Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee Prasek: And I am Aimee Prasek. So we are talking about resilience this month. It is our Element of Joy here at the podcast and the program, and we've been talking about stuff that can deplete our resilience in a lot of ways. We got into rumination in episode 205. Uh, we talked about busyness last episode, or time poverty, and today we're talking about
Aimee Prasek: emotional inertia, [00:01:00] which is kind of a weird term. So let me explain. Emotional inertia describes how we might get into a state where our emotions stay the same over time, regardless of what's happening. So if someone has high emotional inertia, their emotions don't change easily. They can feel stuck in these emotions.
Aimee Prasek: And it's hard to adapt, right? To move into a different emotion. On the flip side, low emotional inertia means emotions shift more easily. So they're more responsive to not just, not just what's happening around us, actually, I think this is important, but what we try to regulate them, we can move through them and not get stuck quite so easily with low emotional inertia.
Aimee Prasek: So we wanna be on that lower end. High emotional inertia is associated with depression, lower wellbeing, [00:02:00] and also subclinical depression. We talked about that a few episodes ago. I'll link to that in the show notes. So there are a few really important things to kind of pick apart here to help us. First, it may seem like emotional inertia is just like an Eeyore kind of state, like we just completely bland.
Aimee Prasek: Uh, but it's not necessarily about the kind of state we're in, depressed or happy. It's that we're stuck there. I think that's the key. The emotion keeps cycling even when the environment is queuing us to respond differently. Um, that's the inertia. It really suggests that this emotion is like just powered by itself and there's no force to stop it.
Henry: Yeah. Yeah. It's kinda like a, a weather front that refuses to move. Out of the area
Henry: and it, Yeah.
Henry: think this is a [00:03:00] very interesting concept and I, I wonder if it ties in with the idea idea of homeostasis, which comes more out of the, out of physiology rather than psychology. But, but basically it means something similar,
Henry: I think, that, that once a steady state is reached, it tends to stay right as it is. So unless something kind of dramatic or a lot of energy comes in to change the way that things are, it will just stay the way that it is. So, it's always a little bit hard to get one's mind around this, because whether we consider the state to be good or bad, it's still hard to change.
Henry: So
Henry: you might be in a, you know, sort of a unhealthy or negative homeostasis but it's, it's hard to move out of it. It's kind of still [00:04:00] stuck there.
Aimee Prasek: Mm
Henry: So,
Henry: I think this happens in almost all of nature organisms. You know, it plays out in a lot of ways within the human body. And so I think within. Any complex system, there tends to be kind of a natural built-in resistance to change. Now, this can really be hard to understand, I think, when it comes to emotions, because if we're stuck in a lower than average mood, why would we wanna stay there?
Henry: It makes no sense. I do think that most of us tend to have a sort of baseline mood. Some people call it an emotional set point. I don't wanna make too much out of that 'cause I, I think it's, it's a more fluid concept than it sounds, but, but I do think that that's something worth noting.
Henry: And, and what is it that creates that set point? I do think genetics play a role here, but [00:05:00] a lot of this is learned or comes from our external environment, you might
Henry: say that it, it's conditioned. So our growing up years I think are particularly important for creating this sort of set point our, our baseline mood because we're just learning and growing so quickly and it's a period in our lives when we are just so strongly molded and influenced by parents, teachers, you know, society, everything around us.
Henry: We're just kind of very plastic, if you will, very moldable. But the
Henry: truth is it doesn't stop in childhood. It's always happening. We're always being conditioned and we are practicing and reinforcing these patterns, whether we're aware of it or not. So I think that this is especially important for folks who have struggled with something like anxiety or depression. And one reason I think it's important is because whatever [00:06:00] their baseline mood was before they had their first episode, let's say, it was not enough to prevent the illness. Something broke through.
Henry: And so I think, you know, our treatment, when I look at how we treat these conditions, usually treatment is intended just to get people back to their baseline and then kind of stop. And that could be fine for some people that's enough, but I think it's really important to try to keep going and push through the, the built-in resistance to change in order to try to move that baseline up a bit. And this is actually how I see what we're doing in Joy Lab, I think that our underlying purpose is to create these upward spirals or at least try to, so that we can train ourselves, condition ourselves, if you will, to move that [00:07:00] baseline to a higher level, no matter what point we are starting from.
Aimee Prasek: Yes, we should do another episode on emotional set points. I absolutely agree. I look at, just an aside here, I looked at some of my old journals when I was little. I was a dark and depressed little being. An example: like so my emotional set point, I really think genetically also, you know, um, modeled to me is, is low.
Aimee Prasek: Um, in sixth grade we had to choose a poem to recite. Everybody was doing Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, do you wanna know what I did?
Henry: Yes, I do.
Aimee Prasek: Edgar Allen Poe,
Aimee Prasek: The Raven. And I remember it. I was just so, I felt so seen and I recited it, and I just remember seeing all of these kids just being like, what is happening? So, um,
Henry: Do you remember what the teacher did?
