265. The Art & Science (+ Shoveling) of Letting Emotions Move Through You
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[00:00:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Hello, I am Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.
[00:00:09] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And I am Aimee Prasek. We are in our Element of Resilience. So in this Episode, we're talking about turning toward the feeling. And we're not really talking about turning toward the more positive emotions or feelings, like excitement, or happiness, or hope. We're talking more about the stuff that gets classified as negative, maybe objectively more unpleasant.
This is a nice follow up to our conversation that we did in our Grief Series just a bit ago, which starts in Episode 248, but there was a quote in there that I shared from C.S. Lewis. It's coming back to me now. "No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear." So whenever negative emotions hit, I think [of] that insight from C.S. Lewis. No one ever told me that anger felt so much like fear. No one ever told me that shame felt so much like fear, or guilt, or helplessness, or envy. So maybe, today, we could say we're turning toward the feeling of fear often.
Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell said, "if there is one single emotion at the core of the human experience, it's fear." I think it's a big reason why we struggle with these negative emotions. They feel like fear. They manifest in our body just like fear. So it makes sense that we wanna run away from them. We wanna stuff them down rather than turning toward them. So this may not sound like the most joyful way to get us started, but as we talk a lot about here, negative emotions aren't wrong or bad. They're also not the outlier, as Hallowell and Lewis suggest. They're not a sign that we're broken or screwed up, they're just part of the human experience, which means we need to be able to be with them. So that's what we're gonna work on today, turning toward that really uncomfortable feeling.
[00:02:18] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, we do a lot of work at turning toward the good feelings too in Joy Lab, don't we? Hahaha.
[00:02:29] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yes. Yeah.
[00:02:30] Henry Emmons, MD: So we're just... this is really just a helpful skill, I think. And you know, it's not that we're even trying to solve anything or fix anything. It's just such a good skill, to know how to navigate these challenging, difficult emotions that otherwise throw us off our game, you know, take us out of that balance or equanimity that we're all seeking in one way or another. And like you said, Aimee, I think fear is absolutely central to our lives and the psychologists, psychiatrists you mentioned, but also spiritual teachers often refer to fear as the central negative emotion, and then the others are some variation or another.
Animals also experience fear, right? It's not just human beings. The big difference is that once the threat is gone, animals' fear usually subsides very quickly, like, ridiculously fast. Whereas we humans can generate fear and keep it alive purely with our thinking. I remember a well-known neuroscientist saying something like, humans have evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick, haha, because we think so much. So, you know, we can keep it alive with our thinking, and we do frequently do that.
So, in a sense, I see negative emotions as thoughts embodied β the thoughts that have taken up residence in our body somehow. And they can get lodged in there. And as I think all of us know through experience, they can sometimes stick around for a very long time. They can even β sometimes people use the word sticky about their feelings. But it is our body where we experience our emotions. They are physical, they're a physical thing residing in or moving through the body in some way. If a thought stayed only at the level of thought, it might be unpleasant, but it won't really harm us. At least not much, unless we allow it to kind of take root in us, or we take some sort of action on it, you know, because of the thought that is self-harmful.
But what we wanna become good at is being able to see a thought just for what it is and let it go before it even turns into an emotion. When it does β when it does become an emotion, especially one of these negative ones that we're talking about now β as we know, it can really be uncomfortable. It can cause real emotional pain. It can even cause great distress. And this happens to all of us at one time or another. And frankly, I don't think we'd want it to not be there. We wouldn't want to be emotionless. Sometimes I see that with people being treated for depression, for example, taking certain medications or high enough doses of medications that it's just β it just leaves them feeling flat or dull, and that is not a good way to live. It might be a little relief in the short term, but, over the long haul, we don't want to be without emotions. It's part of what really makes us feel alive. So they're normal. These unpleasant emotions, at least the ones we're talking about right now, and the ones we're gonna be working with, they are normal. And I even think it's fair to say they're healthy. They are supposed to come. But they're really supposed to just touch us briefly and then move on. It is when they're too strong or they become stuck in us, that they really start to cause trouble. And so that's why we are suggesting turning toward the feeling. Facing it directly. 'Cause it gives us a chance to experience it and then coax it on its way.
