Learn from Your Emotions, there’s Nothing Irrational about Them
From this month, you can also watch our video blog, listen to its recording
or read it below as usual
Do you ever feel like there’s a battle in your head between your rationality and your emotions? Well, you’re not alone, and you haven’t been alone for centuries.
Ever since Plato, mainstream Western thinkers and scientists have depicted the dynamics inside our brain as a never-ending battle between “rational” forces and other forces – often labelled “animal” – like emotions, instincts, sexual cravings and other desires.
For some obscure reasons, desires for power, money and success have never been labelled “animal”, but I’ll leave that topic to another conversation.
For so many centuries we’ve looked at that internal fight as a symbol of human supremacy over the rest of the sentient – and insentient – world. Until quite recently, we even used that argument to validate men’s supremacy over women, considered to be too emotional. And even if many of us have now abandoned that belief, we still regard being too emotional as a flaw compared to living a rationally-led life.
The general advice about how to handle your feelings responsibly ranges from ignore them to fight them and, by all means, hide them. It’s not appropriate to show your emotions, particularly in public, and we often hesitate to share them even with friends or family. To the point that it can be frightening to acknowledge them even to ourselves – and the growing epidemic of loneliness and the rising suicidal rate are just an outcome of that.
Finally, we’ve been so persuaded of this vision for so many centuries – in the Western world – that even neuroscientists, until the end of the last century, would affirm that rationality resides in certain areas of the brain that are unique to humans, and would use a layered brain model similar to geological layers: a new layer equates to a new evolutionary step, a superior brain function and, consequently, a superior species. This idea has now been completely refuted by researchers for more than two decades, but it’s still in our language, our culture and lots of literature.
Now, if you’re reading this blog, chances are that you’ve already started giving more room, a less secondary role and more dignity to your emotions in your life. But equally, chances are that you’re still struggling to accept and deal with them regularly, let alone honour your emotions as much as you do your rationality. And, truth is, that’s what we all should be doing.
Well, rejoice,
there’s no war between emotions and rationality in our head.
They don’t even live in separate parts of the brain.
Our highly evolved brain has not evolved to be a rational machine. And indeed, there are many things it doesn’t do well, from a rationality point of view. For example, it massively favours perception over reality; it suffers from several well-known biases like looking for all the facts that confirm an idea I already have in my mind, ignoring the evidence to the contrary, overestimating the impact of a future event on my happiness (whether positively or negatively)… But I’ll leave these biases to another conversation.
The ultimate function of our brain is not to be rational or to understand Quantum Mechanics. Rationality and intelligence are only some of the tools the brain has, but the ultimate goal is to manage our body resources, predict what is the most efficient way to guarantee our survival, and act accordingly.
Photo by Josue Verdejo on Pexels
When you’re up at night making the last changes to the PowerPoint you need to present to your managers tomorrow morning, the excitement and anticipation that you feel – probably coupled with thoughts you’re hearing in your head such as “You can do it”, “Tomorrow it’ll be great”, “You’ll crush them”, etc. – are generated by your brain that, based on its previous experiences, predicts that those are the most effective emotions to push you through the night.
Or you may be feeling terrified and fragile in that moment, your thoughts telling you “Come on, you need to get this presentation done or your boss will kill you tomorrow”. In this case, your emotions are quite different but the mechanism is the same: your brain is triggering those emotions and those thoughts because it predicts (based on its previous experiences) that’s the best way to push you through the night.
In either case, there’s nothing irrational about those emotions. To be honest, it all sounds quite clever to me.
Not only that, emotions are generally faster than thoughts and work like shortcuts. Imagine you suddenly found yourself in a dangerous situation – you felt scared, terrified, and found yourself running away well before your thoughts could even tell you why. Besides, you ran at a speed and with an energy you didn’t even know you were capable of – all courtesy of your brain predicting (based on its previous experiences) that it needed to make adrenaline and lots of other body resources available for you to run fast. Fear was the shortcut mechanism for your brain to allow your fastest run ever.
Now, what happens when the fear is such that you actually run away from the podium where you were supposed to deliver the presentation you’ve been working on for weeks (and last night) to your managers?
There’s nothing irrational about that fear. Your brain, based on its experiences and all the tools it developed in the past, predicted that keeping you off that podium was the best way to guarantee your survival.
There’s nothing irrational even in you thinking that that wasn’t necessarily the best outcome for your career. But denying, hiding or suppressing that fear is not going to help your career.
What will help you is to take that emotion seriously – not literally but seriously – and understand what tools and beliefs your brain has developed that have led you to shy away from that podium. And then work to equip your brain with more helpful tools and beliefs so that, next time, it’ll predict and trigger a different, more career-friendly emotion.
The very first step is to acknowledge and accept the emotions you’re feeling: acknowledging (as opposed to hiding or suppressing) that they’re happening inside you and accepting that your brain generated them based on a very rational prediction.
How to do it
We always like to share some practical tools in our blogs at Wise Humanity. The tool I’d like to share here today is a simple yet (or perhaps I should say hence) powerful awareness tool.
We often lack the emotional vocabulary to acknowledge and accept what we’re feeling. We’re just not used to listening to our emotions.
When the emotion is unpleasant, we often feel overwhelmed by it, try to toughen up, suppress it and move on. But even when the emotion is pleasant, we often fail to embrace, allow and enjoy it. (How many times have you felt happy, proud, confident or valued and then have immediately dampened that feeling down for fear that things could change or that you didn’t really deserve to feel that way?)
We recommend the use the Emotional Wheel below (courtesy of Geoffrey Roberts).
Several times a day (even hourly!) pause what you’re doing and observe what emotion you’re feeling.
Use the wheel to fine-tune your vocabulary and self-understanding.
Write that emotion down. And also write down what’s actually happening, that is, what factual situation you’re going through, and how that emotion is influencing what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. And remind yourself that it’s your brain using its tools and predicting that that’s the best emotion for you to feel in that moment.
Here are a few examples.
6am. I feel anxiety and irritation at the alarm going off. What’s happening? I’m waking up and getting ready. How am I doing it? I’m not connecting with my partner this morning. I’m hiding behind my phone with my coffee.
7am. I feel light and optimistic. What’s happening? I’m walking the dog. How am I doing it? I’m walking with a spring in my step, taking an extra minute to play fetch, smiling and connecting with other dog owners around me.
Notice how your emotions are influencing how you’re doing things, not the other way around.
8am. I’m feeling slightly anxious again. What’s happening? I’m driving to work. How am I doing it? I drove on autopilot constantly worrying about today’s work agenda. Almost ran a stop sign!
*****
After a few days journaling, you’ll have broadened your emotional vocabulary, boosted your self-acceptance and enhanced your acceptance (and respect) of other people’s emotions.
On top of that, you’ll have found patterns and repetitions in the emotions you’ve observed inside yourself. If you find that any of them are not helping you, your career, your self-realisation or, generally, your enjoyment of life, you’ll know which ones you want to start working on first.
You can ask yourself (alone or with our help): what tools/beliefs/ideas does my brain hold that trigger those unhelpful emotions in those situations? And then you can work on equipping your brain in a way that works better for you.
That’s how you take your emotions seriously and responsibly.
Get in touch if you want to continue this conversation.
This blog is based on several sources, research and tools that constitute the Wise Humanity knowledge pool, and is particulary inspired by neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain.
