Integrated Emotions: Rethinking the way we evaluate our feelings

By Joshua Freedman

What does it mean to feel, and what does it happen? Today, most people see emotions as "good" or "bad" -- which leaves us in a constant state of internal struggle against our own feelings. Is there another option? And how did we come to this point? Imagine the archetypal child and parent; lets take a boy, about eight years old. His parent is busy dealing with 3.3 million tasks and chores, its been a long day and everyones on thin ice. The child is going about the business of childhood and something happens almost irrelevant what it is, perhaps his Wii stops working and, unsurprisingly, he gets upset its been a long day for him too. Lets suppose hes highly upset, unreasonably upset, and acts that out: he slams something down, he kicks something, he shouts, and overwhelmed by this rush of feelings (and afraid of his parents reaction) he starts to cry. What is the parents typical reaction? Perhaps asking a question, perhaps comforting, but more likely dismissing: Stop crying honey, its not that big a deal. You shouldnt get so angry. Or even the absolute dad-classic: Knock it off or Ill give you something to cry about. What did the child just learn about these feelings? What have you learned about these kinds of feelings feelings like anger, fear, hurt, or jealousy? Around the world, people have told me much the same thing: negative feelings. our bad feelings). So, the natural, reasonable, response to something bad? therapy, manage it. What about embracing it? Increasingly were happy to do that with positive emotions and, the current fad is that if somehow were not flooding our families, schools, and offices with bliss then perhaps were just mean (because happiness is seen as the ideal).
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Those are

Even bad feelings.

We find them uncomfortable,

overwhelming, scary, out-of-control (and now were having bad feelings about Control it. Push it

away. Cover it over. Squish it. Or at the very least, hide it. Maybe after some

But

even

this were

attitude limiting

is

fraught

with Were

judgment;

the

motivating

power of feelings to a select few. which requires that others are bad.

deciding that some emotions are good In the last 14 years of teaching about emotions as a driver for positive change, Ive come to consider that this vilification of our own emotion is the single biggest obstacle to emotional intelligence. So Id like to propose a different way of thinking about emotions. First, lets explore an intriguing model from a scientist named Robert Plutchik. Plutchik studied the way animals experience, express, and respond to emotions. He saw, following in Darwins tradition, that there is an adaptive purpose to emotion. Feelings help animals survive by alerting them to threats and opportunities, and by providing a universal, cross-species communication mechanism. understand this viscerally. Plutchik proposed a model of eight basic emotions that each has a physiological response. He said that each of these could be more or less intense, and they could combine. They are portrayed as opposites because they provoke opposite physiological responses: Emotion (physiological response) Anger (attack) Disgust (reject) Sorrow (close) Surprise (stop) Emotion (opposite response) Fear (protect) Trust (accept) Joy (open) Anticipation (go) If youve ever heard the angry snarl of a wolf, or been enchanted by a puppys playful grin, youll

Emotions are signals of opportunity or threat.

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There are many different ways of defining emotions, but researchers in this adaptive tradition tend to see that these basic physiological responses each serves a different survival need and (a) focuses our attention to a threat or opportunity, and (b) motivates a response. Anger, for example, is a signal that our pathway is blocked. We want to be promoted, we perceive someone is interfering with that, we are angry at the person. The anger serves to focus our attention on the threat and motivates a response of fighting or pushing through the obstacle. Here is a chart of the eight basic emotions and a likely description of the focus and motivation provided: Basic Emotion Anger Anticipation Joy Trust Fear Surprise Sadness Disgust Focus Problem Opportunity Opportunity Safety Threat Uncertainty Loss Problem Motivation Fight or push through Move toward Do more of this Connect with others Protect Stop and look Stop and clarify Reject

We can use this table to decode our emotional experiences. It shows us that emotions serve a purpose, that there is value in all feelings. But its still easy to say that some are negative because theyre tied to problems or threats. We can try to remove the judgment and call some of but these that pleasant doesnt or unpleasant, quite

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them. Marilyn Ferguson

work: Sometimes when I think my son is defying me, it feels very pleasant to express my anger. When my dad died, it felt right (not exactly pleasant, but goodhard) to feel sad.
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Another approach is to characterize them as contracting versus expanding. Feelings tied to problems narrow our attention and cause use to zero-in on the issues, to slow us down, to restrict our risks. At the other end, some feelings energize us to look outward, to become more open, and to take risks. Of all the polar characterizations this is my preference because its genuinely nonjudgmental. However, Id like to go a step further. In Buddhism, and many other faith traditions, there is a notion of non-duality. Rather than good and bad as opposites, they can be seen as one, a whole with balancing sides. This is visually represented in the yin-yang symbol. In that graphic, the universe (a circle) is half and half but not actually divided. The black and white are interlocked they are one circle with two aspects.

As the yin-yang expresses two sides balanced into one, is there a way to see opposite emotions as a linked whole?