[00:06:54] Aimee Prasek, PhD: I like the reminder, as you're saying, that unpleasant emotions are normal. They even have a purpose. In our Grief Series, we talked about love being the sister of grief; that love and grief are woven together. I think positive and negative emotions, and feelings, are the same. They're woven together too. We notice them because of how they move together and how they move through us. And we need both to survive, and to build our resilience, and to really flourish. And, as you're suggesting, we are not a victim of negative feelings either. They're not just things we have to endure. We have some agency in them.
There's a paragraph in your book, Henry, from _The Chemistry of Calm,_ that I love, to help guide us here. You wrote, "you can't prevent feelings from arising anymore than you can stop yourself from having thoughts, but you can develop a skillful way of responding to them. You can turn your awareness toward the emotion, not so as to figure out what is going on or what to do about it, but just to have a complete experience of the emotions themselves. This allows the feelings to have their moment of life, but to move through you without getting stuck. In this way, even negative emotions can flow naturally and effortlessly." I think that's what we're aiming for.
[00:08:20] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah. Yeah, me too. And I also see it as kind of a lifelong process, right? It's not that we perfect this once and for all and never have a problem-emotion again, you know, they keep happening. But we can also keep getting better at them. And it's working through these β the little day-to-day things, not the great big ones that really throw us off, but the little day-to-day hurts β it is really helpful at gathering together the skills that we can apply then, when the really big things come along, which of course they will.
So it's kind of like that emotional immune system idea that I talked about recently too, with regards to grief, where, you know, we develop the ability and the skill by being exposed to the very things that harm us, or that we react to. And that's how the immune system develops and evolves, you know, if you grew up in a bubble so that β or you were so extremely careful as a child that you never got really exposed to germs or whatnot, your body doesn't have a chance to develop that immunity. And likewise, if we don't experience the slings and arrows of life, you know, the little day-to-day things that hurt us, how are we ever going to develop the real ability and the skills to protect ourselves when something really virulent comes along?
[00:10:00] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, I love the emotional immune system metaphor. I think it works really good here too, because it makes me think of, well, a few things β the fact that these things will come, we will be exposed to them, and we can care for ourselves after, right? When we know we're getting sick, there's things we can do. There's also things we can do to kind of minimize our risk, to lower the impact. It makes me think of, also, the differences between emotions and feelings, which I think, can be helpful. So the terms are often used interchangeably. Emotions and feelings. I often use them interchangeably. But there's likely a meaningful difference between them, and I think it's helpful to tease them apart or at least play with this in our minds for a moment. And you hinted toward this earlier, Henry.
So, emotions can be thought of as sensations in our body. Or at least originating as sensations, and then feelings build on those sensations with our mental thoughts and interpretations. For example, before I give a talk in front of people, like real humans, I feel this knot in my stomach and a racing heart. That physiological reaction is the emotion. And the point of that reaction is to, if needed, motivate me to take an action that keeps me safe. It's not a bad thing, it's an instinctual response. And then my feeling in response to that emotion or sensation is, "oh my God, I'm so unprepared. What am I doing? Why did I agree to do this? I wanna go home." So the emotion β essentially a fear response β has taken a leap in my mind into feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, worry, uncertainty. And if I hold onto this emotion tighter β those sensations β and add more layers of interpretation and judgment, which I can skillfully do, then I can get lots more feelings to pile up as well, like regret and embarrassment. And then, what do you know, another surge of emotion can come in as well, in response to my feelings. So this is sometimes called emotional elaboration, or the cognitive emotional feedback loop, in CBT [Cognitive Behavioral Therapy]. It can be quite a cycle of piling up emotions and feelings.