Aimee Prasek: [00:08:00] I, I would assume there was a call home to the parent.
Aimee Prasek: I mean, it was just kind of, I think everybody was a little surprised. So I get it, like, if you feel like you're there, but I, the, the thing I wanna say is that I don't think it's set. I think it might be, you know, it might be a little stubborn, but there is movement because I
Aimee Prasek: am not there. I am not there anymore.
Aimee Prasek: So, I'll pivot here, but we, I, I wanna come back to that on another episode. So I think we've, we've talked about this, back to kind of your last point here about, care too. We've talked about this unfortunate and common interpretation of mental health as like just existing, uh, to the baseline reference you made, Henry, like you have mental health if you don't have a diagnosable mental health disorder.
Henry: Uh huh.
Aimee Prasek: Just the lack of diagnosis is the goal.
Henry: Yeah.
Henry: which
Aimee Prasek: is super depressing. We can, we can raise that [00:09:00] set point. We can raise that baseline. I know it to be true. We can experience so much more than that. So, and there's a, a recent episode that we talked about a little bit of, that flexibility.
Aimee Prasek: What resilience really is that we are inclined, this is our natural state. I will link that in the show notes. The other thing I think that's really interesting is that emotional inertia is not the opposite of emotional variability. This is subtle, but I think it's important. So if you have high emotional variability, then you'll move quickly and intensely
Aimee Prasek: --intensely, key point here --from one emotion to the other. And a frequent pattern of high emotional variability is associated with higher levels of depression, neuroticism, lower self-esteem and other negative wellbeing outcomes. It sounds like the opposite, but we all probably know someone who, or we are that [00:10:00] person who might overreact to a situation, just kind of blow up for a moment.
Aimee Prasek: And then here's the inertia part. We may get stuck there for too long, holding onto that. So too long may not be a super long time either. Just too long in such a way that we've blocked other emotions. We're not adapting or interacting with the world around us after that event. So we can have high variability and high inertia.
Aimee Prasek: Kind of extreme mood swings that we stay in too long, but then we swing back again in a big way and get stuck again. I think the point here is that we are really looking for that resilient state where our emotions are making sense with the environment. So we just finished up our, Element of Joy last month, equanimity, and that's kind of the dance,
Aimee Prasek: um, that we talked about there as well, so that we can respond to our inner and outer environments in healthy [00:11:00] ways.
Henry: So I wanna, I wanna say something, about that concept of high, high emotional variability and high inertia.
Henry: 'cause I, to me this is, I'm gonna try to describe what I think is growth, at least for me ' cause I, I am, I think I am that high variability type person. I'm very sensitive you might say. My, my, my parents used to always tell me I was too sensitive
Aimee Prasek: God. Yep.
Henry: and I, and I, I, I still am.
Henry: and so people can, I'm sure can relate to this, you know, when something throws you off, let's just say it that way, it throws you off emotionally you're in a, a bad mood of, of whatever shape or size that is, but it, but it just stays with you for a long period of time. So for me, growth is that it doesn't stay with me as long.
Henry: I still, I still, have that, you know, emotional [00:12:00] variability. I'm still sensitive, I still react to things, although it probably takes more to set off a reaction. But, the, the real change that I've noticed is that it doesn't last as long.
Henry: It don't, doesn't get, I don't get stuck there. I'll go there and if I do some things that I think will, will come and talk about later, um, if I practice those things, it might not last long at all.
Henry: It might
Henry: still happen, and then it just kind of goes right through.
Henry: So I think that what we're talking about now is sometimes referred to as emotional reactivity as well. And
Henry: when it, when it's at the extreme, the, the mood can just seem like it's on a hair trigger. You know, it changes dramatically from one moment to the next.
Henry: Usually that's in response to something. Some kind of external stress, but sometimes the trigger is so mild that the Yeah.
Henry: that emotional reaction just seems [00:13:00] all out of proportion. and there are times where you just cannot identify a trigger at all. It just seems as though the, in that instance, the person is just stuck in a pattern of mood instability.
Aimee Prasek: Hmm.
Henry: So when you were talking about this kind of, this dance of equanimity, I was, I, I am thinking about the middle way, which we talk about often, and I believe that most aspects of mental health, if you were to, to really kind of lay them out that they exist on a spectrum, a continuum, and strong emotional inertia would be on one end of the spectrum and high emotional variability on the other. Now, generally speaking, we don't want to live at either end of the spectrum. We want to try to move somewhere into the middle 'cause either of those extremes can [00:14:00] just deplete our resilience. Being too emotionally reactive is just exhausting. Both for the person who has that, but also kind of for everyone, everybody around them.
Henry: And then having too much of that emotional inertia being stuck in in a certain place. It just leaves a person so vulnerable to something like depression and there just aren't enough reserves in the emotional bank account to be able to deal with something big that comes along, a big stress or loss or, or even a, just a change in one's life. I think one of the other downsides to being on one extreme or the other of the spectrum is that you, you are losing the value that emotions offer to us.
