Emotion, What is it?

Explaining e-motion, LOVE/Fear and change, the short path and the long path.

Introduction, simply put, emotion (e-motion) is evolving motion. Essentially, every human being is designed to have a full range of emotions. Emotions naturally arise out of the human limbic system, which is the innermost part of the brain (the emotional brain). Emotion is not just a statement in your mind like "I feel angry" or "I feel happy." It is a state pervading your entire body.

From the limbic system, commands spread by three pathways to the rest of the body.The three pathways are the:

1. Hard wiring of the nervous system
2. Liquid media of neurotransmitters, immune transmitters, and hormones
3. Vibrational whisper of brain waves and heart waves

The immune system carries the emotion in specialized cells that circulate in the blood and spread to the entire body. For this reason, the immune system is called the circulating brain. Thus, emotions connect the mind to the body, and the body to the mind. Because of this, emotions are a vital and integral part of being human.

Basically, human beings have two primary emotions: love or pleasure, and fear or anxiety.

• LOVE is a moving toward emotion-it draws you closer to a certain person, place, or thing.
• Fear is a moving away emotion-it repels you from a person, place, or thing.

Fear is further broken down into three other emotions: anger, guilt, and sadness. Thus humans have five basic emotions which form the foundation for all human behavior. But not everyone is able to experience a full range of emotions; some people are emotionally suppressed.

3 Components of Human Behavior:
Emotion is only one component of human behavior. The other components can easily be understood by using an example called: The Iceberg Model. Human behavior has three components:

1- Physical Action
2- Emotion Feelings
3- Mental Thoughts

The iceberg tip showing above the water's surface is action or muscle contraction. This tip is overt behavior: the part which we see.

But under the surface is hidden or covert behavior: thoughts and emotions. If we are observing another person's behavior, we cannot see the expression of  covert behavior. Yet the person we observe experiences these thoughts and emotions. Covert behavior is also associated with muscle contraction. However, this subtle level of muscle contraction can only be proven by amplification systems, such as biofeedback recording equipment.

Physical Actions: Action is the contraction of a muscle. When your hand moves, contract. You, as well as others, can see it. When you smile, others contracting muscles in your face, and they see that you look happy

Emotional Feelings: Human beings have an endless string of emotions happening in their minds and bodies. Every emotion, like a thought, has its own neuromuscular part and chemical part. Thus, emotions are present so people can experience and express feelings. When an emotion is experienced, people know how they feel. When an emotion is expressed, others know how they feel. The subtle experience of emotion is covert behavior, while the visible expression of emotion is overt behavior.

Mental Thoughts: Thoughts are like electrical sparks. These sparks travel from nerve cell to nerve cell, similar to the way electricity travels through wires. Your thoughts form images or pictures in your mind's eye when you focus on them for one to three seconds. These images then release chemicals in your brain and body called neurotransmitters. Next the neurotransmitters mix with other chemicals such as hormones and immune-transmitters. This process produces the liquid media soup of your body. All of your cells swim in this soup. So, every thought has a neuromuscular part and a chemical part in your body.

Change, 3 process for changing human behavior:

1. Retraining of Physical Actions
2. Replacing of Emotional Feelings
3. Reframing of Mental Thoughts

Retraining: You change actions by repeating the correct actions. This repetition is known as retraining. When you repeat a new action, new cell-to-cell connection pathways (synapses) take place in the brain. These pathways promote nero-associative learning or neurolinguistic programming (NLP). You can do the repetitions covertly in your mental imagery or overtly through action. The NLP remembers the sequence. For example, Vic Braden, a tennis master, says if you use a forehand grip for serving, and want to change to a continental grip, repeat the new grip in your mind or in action at least 1000 times, and you will change your habit. Repetition is the basis of dog training, learning to type, or any other muscle-based activity.

Replacing: Emotions, unlike actions or thoughts, do not listen to logic or retraining by repetition. An emotion is instead changed by replacing the old emotion with a new one. This replacement is known as desensitization. When you replace one emotion with another, you are overlaying the old chemistry with a new one. Desensitization is the process through which you replace anxiety with relaxation.

Reframing: You change thoughts by re-framing them, a process known as cognitive restructuring. Challenge the thought and re-frame (or change) the interpretation of the thought. By repeating this scenario several times, you will establish a new pattern of thoughts. This process is used for people who suffer with phobias to help them challenge their catastrophic thinking.

