Emotional Mastery Series #3

In the past two articles, I have identified five of the seven truths about emotions, and with this one the last two truths.  As a kinesthetic sensation enriched by meaning (cognitively) an emotion exercises influence on us to get us to move (motion) out (ex) from where we are.   As a difference between map-and-territory, these mind-body systemic experiences create energy, motivation, and vitality within us.  They are therefore important, but not as ultimate truth, but as relative truth indicating what meanings our bodies are attempting to actualize.  As somatic registering of our meanings- they indicate the meanings that we are feeling.

5) Emotions are always right – relatively and conditionally to the map-territory situation.

Here is the paradox, while fully fallible (definition- “liable to error”) emotions are always right.  How is that?  They are right to the maps out of which they come and they are right in the context and situation that they are reflecting.  That’s why we should pay attention to them without falling into the falsehood of “obeying” them.  They do provide information, although that information may be erroneous.  And what this means is fabulous for human beings.

What this means is that there are no “bad” emotions.  Write that down. There are no bad emotions. The judgment of “bad” doesn’t apply to this mind-body function, an emotion is just an emotion.  It arises as a symptom of how you are thinking in relation to your expectations and skills.  They are not indicators of external reality.  Instead they indicate the relationship between our map and our experience of the territory.  In this, they are completely fallible and not an infallible voice or authority.  Our emotions can be very wrong and erroneous to the outside world, a reflection of distorted thinking and fallacious reasoning.

6) Emotions can be responded to in a variety of ways.

When it comes to emotions, you and I can respond to them in a wide range of ways.   We can listen to them, suppress them, ignore their message, obey them, release them, take them into consideration, etc.  Once we feel an emotion we can be chose how we will respond, listen to them, ignore them, or deal with them later.  So, how do you want to respond when you feel any given emotion?

The range of your choices and your flexibility of response describes your repertoire of skills in responding to your emotions.  So as you develop more and more ways of responding to your emotions, you’ll have a sense of more choice and more control in your life.  And as you do this, be sure to quality control your emotions.

What does it mean to quality control? It means to check to see that the emotion itself, how you are experiencing it, how you are creating it, what it is registering, and so on is useful for you, helpful, empowering, and enhancing.  After all, if emotions are fallible, functions of thinking, meaning-making, and experiencing the territory, then emotions need to be quality controlled for ecology and realism.

So, just because we feel something doesn’t demand that you act on it. Emotions can be distorted and even perverted.  What you feel may not be real.  You may be feeling an “old” emotion, a dated emotion, an imaginary emotion, and so on.  So check it out before you just react!  By quality controlling your emotions, you will discover that you have many more ways of responding to an emotion and that ultimately, you have that choice.

7) Emotions always habituate and become unconscious moods and attitudes.

When an emotion habituates, we live in it and lose awareness of it as an emotion.  Then the emotion becomes something else, it becomes a mood.  It becomes an attitude.  It becomes a generalized mind-set or disposition and when this happens it doesn’t so much feel like an emotion.  As it is repeated and habitualized, it feels so familiar and so comfortable, that you will experience it as “the way things are,” “what’s real,” and “life as you know it.”

Summary

Here then in summary are the 7 truths we speak about emotions in Neuro-Semantics.  These are not the only “truths” but central to being able to create and experience a healthy emotional intelligence and emotional mastery.

1. Emotions measure the map / territory difference; they are felt meanings.
2. Emotions are important as information signals.
3. Emotions are functions of the body as well as the mind.
4. Emotions are just emotions, not commands from heaven or our destiny.
5. Emotions are always right – relatively and conditionally to the map-territory situation.
6. Emotions can be responded to in a variety of ways.
7. Emotions always habituate and become unconscious moods and attitudes.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Emotional Mastery Series #2

Last week I began this series on “Getting Clear on what an Emotion is.”  I started by beginning with the “7 Truths about Emotions” that we present in a good many of the Neuro-Semantic Trainings.  Here are two more for this week. These “truths” about emotions pick up on the theme to continue grounding this subject so that we know what we’re talking about and in that way we can create a good operational definition of an emotion.  Once this is complete, then I’ll present some skills for handling emotions from an NLP/Neuro-Semantic perspective for emotional mastery.

