Emotions, both good and bad, are an inescapable part of being human.
Many of us, however, find it difficult to deal with our feelings, and this can cause an immense amount of suffering in our lives.
Perhaps you’re someone who gets completely swept away by your emotional states — or maybe you desperately try to numb and repress them.
Either way, it’s clear that your feeling states have a huge impact on the quality of your life. A life run by our emotional reactions is a life of chaos and disorder for ourselves and those around us.
That’s why it’s essential to have an understanding of what emotions are, what their purpose is, and how to deal them simply and effectively. Because if we don’t learn to master our mind, then we’ll forever be a slave to it.
What are emotions?
Emotions are a psycho-physiological response to our environment and our thoughts.
Scientists have a number of different theories about emotion. At the most basic level, emotion is a built-in response system triggered by the limbic system, which is the oldest and most primal part of the brain.
Emotions can be seen as messengers — signals that motivate us to act.
When we’re in danger, the brain generates fear which motivates us to seek safety. When we’re hungry, the emotion of hunger motivates us to eat food. When we’re horny, the emotion of lust motivates us to…well, you get the idea.
Emotions, caused by the brain releasing bio-chemical reactions in the body, helped our species survive. They enabled us to react to danger and threats and seek out what we needed in order to survive and thrive. At this level, emotion is instinctive and can be seen universally in humans and other species.
So it can be helpful to recognise emotions as signals.
Negative emotions — such as fear, terror, anxiety, sadness and guilt — generally try to steer us away from certain things not conducive to our survival or well-being.
Positive emotions, on the other hand — happiness, peace, joy, attraction and contentment — are a signal that what we’re doing is something beneficial to us. Or at least we think it’s beneficial to us.
Everything You Experience is in the Mind
Where emotions get complex is when we realise that they aren’t just biological responses to external stimulus.
Your emotional responses are filtered through the mind’s thoughts, memories, judgements and interpretations.
So your emotions are rarely just a direct response to external objects, situations or events. They are a response to the thoughts you think about those external objects, situations and events.
The world you think you experience out there is actually experienced in your mind.
‘Naive realism’ is the assumption that you experience reality by just looking out your eyes the same way you’d look out a window, and that you see whatever is out there. That’s not how it works, however. Your eyes relay sensory data through the optic nerve and then the mind decodes, interprets and reassembles that data in the form of thought.
So when you experience something, you don’t actually experience it ‘out there’. You experience it inside your mind. Your brain takes external signals and then recreates a representation of this data in your mind.
It doesn’t matter what you think you’re experiencing outside of yourself — whether it’s other people, mountains, the sky or the stars at night — the only place you can ever experience it is within your consciousness. Your consciousness is the carrier of reality; your medium for experience the world of things. And all those things you’re experiencing are actually just representations in your mind.
In other words, you’re only ever experiencing your mind, in the form of thoughts, whether those thoughts represent external stimulus (the objective world) or internal stimulus (the subjective world).
This isn’t some philosophical abstraction, by the way. It’s hard science.
Mindblowing, huh?
That’s why emotions can never be seen as truly objective. If your experience of external objects is filtered through the mind and all the biases, memories, interpretations and judgements inherent in that mind, then your emotions are always going to be affected by thought. Indeed, thought can be seen as the creator of emotion.
I Think, Therefore I Feel
This might seem very counterintuitive.
After all, doesn’t it seem like our emotions and feelings are caused purely by external situations or events?
For instance, let’s say you’re being chased through the jungle by a hungry tiger. Your life is in danger and you’re inevitably going to experience fear and terror.
Likewise, if you win the lottery, the chances are you’ll be pretty delighted about it.
On the other hand, if someone close to you dies, you’re naturally going to experience loss and grief.
But even though we tend to pin external causes on the arising of emotion, the emotion is almost always preceded by thought.
To go back to our examples, if you’re in the jungle you might be completely unaware that you’re being stalked by a tiger. You’re still in the same deadly situation, but because you don’t have the thought ‘I’m in danger’, you don’t experience fear.
With the lottery example, your response will be determined by the meaning you place on money. If you’re poor and struggling to make ends meet, a lottery win will be a source of immense delight and relief. But if you’re already loaded and have your own penthouse, a private jet and twelve yachts, the thought of more money won’t generate the same response. You might even just give a disinterested shrug. (In which case you can happily pass your winnings to me!).
Even with grief, it’s not the actual death of the person that causes the suffering. It’s your thought and interpretation about it and what it means to you — such as the value you placed on that person and your relationship with them.
The Vedanta text Panchadasi by Vidyaranya Swami uses the example of a man whose son has gone to live in a far-off country. One day, someone arrives at the village with the news that the old man’s son has died. The man naturally experiences devastating grief.
