[Neurons] 2024 Neurons #11 THE WORK OF EMOTIONS WITHIN YOU

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2024 Neurons #11

March 4, 2024

Emotional Intelligence Series #11

Managing Your Emotions III

 

THE WORK OF 

EMOTIONS WITHIN YOU

 

In the delightful art of managing your emotions we have covered steps one
and two.  First, accept the emotion as an emotion and second, fully embrace
the emotion to understand it.  Now for the third step.

 

3) Let Your Emotions Do Their Work in You.

As emotions work inside you, moving you with their energy (e-motion), they
enable you to do whatever emotional work they require.  This emotional work
depends on the kind and quality of the energy that the emotion triggers.

 

For example, the energy of anger (if it is true) is to feel that something
is violating your values and to take action to see if you can change things
and reduce that threat.  However, feeling that is not a pleasant feeling.
Most of us feel it as stressful and unpleasant.  But sometimes there's
nothing to actually do, no action to take.  That's when we have to use
symbolic actions to displace all of the physical energy that we feel within
our bodies.  So, for example, I may speak my anger out, I may write my anger
out, I may even walk or run my anger out, etc.

 

The energy of fear is different.  When I feel it, I want to move away from
the threat.  Sometimes if it is too much, I freeze in place and feel so
confused I don't know what to do.  The energy of fear warns me of danger and
threat, and my unthinking response is to get away from it.  If I do my
emotional work, I feel this tendency so that I can then ask, "Should I or
should I not?"  "If I do, what precautions do I need to take?"  The feeling
of fear does not always require that we move away from the trigger;
sometimes we have to face it, move forward and act anyway. 

 

Then there's the energy of sadness, the sense of loss and the emotion of
grief.  I have lost something- money, a job, an opportunity, a friend, a
loved one, a child, etc.  Here the emotional work is that of feeling the
loss, registering it, and owning it.  In that way, I say to myself (and
others), "X was very important to me; I feel less now because of the loss."
It's through doing the emotional work of registering the loss and owning it,
that you are freed to ask, "How can I replace what I lost?"  The end goal of
grief-the recognition of value and the willingness to risk loss again by
replacing it.

 

In each of these instances, the emotion urges us to go inside and own the
emotional experience so that we develop, grow, and become more human.  The
emotional work is the work of developing our humanity.   Consider that as
you re-read the quotation from Aristotle.

"Anybody can become angry-that is easy, but to be angry with the right
person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right
purpose, and in the right way-that is not within everybody's power and is
not easy." 

 

When a person does his emotional work, he becomes a better person for it.
It's only the person who has lost, and through embracing her grief that she
now knows the true joy of love and connection.  She now can be a fully
loving person.  It's only the person who has feared and has embraced that
fear, and learned to take proper precautions and moved forward to face life
as a vulnerable human being who knows the wonders and joys of tackling big
goals with courage.  It's only the person who has faced his angers and
refined his values and who now can transform that anger into fighting for
justice for those who cannot fight for themselves who knows the
transformative power of respectful anger.

 

Emotions have work to do inside of us.  What we know and understand about
things (cognitively), such as dangers, treats, values, losses, etc., our
emotions integrate that knowledge into our neurology and physiology.  Then,
as a result, with emotions we feel the danger or loss or joy or love or
whatever.  What we 'know' activates our whole mind-body system so that we
are more ready and resourceful to take effective action.

 

Just as knowledge changes us, so do our emotions.  As the word indicates,
now we are moved on the inside and more ready and capable of moving on the
outside.  In this way, your emotions create your states so you can be
increasingly resourceful in speech and behavior.  These states are mind-body
states which allow you to put your knowledge into action.  They enable you
to feel competent, confident, resilient, persistent, joyful, hopeful,
loving, creative, etc.

 

Conversely, if you don't allow your emotions to do their work within you,
their messages go unheeded and you are the worse for it.  Typically the
emotion's energy gets misdirected on the inside, often misdirected against
you-your mind and/or your body.  So we ask, "Have you done your emotional
work?"

 

As you explore your emotions for their message, you can now let the energy
work in you to make you more human.  Emotions are to be felt, owned, and
learned from.  Doing so makes you stronger and more resilient.  The caveat
is to make sure you submit the emotional energy to your best thinking.  If
you reverse the order, and submit your thinking to your emotions, you make
yourself an emotional dependent and lose the ability regulate your emotions.


                                                          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

THE NEW BOOK

Have you seen the brand New Book from Neuro-Semantics Publications---
Thinking for Humans (2024)?   It is now available!

 

If you want to learn how to become an excellent thinker --- to think
clearly, precisely, creatively, critically, and lovingly, this is the book
for you. 

 

We have a special deal on the book right now - write me at meta at acsol.net
for that deal.  This book would make a great gift!   

 

For International mailing: If 3 of you order together, you can reduce the
international postal cost to $13.

 

 



 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20240303/af32c0bf/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 7843 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20240303/af32c0bf/attachment-0001.jpg>