The Neuroscience of our Fancy Emotional Road Blocks

Our brains have evolved to regulate our body!

Long, long ago when reportedly many women were attributed with Hysteria In The History Of Mental Health (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480686/), it was understood that emotions happened to you. Or more specifically in this case, women! I can’t say I’d like to be living in Egypt back in the 5th century BC!

Thankfully - like most things...we have indeed progressed and science now shows us that although yes, our neurons do get triggered, emotions and hence emotional road blocks for the most part aren’t some objective thing. Rather, they’re learned and something that our brains construct. These great little brains of ours have evolved for the purposes of regulating our body. 

We’re designed to optimise our energy...

Your brain makes decisions about what to invest its resources in. On a day to day, minute by minute basis your brain is pondering: what am I going to spend? and what kind of reward am I going to get? 

Your brain is always regulating and predicting what the sensations from your body are. It does this to try and figure out how much energy to expend.

Emotion Concepts:

The thing is that different sensations warrant different responses and so when those sensations are very intense, we typically use what our brain knows to do and what feelings come from that knowledge. In neuroscience these are often referred to as “emotion concepts.’ They help us make sense of those sensory inputs. In other words, yep, we actually construct our emotions.

Breathe in, breathe out - I get it, sometimes this can be a tough fact to digest. 

Why? 

Lets walk through an example:

Well, when you’re in a meeting at work and falsely accused of something you never did (and that’s another story I’ll dive into in another article) then for most of us, we’d be taken aback, we could remain silent, shocked and embarrassed by what we heard, for others we may immediately arc up on the attack of explaining why that’s just not true. Either way - in that instant we attribute meaning. Let's imagine this for a moment. The person who accused you of something, rushed into the meeting feeling  sick and a little late, having just been fed that misinformation (from someone else) moments before coming into the meeting. They were asked if they’d raise it and so rather than think through the validity of it or even the execution of what came out of their mouth and their tone - feeling pressured they just blurted it out and then in the same moment realised it came across far more harshly than they intended and in fact are now actually feeling pretty bad about it. On a great day - where the accusation, was something that would be obviously not true to anyone in the room, you could likely let go of the horrible emotional feeling, whereas - on a bad day, you’ve had it you, you work long hours, are constantly feeling like you’re struggling to stay afloat in your role, are now super embarrassed and at the same time really angry that you’re being held to account for something you know you didn’t do.

Distinguish between the feelings and thoughts:

There will be a situation/experience or circumstance and you will make it mean something, about yourself, the world or someone else. You will attach meaning to it and this meaning will be a thought that triggers a feeling, for YOU!

With varied techniques you can learn to distinguish between the feelings and thoughts. Think about distress and discomfort. It’s partly why mindfulness meditation is so useful to people who have chronic pain — it lets them separate out the physical discomfort from the distress.

Understanding how emotions are constructed widens the horizon of your control. When you realise your brain is using your past to construct your present, you can invest energy in the present to cultivate new experiences that then become the seeds for your future. 

Read that again.

Yes, this, is true.

At a loose level you may know it to be true. It is however key to remember this - daily! 

Tried and Tested Technique - Yep, this stuff does work!

One of the first items I cover off on, in my mentoring sessions with junior HR folks, takes them through a detailed explanation of this concept and I bring with me (yes, for realsies!) a laminated copy of this sentence to place prominently above their work/study or hang-out place. In my coaching sessions, I take clients through a guided role play to better grasp their emotions and interrelated limiting beliefs on the ways people or a person in the office is treating them. 

So - yes, I can say - this idea that YOU CONSTRUCT YOUR EMOTIONS is a key part of the, becoming Your Best You, journey!

You can cultivate or curate experiences in the now and then they become, if you practice them, automated enough that your brain will automatically construct them in the future. 

I hope this helps you or someone you know in some way. If you’re wanting to know then come on over to our coaching sessions. 

**I’m also attempting to figure out this whole Tik Tok thingy so you’re welcome to view my 1 minute piece on Tik Tok that explores some of the details of emotion, touching on guilt shame and the simplicity of searching for gratitude: https://vm.tiktok.com/JdbWGB9