It wasn’t the actual death of his son that caused the grief because his son could have been dead for months without him knowing. It was the thought ‘my son is dead’ that caused the suffering.
However, a few days later he learns that a mistake was made and his son is actually still alive.
Immediately the man’s suffering vanishes and he is elated!
The whole time, nothing changed other than the thoughts the man was thinking.
This demonstrates that the real cause of our suffering is actually within our mind.
Emotion, then, is a response to thought. And as we discovered, everything we experience is experienced as thoughts in our mind.
Life is Neutral
Those were extreme examples. Most of the time our lives occupy a more neutral position along the emotional spectrum.
What is important to understand is that the things of life — objects, situations, events, etc — are in themselves neutral.
Everything that is simply is.
It’s not until we start thinking about and analysing life that some things become ‘good’ and others become ‘bad’.
That’s what Shakespeare meant when he said:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
The way you think about something determines the way you feel about it.
Such thoughts can be subtle, unconscious and automatic. They may arise as an almost subliminal flash of memory of a past experience. So it’s not always easy to see the causal relationship between thought and emotional response, but it’s always there.
That’s why our experience of life varies so wildly from person to person.
No two people are the same. We can respond very differently to the same things.
Let’s say you’ve just bought a flashy new sports car. You’re probably feeling pretty darn great as you cruise down the street, eager to show it off to the world. If, however, you’ve only just passed your driving test and aren’t a confident driver, you might be clutching the wheel in terror and praying you don’t damage the car, yourself or anyone else!
What can be a fountain of bliss to one person can be a source of dread to another. If you have a new boyfriend or girlfriend they’ll most likely be a wondrous source of joy to you. Their ex, however, is unlikely to feel the same way about them.
Our mental filters affect our experience of life in so many ways.
That’s why some people breeze through life, never getting too stressed or downtrodden in spite of whatever challenges they might face. Others, however, faced with the same circumstances might be choked with anger and bitterness and crippled by depression or anxiety.
That’s why centuries ago, Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but rather your estimate of it–and that you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
So it’s not the circumstances that determine your response to life. It’s your thoughts and your state of mind. The way you think about and process experience affects everything.
Manufacturing Emotions
If you still don’t believe that thoughts create emotion, let’s do a little experiment.
Take a moment and think about something that makes you sad or unhappy. It could be something bad someone said to you, or a personal grievance or bereavement, or maybe the fact that Donald Trump is in the White House will do it.
Notice how, almost immediately, the thought stirs up a wave of emotion.
It might be subtle at first, but if you were to keep thinking those unhappy thoughts the emotion will get stronger and more pronounced. Anxiety and depression is the result of the mind getting caught in a kind of feedback loop and continually focusing on thoughts that distress, disempower or weaken you.
Now put that out of your mind. Take a deep breath and think of something that makes you feel happy, joyful or excited. You might think of someone you deeply love, or go back to a cherished memory, or simply imagine something amazing happening.
Be aware of your emotional response to this thought. How does your body react to a happy, positive thought? What you will notice is that a happy thought is its own reward, for it brings with it a warm glow of satisfaction, joy or contentment.
What this shows is that you have the power to feel good at any time. You can do this by simply changing your thoughts and focus.
The Power to Choose
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies your freedom and power to choose your response. In those responses lie your growth and your happiness.” Stephen Covey
You have the power to choose how you think about and respond to life.
Most of the time people choose not to exercise that power. Instead, the way they think and react is a reflex; the outplaying of old psychological programming, coloured by memory, experience and also shaped by environment and culture.
But when you become aware of the thoughts you’re thinking and the way you’re choosing to judge, interpret and engage with life, you have the ability to switch to a different and more positive way of thinking.
This isn’t about simply ‘thinking positively’. It’s about learning to detach and disidentify from your thoughts — which then gives you the ability to question them.
Never take your thoughts too seriously.
They’re just thoughts.
Thoughts aren’t reality. They’re only crude, second-hand representations of reality and are coloured by bias, conditioning, ignorance and all kinds of distorted viewpoints.
People don’t like to hear that. After all, whether they admit it or not, the majority of us worship our own thoughts. The notion that our thinking could somehow be in error is heinous to us!
But so often it is.
To unquestioningly believe all your thoughts is to invite a lifetime of delusion and suffering.
It’s a mark of maturity to have the ability to question your thinking, challenge your assumptions and see through your biases and prejudice. The ability to use your mind rather than be used by it is the key to liberation. It’s also the key to feeling good and turning suffering into peace and even joy.
Garbage In – Garbage Out
Perhaps your thoughts are working fine for you. If you’re a glass-is-half-full kind of person and tend to view life in a positive and carefree manner, then it’s unlikely you’ll be generating much emotional suffering. You probably feel reasonably good most the time.