Dr. Antonio Damasio, who has done a lot of work in this area of feelings, emotions, and consciousness, writes that it is helpful to think of feelings in music terms. "Feelings perform the equivalent of a musical score that accompanies our thoughts and actions." I kind of like that. It's like that music is just always playing in the background. The feelings always arise, and as we work with our emotions and feelings, we can start to change the music, I think. If that's what we need or want, we can change the station, turn the volume down, or even compose some new pieces if that old music has overstayed its welcome.
So with all that said, the line between emotions and feelings can be blurry. It's also β it gets you in the weeds sometimes with scientific terms and concepts. There's good debates on this in the research, but I think the distinction between these emotions and feelings can be important if it helps you gain some confidence or insight into your power here. Like, essentially that there is a space between the stimulus β the physical emotional reaction β and the response, the feeling β that we can work in that space, work to soften the stimulus, and also the response. We can work in that space to influence the feelings that arise, how big they are, how long they last; if we believe them. And even working to change them, to change the music. So the point is that yes, this stuff can rise up, but we do have some power here.
[00:14:19] Henry Emmons, MD: You know that description you just gave of creating that little space? It is exactly how I remember John Kabat-Zinn describing the point of mindfulness. The fruit, or the benefit, of a mindfulness practice is it's simply to give you a little space between the initial reaction, the desire to react, and then what you end up actually doing. So, you know, we kind of talk about this as giving us that gap so that we can choose wisely how we respond, rather than having sort of a knee-jerk reaction.
[00:15:01] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, that's where the freedom is, right? Like, that's the space where we have some say. And mindfulness is a tool.
[00:15:09] Henry Emmons, MD: Right, right. And I think that's where negative emotions can come in as a helpful part in all of this, is that they can serve kind of like a little alarm bell. It's just a little β I'm talking about the little emotions now, not the big waves that are crashing over us, but the, you know, the day-to-day, kind of smaller upsets β they are a signal that something is not right, you know, that there's something that's kind of off in our little world. And we can use that as a cue to step back; observe what's happening. Tapping into that observing-self that we just talked about in the last Episode. And when we do that, if we can really tap in and, you know, use β okay, if something's wrong here, kinda look inside, see what's happening with our thoughts β we will usually find that there was a thought that occurred just before the emotion that kind of led directly to that emotion. Now sometimes it happens so fast you can't make that connection, and sometimes you may have the emotion without any preceding thought. But it is helpful because we can work with our thoughts, we can learn to see them just for what they are; learn to let them go.
So, the good thing about this is, though, that we don't even have to do that. We don't have to be all that sophisticated here. If we can just stay with the feeling, it will last for a brief time and then it will move along. We don't have to figure it out. But again, I think it's helpful to start with the little routine emotions that are happening all the time rather than the great big stuff. So when we feel just a little bit annoyed, or stressed, or frustrated. It's something to β look at it as just something to help you get more skills so that when you really need it, when something really difficult or even traumatic comes along, you have a fighting chance to be able to manage it a little bit more skillfully.
[00:17:26] Aimee Prasek, PhD: I love that you're reminding us, or you're presenting the idea too, of where thoughts can sit in. Like, yes, it could be thought, [followed by] emotion, [followed by] feeling. Like, then there's even more spaces of intervention and opportunities for us to create space, andhave some power and say in what happens next. And we could go all the way down that series, and we're in feeling, and there's still space there too, to create. So there's β we've never lost the moment.
I don't know why, but I think it's 'cause you said bubble before, I am remembering the Metrodome collapse in, uh...
[00:18:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Oh yeah. Hahaha.
[00:18:07] Aimee Prasek, PhD: I think it was 2010, 2011. Minnesota people are like, "oh my God. Yes, I remember that." Big news here. Big news. If you don't know, this big stadium we had in Minneapolis β big, inflated, bubble, dome β was made to withstand, a lot of piled up snow. But after a year of snow, they tried to shovel it off and all these things, but then a blizzard hit, and the snow just kept piling up, piling up, and then β there are some YouTube videos of this β there's this poor groundskeeper driving around in the grounds, you know, of the bubble, in his forklift, trying to put buckets, to catch water dripping down.