Henry: Because you know, whether they're good or bad, whether we've experienced them as positive or negative or somewhere in between. [00:15:00] Genuine emotions are a gold mine. We don't want to shut them down, but we also don't want to let them run our lives. What we do want, I think, is to have access to them, and we want to develop the skill, the ability to allow our emotions to move through us rather than getting stuck. I think if we can do that and pay some attention to them, there is a ton of really valuable information that they can give us to help guide our lives, and also just to help us feel more vital, more alive.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, This is making me think of a, a term from researcher Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg, I think first coined it, it's called emotion context insensitivity. it's actually a hypothesis of depression. The idea is that, when we are experiencing [00:16:00] depression particularly, major depressive disorder, we are less reactive to both positive stimuli and negative stimuli.
Aimee Prasek: We're dull. We don't see or feel the good stuff,
Aimee Prasek: um, but we actually don't see or feel the bad stuff very well either.
Aimee Prasek: It's so, it's like our antenna aren't picking stuff up. We're disconnected. We may feel more empty than negative. Actually, if you've had depression, you might agree. It's the disconnection, it's emptiness.
Aimee Prasek: It's not necessarily a negativity. This is a debated hypothesis. There's some researchers would say that depressed folks are more tuned into the negative, more reactive to it. There's not clarity though. I like this interpretation though. I think it, it resonates particularly here when we're talking about how we can wake up to see all of what is. Um, you know, we can get out of our heads, also about how we're feeling. So, you [00:17:00] know, we're not feeling bad about feeling bad all the time. We're not feeling bad about feeling good or bad, about not feeling good. But whether, like you said, Henry, you're, you're feeling good or bad isn't necessarily the problem. It has to do with the flexibility to move.
Aimee Prasek: And are you in tune with the environment around you? I like that. It reminds me that I can be present with the environment, I can get out of my head, get out of past regrets or future worries and just pay attention to the now. That's what we can do. We can sync our emotions up with what's around us. And if they get too high or low to your point earlier, we can practice regulating those emotions so that we're not wound up or depleted by them.
Aimee Prasek: and I like that. The solution then is less about fixing the emotions and more about connecting with the world, with the people around me, getting my antenna reawakened. And when I do [00:18:00] that, that connection will support my resilience. It will support my emotions. We can all do that.
Henry: Yes. And we can all learn how to connect directly with our emotions, you know, and I think, as you said, Aimee, it has so much to do with flexibility with not getting stuck at either end of that spectrum and also not shutting our emotions down.
Henry: You know, you, you alluded to this and one of the things I often hear from patients that their biggest concern is not that they feel depressed or anxious, but that their mood is flat or blunted
Aimee Prasek: Yes.
Henry: And that sometimes happens with me from medications too,
Aimee Prasek: Right.
Henry: Which I usually interpret as being on too high of a dose. But that's sort of a bigger discussion.
Henry: But, but the point is that feeling numb might be better for a little while than being overwhelmed by something, some negative [00:19:00] emotion, but it is
Henry: just not a good or satisfying way to live for very long. So how how we stay connected to our emotions and also flexible with them? I keep coming back to this 'cause it's such a key for our inner lives and that is attention.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: So here's a really quick way to try to bring yourself back to the moment and to pay attention to be with whatever it is you're feeling. And it involves asking yourself just two simple questions. And I,I have a, a memory, a vague memory of, kind of learning this from a book which name might come to me... Um, the one thing holding you back,
Henry: which is to not be in tune with your emotions. So anyway, here are the two
Henry: questions. First, [00:20:00] what am I feeling right now? Simple question. Just what am I feeling right now? Not what was I feeling yesterday or years ago when something bad happened, but right now. So you ask yourself that question, what am I feeling right now? And then just tune in to your midsection, your chest or your belly, and see what's happening there. Second question, can I be with it? Can I just stay with whatever I'm feeling right now, at least for a little while? So notice there is no need to change it. You're not trying to suppress it. You don't need to speed it along so you can get on to the next thing. You just sit with it, notice it, experience it, and see where it takes you. And you will almost always find that you can be with it. And if you [00:21:00] can't, if the feeling is too strong in that moment, that is okay. Just be honest about it and set it aside consciously, on purpose, until you are ready or until the intensity of the feeling has subsided in, at least in my view, that is not the same as stuffing your emotions.
Henry: It's not avoidance, it's just honoring what you need at that moment, which is more time, more spaciousness, and you can come back to it whenever you're ready.
Aimee Prasek: Mm. I love that. Yeah, we can be present and when the storms come, we can practice and we can practice again and again to get better at this. so I, I think I wanna close us with some wisdom from Ella Wheeler Wilcox. This is an excerpt from her poem, The Winds of Fate. When she talks about our sales, I think that's, she's talking about, when we get into it, you'll understand, [00:22:00] hopefully, that's our choice here, our practice, our resilience. So here it is, " One ship sails east and another west by the self same winds that blow 'tis, the set of the sails and not the gales that tells the way we go."
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