 

Brain Development, The three stages of human brain development:

1. The vital brain or reptilian brain: This part of the brain controls vital functions, such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and temperature. The vital brain is in the medulla and pons part of the brain stem. This cold-blooded area of brain does not experience feelings.
2. The emotional brain in the limbic system. It is known as the mammalian b because breast-feeding animals show affection and care towards their offspring. In humans, the emotional brain prepares a person to move toward love, or away from fear.
3. The human brain or intellectual brain, can be a two-edged sword. It allows us to process information, think about the past, plan the future, use compute and solve problems. But we may also ruminate about the past and become anxious about the future. This form of anxiety suppresses our emotional brain, leading us to live a life of information processing, judging others, and over-focusing on our problems.

The Training of Emotions:
     On a hike you cross paths with one. Instead of becoming afraid and reacting to that fear, you learn to think about the situation at hand (the snake) and then control your emotions. As a consequence, your reaction will be less dramatic.

      Uncontrolled fear (fight-or-flight response) promotes the sequence of emotion first, thought second.      
      Controlled fear promotes thought first, emotion second.

You actually think about what you should do when you see a snake (before you run). We need to clarify some brain anatomy that relates to emotion.

Basically, there are three connecting points in the emotional circuitry of the brain. They are the:

1. The thalamus is the clearing house for the sensations from your sensory organs. Therefore, what you see, hear, touch, smell, or taste creates a message brought to the main hub, the thalamus.
2. The amygdala is the almond-sized control center in our brain which acts as a watchdog for all our emotions. Like a watchdog that barks at the postman/woman or burglar alike, the amygdala reacts quickly to any situation without any rationale or reasoning.
3. The frontal cortex analyzes and evaluates the reality of each emotion with the hidden question of "What's in it for me?" If the cause and effect relationship is trivial, the frontal cortex could ignore an emotion. For example, if the evaluation determines that a curled rope was mistaken for a snake, the fear response is curbed. Furthermore, before the amygdala (watchdog) sends commands to the body, it has to receive the input of perceptions or simulations.

New research, by Joseph LeDoux of New York University and Paul Ekman from the University of California (San Francisco), has shown two clearly different brain circuits of emotion. They've found two pathways through which the amygdala (watchdog) receives the message to respond emotionally.

Pathways, The Short Reactive & Long Responsive Pathways:

1. The Short Pathway is from the thalamus (sensor input center) to the amygdala (emotional center).
2. The Long Pathway is from the thalamus (sensor input center) to the prefrontal cortex (logical thinking center) and then to the amygdala (emotional center).

Certain emotions, especially intense fear, travel directly on the short road, through a single synapse or link to the amygdala (emotional center). The amygdala then sends messages to the rest of the brain and body. The long road has an intermediate relay station at the prefrontal cortex (logical thinking center). This relay station helps you to rationalize the message by comparing it to a past memory of a similar experience. In short, the two pathways of emotions lead to two different sequences of emotional activation:

The Shorter Pathway: (reactive & emotional )
The 'Feeling First' emotions of the "short pathway" occur in a split second. In fact, it's too quick, sacrificing accuracy for speed. Feeling first has no rational logic or analytical argument. This haste is what causes "love at first sight." We might overlook major incompatibilities in morals, ethics and life-style because the initial feeling is so strong. We feel the emotion of "love" without knowing what is inside the outer packaging.

Researcher Paul Ekman discovered that the facial expression of an emotion such as fear occurs within half a second after the perception of danger, and within a millisecond the flow of blood in the body is shunted off towards muscles, and the heart beat becomes rapid. The heat of an emotion peaks within a few seconds, not minutes or hours. Afterwards, you react to the repercussions of the first intense emotion. Then, a toned-down version of this intense feeling may follow. This subsequent feeling is known as a mood. An example would be depression after having an emotionally intense argument with someone.

Understanding the transient nature of emotional heat is important when managing deadlines at work, or challenging situations at home. You may develop sudden outbursts of anxiety as a conditioned response to the deadline or challenge. The body gets aroused, and then you have reverberating circuits of body arousal making you more anxious. It is at this point when the tools of interception (interruption) come into play to shift you away from further emotional hijacking. By having the various monitoring and modifying tools internalized (through practiced, ritualized use) you can learn to shift from stress arousal to relaxation.

The Longer Pathway: (responsive & logical)
The 'Thought First' emotions of the "long pathway" are slow to develop because the perceptions from sensory organs are brought to the relay station of the thinking brain and evaluated for accuracy and comparison. One type of emotion can merge into the other as a secondary phenomenon. The heat of the emotion occurs in milliseconds, not in seconds, or minutes. Therefore, the body arousal of the hot emotion is sustained in a reverberating cycle.