So we're way into feelings now, right? A lot of snow piled on top. A lot of stuff that hadn't been dealt with. He is just frantically trying to scoop up some of the mess. And then all of a sudden, the dome just collapses. And then, like, explodes at the same time. And you see this poor groundskeeper run back to his forklift and just get out, just drive away safely. He was fine.
But I just think when it comes to working with our emotions and feelings, we are able to withstand a lot. We don't have to do this perfectly. We can place buckets to, like, catch the leaks. But we still need to gain the skills to work with this stuff. just as you said, Henry, because when the blizzard comes β and there will be multiple β if you can have less stuff piled up then the damage will be less too. And we can navigate more skillfully when those leaks happen, getting the snow off the roof, and if there is a bit of a collapse. But if we don't, I just β just seeing this Metrodome do this, this collapse. And the explosion at the same time. I just β I've been there. Hahaha. Like those two opposing forces of just... done, I'm done. This has got me. And the cleanup is expensive. I mean, I think we just bulldozed the dome after that, right? It was like... hahaha.
[00:20:13] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah, I think pretty soon after that.
[00:20:16] Aimee Prasek, PhD: It was just too much work. So let's do it on the front end; not let this stuff pile up. Let's let it move through us. Let's practice navigating it. And we can do that. We've got three really, I think, helpful cues or steps that we can come back to when we feel the wave of an emotion hit β like not a blizzard. Let's catch it on, like, the flurries; on the days when we've got some snow that we can push away. But these cues, these steps are: embody, observe, and yield. Henry, do you wanna get into these, explain these a bit?
[00:20:50] Henry Emmons, MD: Sure, sure. Yeah. They're β now I'm going to think of them as shoveling the snow off the roof while the snow is falling, so that it doesn't build up so much. That's how I'm gonna...
[00:21:04] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:21:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Hahaha. So, whenever difficult or unpleasant emotions arise, we have some choices to make. One, we can push them away, but that takes a lot of energy and it just leaves them kind of stuck in our system. Two, I guess we could ignore them, which doesn't maybe take as much energy initially, but it does leave them stuck. In fact, that's when they can β that's when the snow is piling and you're thinking, "ah, it's not gonna collapse. It's just..."
[00:21:39] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Oh yeah. "I'm fine."
[00:21:40] Henry Emmons, MD: Or we can turn toward them, even briefly, and allow them to move through us.
[00:21:48] Aimee Prasek, PhD: This is when we stick our tongue out and we let the snow just, like, fall on our face. Or we do snow angels. Haha.
[00:21:57] Henry Emmons, MD: Hahaha. Well, so here are three simple steps that you can take. I'll describe them here, kind of briefly, and then in the Joy Lab Program, we're gonna give a really in-depth guide for how to apply this. But here they are.
First is to embody. And it's as simple as turning your attention towards your body. And it's usually in the midsection, chest, or belly. And simply ask yourself, "where do I feel this?" So all you need to do β you don't have to fix it, you don't have to understand it or figure it out, you don't even have to name the emotion. 'Cause as we learned earlier, they're all some version of fear, right? β you just need to notice it and experience it in your body. So embody.
Second is to observe, which is to go a little deeper with that. What does it feel like? And then as I'm observing it, how does it change or move? Or, you know, does it seem to wax and wane?
And then thirdly is to yield, allowing it to be there without grasping onto it or pushing it away. Just letting it be there, and letting your attention stay on it so that it will leave on its own accord. Starting with the small emotions, we are building up our emotional immune system, trying to become more skilled at dealing with our emotions, so that we really can take it on when we need it.