3) Emotions are functions of the body as well as the mind.

When we talk about “emotions” in NLP, we distinguish between a feeling and an emotion.  When I first learned this in NLP, I found this distinction and insight very useful.  Later when I check numerous books on anatomy or books in psychology, I saw this distinction again and again.  An emotion is a combination of a feeling and a cognition.

First is the neurology which is the “feeling.”  More technically, this is a kinesthetic distinction.  It could be inside kinesthetic (a proprioceptive sensation) or an outside kinesthetic.

Inside

• Relaxing- tense, tight
• Cold- warm – hot
• Rate of heart beating
• Skin sweating – shivering
• Eyes dilating – degree of
• Rhythm of movement
• Pulsating … quiet

Outside

• Rough – smooth (texture)
• Cold – warm – hot (temperature)
• Slimy – dry
• Hard – soft
• Thick – thin
• Wet – dry

Then, once you have a “feeling,” add a cognition to it (which gives it some meaning) and then you have an “emotion.”  This explain why four of the most basic emotions are the same in terms of the neurological sensations and differ not in terms of what’s occurring in our body, but from the differences that we compute in the mind.   The neurological state is called the “General Arousal Syndrome.”  It is what you may more commonly recognize as the Fight- Flight- Freeze Pattern.

At the level of neurologically and physiology, the four emotions begin with an arousal that causes the heart to beat faster, the lungs to pump oxygen harder, the glands to release adrenalin, the sweat glands to be activates, eyes to dilate, and so we are in general arousal sydrome.  But what “emotion” is this?  If the trigger is undesired and unwelcomed- then it could be fear or anger.  If you think you can handle it, anger; if not, fear.   If the trigger is desired, then excitement, and if sexually desired, then lust.  So four emotions- fear, anger, excitement, and lust all involve the same “feelings” in the body.  The distinguishing variable is that of the cognitive understand and meaning.  Hence again, number one definition: a relationship between mental map in one’s head and one’s experience in the territory of the world.

“Emotions” are somatic responses of the mind-body system which also explains why our emotions are susceptible to so many of the physical factors in our lives such as sleep, eating, exercising, health, illness, etc.  What and how you have been eating influences emotions as a contributing factor, so does your sleep habits, your exercise patterns, etc.

The “motion” part of an e-motion is the action of the motor cortex sending a message when we experience an emotion to move-out from where we are to some other place. Hence the original word, “ex (out) motion.”  Emotions move us to move out from where we are.  They give us the somatic boast of energy to move.

Where do emotions come from and what are they?  As e(x)motions, they are inner urges, activated by the motor cortex, moving us out from where we are. Neurologically, an emotion is “an action tendency” generated by the information in our context that activates our motor cortex and other brain structures (amygdala, thalamus, hypothalamus, adrenal gland, etc.). Understanding emotions in this way enables us to hold the tension between several realizations that are all simultaneously true.

As a neurological process, an emotions is not a thing, it is not solid and static.  It is an activity going on within our mind-body system and so produces it each moment as energies move us from where we are at to another place.

4) Emotions are just emotions, not commands from heaven or our destiny.

In the end, however, emotions are just emotions.   As the difference that we register in our body (soma, hence somatically) between our map of the world and our experience of the world, the emotion is just the motion generated in the body by the feeling of our meanings.  As such emotions are secondary and derivative of- mind-and-body.  This makes them symptoms of the functioning of our mind-and-body.  And that leads to the next understanding.

If “emotions” move us out from where we are because of the cognitive meaning within them so that they give us information about what fits or does not fit our sense of reality, then they are information, movement, energy, somatizing of meaning, but they are not commands from heaven.  They are not orders about what to do.  They do not set our destiny.  They are just emotions- the symptoms of our mind-body in action. Emotions are just emotions and so if we treat them as mind-body symptoms then we can effectively discover how we create them in our mind-body system.   Until the next Meta Reflection – to your highest and best!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.