If, on the other hand, you have a negative outlook and are forever experiencing emotional states such as anxiety, dread, anger and depression, then your thoughts are not working for you. They’re working against you.
But, you might argue, I have a right to feel bad because of all the terrible things in my life.
Another person, however, might experience the very same circumstances and be perfectly happy and content.
The variable is not the circumstances and it never is. The variable is your thoughts and your interpretation of your circumstances.
If you consistently experience emotional suffering then you need to get to the root of it: your thinking.
There’s an old computing analogy that applies equally to the human mind: garbage in = garbage out.
The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your emotions. Think crappy thoughts and you’ll get crappy emotions.
Antidepressants or other pharmaceutical concoctions will only numb you out and mask the core of the problem. What you need to do is employ some self-inquiry to discover what thoughts and beliefs you are harbouring that are causing the emotional disturbance. Once you’ve done that, I’m going to share an amazingly simple technique for immediately dropping such thoughts.
You don’t have to be a prisoner to your thoughts and beliefs. They are not you — and neither are your emotions, for that matter. They are simply objects that arise and subside in you.
Whenever you catch yourself saying ‘I am sad’, ‘I am angry’, ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’, you are identifying with your emotions and thoughts and investing them with a false sense of self.
You can’t be your thoughts or emotions. That’s impossible because you exist prior to, during and after them. You are the awareness in which they arise and subside.
When you realise this, a huge weight is lifted! You transcend them and are no longer quite so bound by them.
The first step to dealing with emotions is to simply notice and label them.
When anger arises, simply notice it and note ‘I’m aware of anger arising’. If you feel sad, note ‘I’m aware of sadness.’
Simply being aware of and finding a label for your emotional state enables you to recognise and detach from it and find ways to resolve it.
Emotional Intelligence
Most of us grow up with little understanding of our emotions — either what they are and how we’re meant to deal with them. This can be disastrous.
One of the ways our education system is failing us is that we’re not taught how to deal with our mind. Until we learn to master the mind, we’re a slave to it.
It’s essential that schools begin to teach us how to develop our emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, or ‘EQ’ is the capacity to identify, regulate and manage our emotions. If we learn how to deal with our thoughts and emotions at an early age, we’re far less likely to suffer from mental health issues later in life.
The effect emotion has on the body and our physical health alone is well documented. Negative emotions disrupt the nervous system and dampen the immune system, making us far more susceptible to illness.
Positive emotions, on the other hand, have the opposite effect. They boost our energy and sense of well-being, bolster our immune system and increase health and longevity.
The need for a solid ‘EQ’ is therefore clear.
To develop your EQ, it’s first helpful to consider the way you habitually tend to deal with your emotions.
There are three basic ways of relating to and responding to emotion.
1. Denial
In our culture, emotions are often seen as something unimportant — a distraction or an indulgence at best. As a result, we may tend to suppress, deny or bury our emotional responses.
This is especially true for men, who are socialised to see emotionalism as a weakness, a mark of shame and somehow ‘unmanly’.
Most people don’t really know how to deal with painful or uncomfortable emotions anyway. It’s not something we’ve been taught.
The best option, we assume, is to try to deny, repress and bury our emotional responses. To do this, we often try to numb ourselves out with what I call the Weapons of Mass Distraction — including alcohol, drugs and all kinds of excessive and addictive behaviours.
Or we might blindly react to our emotions, impulsively lashing out, often with harmful consequences. Emotional suppression very often results in aggression, anger and violence.
While suppression and reactivity might provide a temporary reprieve, they are clearly not healthy ways of processing emotion. The underlying emotions fester beneath the surface, constricting our psyche until they later manifest in the form of anger, resentment, violence, anxiety, depression and any number of possible neuroses.
Avoidance of emotion is not a healthy tactic in either the long or short term.
2. Over-identification
At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who take an overindulgent approach to their emotions. While emotions are an intrinsic part of being human, over-identifying with them is every bit as unhealthy as repressing them.
Some people almost worship their feelings. Kneeling at the altar of their emotions, they might always talk about ‘following their heart’ and allowing their feelings to guide them. What they don’t realise is that their feelings are generally just a response to their thoughts.
Emotions are actually really simple. When we get what we want, we feel good. When we don’t, we feel bad.
The mind is constantly measuring the external world against its desires and expectations. It’s the disparity between the ideal (or desires and expectations) and the actual (what life brings us) that determines our emotions.
A lot of the time our emotional pain is from simply not getting what we want. It’s nothing more sophisticated than that.
To feeling-worshippers, life is an emotional rollercoaster in which they are helplessly controlled by their feelings and emotions which are by nature fickle and unreliable.
