.
Second, the brain is like a guessing machine. It doesn’t directly perceive what’s happening outside; it needs to guess and predict your body’s reaction (motor plan) based on limited information. The inputs your brain uses to guess are: one, the simplified form of sensory information from the body, and two, past experiences stored in memory.
Third, your body is constantly sending signals to your brain, and your brain is constantly processing them. We often don’t pay much attention to these signals. Instead, the brain creates a low-dimensional summary of the body’s state, and that’s what we call feeling—whether it’s sadness, pleasantness, unpleasantness, or agitation. These feelings are present whether we’re consciously aware of them or not, whether we’re in an emotional state or not.
Only when you are giving the meaning to those feeling, you create the emotion!
So, emotion is the story that the brain tells about what caused the feeling. This means you have more control than you think. Initially, when a bad feeling comes, I used to become more passive and hope it would pass soon. However, based on this research, it seems like we can deliberately shift the state of our body and change the feeling, or purposefully stay in that emotion to work toward our goals.
Here are some examples of how to change your mood or feeling, or work with it:
1. Change the state of your body. One of the inputs for the brain’s guessing model is sensory signals from the body. If you shift your attention to a different place, such as the outside world or to another area of the body, it can change the current feeling. That’s why going for a walk or paying attention to a specific part of the body can shift our mood.
2.Another input for your brain is your past experiences. This is more of a long-term solution. When a similar situation that creates negative feelings or emotions, try doing something different to create a different outcome. These are new learning points that will add to your past experience category in your brain and eventually shift your brain’s future predictions.
Feeling becomes a source of wisdom. It’s a cue to do something different, not something we need to run away from. It’s your reality you are creating. So, How do you want to see the world and tell the story to yourself?
Youtube- How to Understand Emotions with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
Book – How emotions are made by Lisa Feldman Barrett