[00:23:34] Aimee Prasek, PhD: I think the key, to start small, is super helpful. I also think it can be really helpful in that yield step, to tune in to see if your body is asking for some movement to assist the emotion with its journey through you. I find that really helpful. I mean, watch a kid get mad. They will stomp their feet, clench their fist. They're not stuffing it down and you can, like, really see the emotion, the physical sensation, moving in their bodies. We don't grow out of this need to kind of move with emotions when they urge us to. We can do it more skillfully though. So it could be that you cry. Unapologetically cry. Maybe you need to lay on the ground and just, like, feel the earth, or ground, on your back supporting you. Maybe you need to stomp your feet. Or scream into a pillow. Or take a walk or a run; shake it out like a rabbit that just got chased by a fox. I β Henry you noted this earlier, most animals do this after a stressful episode. They, shake-off or do some kind of observable movement to release stress hormones. If you want more on this work, I'd say check out Dr. Peter Levine's work with somatic experiencing. What's that one with the zebra and the ulcer, Henry? Who's that? Is that Levine?
[00:24:57] Henry Emmons, MD: Uh, I believe so. I, well, I don't know about the β I think you might be thinking of two β of, oh gosh, two different neuroscientists, but um, I think there's zebras and then there's ulcers and...
[00:25:11] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And they're separate?
[00:25:13] Henry Emmons, MD: Hahaha. I don't remember either.
[00:25:15] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Oh my goodness, folks. I'll put some β I'll put some books in the show notes. It might be a zebra with an ulcer or two separate creatures. But yeah, if you're like, "Ooh, that feels right to me; I wanna move with this," and you have this wisdom βreading Levine's work or learning about zebras and ulcers, but β you do know what your body needs. It's as instinctual to you as the emotion rising up. It's like your superpower of interoception. We've talked about that before, I think in Episode 38, so I'm gonna link that in the show notes too β you know it, don't you Henry?
[00:25:47] Henry Emmons, MD: Oh, oh, oh, oh. I just came up with it, Aimee.
[00:25:50] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Please tell me.
[00:25:51] Henry Emmons, MD: Yes, it β hahaha, it's Robert Sapolsky, and he did write a book called _Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers_. And actually that's where I got that quote earlier, that zebras don't get ulcers but humans do, because we're smart enough to make ourselves sick.
[00:26:10] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Oh my God. Yep. There it is, everybody. So, Sapolsky...
[00:26:14] Henry Emmons, MD: We did it. Hahaha.
[00:26:15] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yay. Sapolsky's great; Levine β they've all done this kind of work on stress and resilience. So, yeah, your body will guide you in safe and healthy waysto assist the emotion in, through, and out. It might be more still,It might be more active; listen to that wisdom. As you have said, Henry, listen and then, you know, we can continue to practice.
[00:26:42] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah, I think you could even consider this befriending your emotions. You know, we're just trying to develop a normal, healthy relationship with them, because they are normal and healthy, even the ones that we don't like. Now, sometimes they get stuck or we get locked into these patterns, these habits where we, you know, become easily reactive; emotionally reactive. If that happens and we're not aware of it, it can cause real trouble. But even if that happens, if we have some awareness, we can apply it. We can just let β kind of stop it in its tracks, so it doesn't create that cycle, that spiral, that you were talking about earlier. So essentially, we're trying to become more conscious and to experience our emotions firsthand , and become aware of them right when they start, right when they first crop up. That's just the first necessary step in making friends of any kind. And here we're trying to make friends of our emotions. So we wanna, let them come, touch us briefly, inform us in some way, and then move on. And if we can gather these skills, we can allow our emotions to do exactly that.
[00:28:01] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, we can do this. We can do this work. As my grandma used to say, and as I have adopted, for how emotions should enter then exit β let the door hit 'em where the good Lord split 'em. So emotions, even if they're your friends, they don't need to overstay their welcome. On they go.
To close our time today, I wanna share some wisdom from Henri Nouwen, encouraging us to turn toward these emotions, turn toward our pain, so that we can transform it. This is from his book, _The Wounded Healer_. Here's what he wrote. "When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope."
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