Emotions are just emotions. Keeping them alive by feeding into them and giving them more importance than they warrant will always lead to suffering not only for you but those around you.
3. Healthy Processing.
This is the happy medium; the Tao of emotional health.
You accept whatever comes up without trying to resist or suppress it, and yet you don’t allow it to overwhelm or obsess you.
Some situations and events are inherently stressful and will naturally elicit an emotional response. In the next post, I will talk about the difference between ‘clean pain’ and ‘dirty pain’. Essentially clean pain is a natural emotional reaction to objectively stressful situations, such as bereavement or loss. Dirty pain is the pain that comes from the subjective mental stories the mind tells itself (ie., our thoughts and imagination).
Either way, you can process the emotion by allowing it to arise and pass through you — observing it while resisting the tendency to become it.
With a clear and mindful approach to emotion, you avoid exacerbating and prolonging it by spinning negative thoughts and stories around it. All this does is create more suffering and runs the risk of creating a negative thought-emotion feedback loop.
The Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence suggests that people use the following steps for regulating and navigating their emotions:
- Recognise the emotion
- Understand the cause and consequences of emotions
- Label the emotion you’re experiencing
- Express it in a healthy way perhaps by talking or writing about it
- Regulate emotional responses in a safe and constructive way
Creativity can be a great tool for resolving emotional pain. Writing in a journal about your thoughts and feelings can be hugely helpful, and if you are artistically inclined, painting or composing music can also be a wonderful way of expressing your feelings. What this does is helps externalise and objectify what you are feeling.
Journal-writing, in particular, is a powerful way of helping you examine the underlying thoughts and stories that are causing the emotional response. A helpful question to ask yourself is: “What would I have to think or believe in order to feel this way?”
You can then begin to examine whether this thought or belief has any basis in reality and whether it is helpful or harmful to you. You’ll mostly find that it doesn’t and it isn’t. That’s when, through the process of self-inquiry, you can shift your perspective and change your feeling state by ‘trying on’ different, more positive and resourceful thoughts.
Awareness Heals
I once heard an illuminating talk by Thich Nhat Hanh on the topic of emotions. He advised that rather than ignoring, denying or unconsciously reacting to an emotion, we instead befriend it and treat it like a young child crying out for attention.
When we bring our attention to an emotion, our compassion and kindness, and hold the emotion in our awareness, it gradually lessens its hold and begins to dissolve.
This is very much the approach of a Taoist dissolving meditation which I will share in a future post. The light of our awareness, when focused and directed to an emotion or sensation, actually heals and dissolves it.
Bringing your focused and non-judgemental attention to emotion in a state of acceptance enables you to let it go. Or, rather, it lets you go.
Neuroscientists have discovered that the lifecycle of an emotional reaction is only about 90 seconds. That’s assuming you just let the emotion pass through you without keeping it alive by continually replaying the trigger or story about it in your mind.
Like clouds in the sky, emotions drift by, ever-changing. Though not always pleasant, they are not a problem in themselves. But when we get stuck on them and caught up in a reactive pattern, it creates a blockage in our system which eventually leads to all kinds of mental, emotional and physical problems.
Three Keys to Emotional Freedom
The first key to managing your emotions is to recognise them without denial and suppression. Awareness is half the battle. It can help to find a label for what you are feeling. Is it anger, sadness, hurt, jealousy, fear or doubt?
The second key is to simply accept the emotion without getting pulled into identification with it. Rather than thinking “I am angry”, say “anger is arising”. You aren’t angry. You’re the one who’s aware of the anger. You’re the awareness in which all thoughts and feelings arise and subside.
The third step is to use self-inquiry to find out what thoughts, stories and beliefs triggered the emotion.
Again, most of the time negative emotion is simply a reaction to the fact that something happened that you didn’t want to happen — or something that you wanted to happen didn’t.
In what way are you resisting life? In what way are your needs and desires not being met? What would you need to think or believe in order to feel the way you feel?
Emotions can be a signal that something is not right in your life; that some situation needs changing or resolved. Spend some time objectively analysing the situation. Try to look at things dispassionately and logically without letting the emotion sway your judgement. What would you need to do to create a better outcome and deal with the stressful trigger?
Once you have resolved to take action — or have seen that a simple shift in perspective completely changes or solves the problem — you can let the emotion go. Spend some time bringing your full attention and awareness to the emotional sensations wherever you feel them in your body.
Perhaps now you can see what triggers emotion and how you can learn to deal with it in a healthy and positive way — a way that makes you stronger, healthier and more peaceful and whole in yourself.
Here is a short poem by Sufi poet Rumi called ‘The Guest House’.
It beautifully demonstrates how we ought to treat our feelings and emotions — not as something to be either ignored or held onto, but as temporary guests to be treated with kindness and respect.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
– Rumi