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Could we take a non-dualistic view of emotion? Rather than characterizing feelings as opposites (good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant, contracting/expanding), is there a way to see them as a linked whole? Often people in my work describe emotions on a continuum a spectrum from one extreme to another, taking an emotion and its opposite as ends of the number line. This has some merit because were starting to link them as part of a whole, but its still dualistic: There are positive and negative integers on the number line. Lets go back to the definition of anger: You feel angry when you want to go someplace, but your way is blocked. So anger arises from that sense of an obstacle. What, then, could we call that feeling of wanting to go someplace? Perhaps anticipation? Or maybe commitment is a more powerful version of that word? In that case, we could say that there is actually no such thing as anger without commitment: If you dont want to go anywhere, you wont get angry! In other words, they are not two separate things: balance, in context of commitment. How about fear? Fear is a message of potential threat a signal that something you care about is at risk so if you dont care, you wont feel fear. In other words, fear and caring (aka love) are also a nonduality. Sorrow arises when you a are losing someone or something that matters a meaningful person. it as joy. Finally, disgust is a signal of violation. It means rules are broken, agreements at risk, the systems and structures of relationship are in peril. Yet if we did not feel trust in those very same things, if they did not signal a sense of safety and
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Anger only exists in contrast, in

Is

sorrow

signal

of

problem or something we need to suppress? this ancient wisdom: Consider

relationship,

significant

Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward harmony. - Seneca
65 AD) (Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician, 5 BC -

But when we feel that sense of

meaning and significance, we experience

peace

and

balance, then we wouldnt care if they were imperiled. At this point, Im fairly content with a hypothesis of these constructs not as opposites, but as wholes. The dark and the light of the candle. Yet I find them a little awkward because I dont have a name for them. Ive been thinking about this problem for several years, and recently I heard an idea that Id like to consider. I was privileged to be on a panel with Dan Shapiro, a professor at Harvard Law & Medical Schools, and the co-author of Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate. The conference was on emotional and spiritual intelligence in negotiation at Harvard Law School. In describing the challenge of first identifying and then actually dealing with emotions in the complex dance of negotiation, Dans succinct summary: Its really tough! question: So his proposal is to notice emotion, but to go to a deeper Since there are a Whats the basic need driving the emotion?

relatively small number of basic needs, perhaps five, it may be easier to handle this set. If we can attend to these five basic needs, Shapiros compelling case is that its far more likely that a true negotiation will arise. Typically when talking about basic needs, the premise is that a whole range of emotions will surface in response to a need being met or not met. In Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg and colleagues have done wonderful work illustrating these dynamics. Hearing Shapiro use basic needs as a way of explaining the emotional dynamics of negotiation, I wondered if we could look at the emotional non-dualities through this lens: Anger-Commitment is tied to wanting to move, a need to achieve. Its pretty easy to see that this emotion-pair arises in conjunction with a basic need that could be called accomplishment. When we feel Disgust-Trust, it means the social contract that produces order is vulnerable (this contact can be within ourselves, and when we violate our own precepts we feel disgust turned inward). While fear also signals risk, its not usually tied to the contract but to the human implication. And its trust that signals safety; so perhaps the specific surety of trust balances with a specific peril of disgust, in which case this construct is tied to the basic need of safety. While the Fear-Love dynamic can arise a connection with an inanimate object (fear of losing a home), I suspect its most deeply rooted in a desire to nourish

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others, to be in a balance or harmony. To be connected. This could be called the need for belonging. Again, the Sorrow-Joy dynamic seems to arise in a range of situations, but Ive been thinking about the biology of joy. seat of evaluation. Joy is produced by opiates that are absorbed in many parts of the brain, but especially in the frontal cortex, the This is an intriguing pairing because it implies that We somehow when we truly understand, well get the reward of inner bliss. could call that pursuit of meaning the need for purpose. Its likely that in our day-to-day lives, there are more basic needs than these, and certainly many, many wants. The needs and wants are tied to a big range of feelings. But perhaps if we can distill down to a simple level, the complexity of our feelings becomes easier to understand and to manage. I hope youll take away: While Im uncertain if these labels are wholly adequate, there are three key messages that

1. Emotions are signals that serve a function. They should not be blindly obeyed, but nor should they be ignored. 2. There is an innate connection between needs and emotions. In trying to make sense of your own or anothers feelings, consider that they might be signals about a core need.

3. Although feelings can be uncomfortable and overwhelming, resist the urge to judge them and to judge yourself and others for having them. Instead, consider that each feeling is part of a larger story, a story of whats truly most important.

2011 Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds (www.6seconds.org). All Rights Reserved. Thank you to Ayman Sawaf for sharing Lazarus work and explaining that emotions come in pairs, to David Caruso for teaching me about the adaptive value of feelings, and to Dan Shapiro for the thinking about needs.

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