Emotions – Catharsis and Catalyst for Healing and Action
Emotions live in the present moment and feelings as we will discover live in the past and in the future – in the mind. It is not only compassion and empathy that connect with emotions when we talk about new leadership. There are also obvious direct correlations to themes like emotional intelligence, but indirect correlations to authenticity, judgements, the term openness and to sensory work – even further away, links to ethics and morals. Emotion is a vital component when we deal with the types of changes we are up against. Emotion(s) when accepted, understood and cared for can become the catalyst for healthy action. In order to understand why emotion propels action it is my opinion that we must dispel, relearn and simplify what emotions are.
“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.” Carl Jung, 1939
The need for a new relationship
We have a strange relationship to emotions. We often think we can control them by shutting
them off, but equally as often find that they seem to simply appear. When we avoid, ignore and neglect them - all of which is very common - we just delay their release and witness a possible transformation into depression, apathy or even physical ailment (Chapman et al. 2014). When we accumulate and store them by pushing them down, they will suddenly erupt - like a pressure cooker; unless steam is let out periodically, it will explode. The emotions we generate tend to become attached to thoughts; forming feelings. The thoughts fuel emotions and emotions fuel more thoughts that fuel more emotions that fuel even more thoughts... We also frequently correlate emotions with heightened physical sensations like shocking the system with adrenal thrills – skydiving or watching scary movies etc. I want to make it very clear that these selfinduced experiences is not what is being referred to in this section.
Emotions and Science
Before going further I think it is important to explain emotions from the scientific perspective. But at the same time we need to understand that working with emotions practically and making scientific experiments around stimuli’s and neuro-reactions are two extremely different things. In science emotions and feelings are very closely linked but separate concepts. In daily language we tend to use them interchangeably but without reflection – they are not the same thing. Antonio Damaso is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists and has written extensively on the subject. He explains that an emotion takes place when the body reacts to certain stimuli - for example, fear can orchestrate palpitations, sweating, muscle contraction etc. This emotional reaction occurs automatically and often unconsciously and can for example produce experiences of sadness and anger. For as long as the experience is thoughtless it is a pure emotion. Once we become aware of such physical changes in the brain it produces a feeling. Feelings are triggered by emotions and colored by thoughts, images and memories stored in in our subconscious (Damasio 2006, Lenzen 2005). These are specifically linked to us like a DNA imprint and are attachments to the mind-constructed world. They can appear as resentment, hate, bitterness, happiness etc. They are always in relationship to thoughts regarding someone, something or oneself. They can be triggered from the pure emotion of anger and turn into the feeling of rage. And when it turns to rage, it is attached to a thought. Triggers can also work the other way; thinking of the future can bring an emotional response of fear for example. Damasio claims that we would lose our self-image and would not be able to function if emotions were not connected with conscious feelings – we would be helpless as babies (Lenzen 2005). I boldly
disagree on this point. I do not believe that we as adults would cease to function, on the
contrary, feelings keeps us attached to our trauma and locked in belief systems that hamper
our ability to live from the present moment. From my experience, working, teaching and
conducting practical processes with emotions, I see knowledge as stored in the same way as
emotions are in our systems. We accumulate information from pre-birth until we die. Most of
this cognitive knowledge is subconscious and only some is conscious (Agusto 2011, Kluwe
1982). When we react to a red light at a traffic stop for example we do not think about what to do, we simply act on our ‘built in’ knowledge. Knowledge does not necessarily have to correlate with the experience of ‘who we are’ – but I agree with Damasio that it certainly correlates with ‘who we think we are’ (Lenzen 2005).
The conundrum of Thoughts
In an article in Huffington Post from May 2013, Bruce Davies, PhD, explains that there are studies showing that we generate between 50,000 and 70,000 mostly unaware thoughts (physical electrical impulses firing through the brain) in a 24 hour period. Of these, 80% tend to correlate with negative feelings and 95% are repetitions of the day before. We have also created far more words depicting negative feelings than positive ones (Schrauf 2005). I have found it difficult to corroborate the first claim even though the internet is infested with writings about it. I have found that claims vary from 16,000-70,000 words (impulses) depending on the source. According Psychology Today the information originates from an article in the National Science Foundation from 2005, which I am still looking for. In any case I think it is reasonable to assume that the number of thoughts generated is staggering, even if it were only one thousand. Understanding that there is a significant amount of thoughts going through us, is the important thing because we consciously only register very few of those and most often the negative ones - that much is clear. A recent study by David Oakley and Peter Halligan (2017) goes further and in it, it is claimed that we do not really have control over our thoughts, feelings or beliefs. They talk about a state of awareness; "we don't consciously choose our thoughts or our feelings – we become aware of them". I agree partly with this assessment. We cannot control the thoughts that arise but we can train ourselves to not attach ourselves to them.
The Present moment
Being in the present moment and allowing the experience of emotions to ‘be’ without hooking on to story or thoughts is a journey of becoming aware of emotions as a separation from thoughts. This is the first step of individual change – it is not easy. It requires refining and cultivating the ability to monitor and distinguish disruptive from non-disruptive thoughts and observe when negative feelings are formed. This state of awareness is a known spiritual practice dating back thousands of years in Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism and is a foundation for Mindfulness etc., (Barnekow 2003, Ekman et al. 2005). I have never seen anybody during emotional seminars be helpless or to not function. In fact I believe that we need to lose the constructed self-image in order to understand ‘who we truly are’ in the present moment. Who we are, is not who think we are, but a simple experience of the ‘now’ - a state of awareness. We do this by distilling the physical experience of emotions from the mind and the story (Brown & Ryan 2003). It is in this space where traumas dissolve and change takes place.
Emotions versus Feelings and Thoughts
As a facilitator, I am ultimately interested in hijacking the moment before an emotion triggers the mind and fuels the thoughts and stories. Therefore our focus is not on feelings but on very simple, pure forms of emotions like; Anger, Sadness, Joy and Fear etc., (McLaren 2014). The aim is to find awareness and clarity in emotions and demystify them. Take anger for example; when a negative thought of for example that ‘someone is evil’ is combined with the emotion of anger we produce the very dangerous feeling of hate that when acted on can cause pain and suffering to others. We have mostly learnt that the experience of anger is bad. I suggest that the anger in itself is not the problem. The thought is the issue – and the combination of anger and thought that cultivates the feeling of hate is perilous. Children until they are conditioned to suppress emotions have a very free relationship to them. They laugh, cry and are angry in the same breath and once it is over they don’t judge or find the need to justify why they felt or what they felt. In my experience, as adults we have this capacity too, if we let go of our conditioning. Imagine just having emotions without ‘thoughts’ – without the mind interfering just like a four year old. From this place an emotion is just an experience, a physical vibration - and acts as a release for the physical and emotional system. Just like sweating out toxins at the gym. In the world of a four year old there are no bad or negative emotions and in all honesty that goes for the adult world as well – there are only bad and negative thoughts.
Jonas P Barvé 2020