We're Emotion-Driven Creatures
What I watched: Brené Brown's Life Advice on Emotions Will Leave You Speechless by Brené Brown via Motivation Thrive. Posted May 12, 2022.
Here’s another gem that I stumbled on when YouTube’s predictive algorithms decided that this was perhaps a video I’d like. Clearly their programming is well honed because I did indeed like it.
At first click I was about to discount the video. I love Brené Brown’s work. But at first it felt a bit too fluffy. That’s not a great way to put it, but fluffy is the best word I can think of. It’s anything but fluffy. It’s meaty. It’s insightful. It’s useful. At least it was useful to me.
Brown sets aside the notion that we can or should walk in someone else’s shoes, that we should or can emotionally role reverse with someone. Brown doesn’t think that’s possible or a helpful approach.
So the idea of walking in someone else's shoes and trying to understand what they're feeling I believe has no merit. I think the call is much more difficult and much more powerful and that is to ask the person for their story of what it's like in their shoes and to believe them.
So the problem becomes why do we think we have to walk in other people's shoes? The problem is the believing part. And the problem is in not believing her when she tells me her story because it either challenges what I want to be true about the world, or it challenges my idea that there's just one experience of the world, or it makes me accountable in some way that makes me uncomfortable.
Earlier in the video Brown reflects on the lack of language we have for the vast range of emotions. Most people can only recognize and name a few emotions that they experience with happy, mad, or sad the three most prevalent.
And I started to ask myself what does it mean if we don’t have a vocabulary that’s as expansive as the human experience?
This came up recently in a conversation I was having with a friend about the many flavors, textures, and configurations of love, We have the one word, which for the sake of this post let’s consider an emotion, and we only have one word for it. Love a partner. Love a family member. Love a friend. Love our community. One word. There might be a few alternatives like affection or friendship, but they don’t quite mean love in the sense I see it.
There was an article I once read that mentioned Eskimos having dozens or even hundreds of words for snow. My immediate reaction was “that’s brilliant” because for all the breadth of the English language it couldn’t muster an etymological lineage to create more sharply defined words for the many aspects of love. But here was an example of numerous words to describe variations of the same thing.
Sadly, I subsequently read that this was urban legend and not true at all, only to later read this article in the Washington Post suggesting perhaps there was some truth to the original contention.
Regardless, the English language lacks more deeply descriptive words for what I consider the many nuances for the emotion of love.
Brown has extensively studied the topic of connection. She does not believe we can learn to recognize emotion in other people. It’s folly to try. We can’t truly walk in other people’s shoes.
When we see someone else express an emotion like rage or sadness, we can’t really know what’s going on inside them. We can guess. We can make assumptions. Those assumptions will often be incorrect. There are dozens of meanings behind the emotions that present in those ways. The same is true for every other emotion we express. We frequently interpret emotions in others based on our own experiential lens.
Brown came across a Buddhist concept of the “near enemy” which helped her better cobble together her developing framework on meaningful connection.
And what a near enemy is, it is an emotion or a virtue that looks and feels and masquerades like the thing that we are looking for or want to be, but it sabotages it.
The near enemy is when, for example, someone reaches out to another person and is desperate for connection and instead gets pity. Pity means one feels sorry for the other person and the result is no meaningful connection occurring.
The far enemy of connection is disconnection. Stark but logical opposites. However, the near enemy of connection is control. If we’re going to really be there for someone, to sincerely connect, we can’t try to control the situation. This is something I’ve been guilty of in the past. I try to grab the reins of control from the person and try to fix it, or try to convince them it’s not so bad. Awful idea. I’ve learned that over time. As Brown says, we control situations when we start to move away from actually being focused on the other person.
Later in the video Brown discusses worry, a topic she’s researched. She concludes that worry is not a helpful coping mechanism. Her discussion about worriers made me pause because I can definitely be a worrier. What she suggested to blunt the needless negativity of worrying was extremely helpful to me and perhaps it will be to you too.
Habitual worriers have three things in common.
Worriers think worry is helpful, which it is not.
Worriers believe they we have no control over it, that it’s not a choice. We do and it is.
Worriers worry about worrying. Worriers ruminate about worrying. This one sure hit home because I can get caught up in circular thinking of worrying that builds and builds upon itself. It’s not fun but my guess is many of you reading this are worriers too and can relate.
When we worry, we wallow in a chain of negative thoughts happening in our worrying brains about bad things that might (might is the operative word here) happen in the future.
Brown has come to believe that those who overcome worrying engage in reality checking and perspective taking. They consider these three things about their worrying.
Is this line of thought helping or hurting?
Do I have enough data to freak out?
And if I do have enough data to freak out, will that be helpful to me to freak out?
These are the questions those of us who worry unnecessarily should ask ourselves each time we get caught in a worrying cycle. If there’s not enough data, it’s not worth expending the energy. And even if we do have enough data, it’s not going to help.
We can’t develop or maintain connection with others until we are connected to ourselves. When we try to build cultures of connection, if we’re not connected to ourself with a good understanding of our emotional landscape and what’s driving our thinking and behaviors, true connection isn’t going to happen.
Emotion is in our driver’s seat. We are emotional beings. We can’t develop a connection of any type unless we know ourselves.
To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.
― Socrates
Human beings will do almost anything not to feel pain, and that includes causing other people pain. To use modern parlance, we need to work out our own shit before we can expect to meaningfully connect with others.
Let me finish with some wisdom that a friend plucked from thisistheswell on Instagram and I’ll share it here because I found it insightful. I think it relates to the topic at hand.
Our brain knows the difference between compassion and empathy even when we’re not fully aware of it.
Recent studies have shown that when we think compassionately we “light up” the same regions of the brain as love but empathetic thinking lights up regions associated with pain.
Empathy works by tapping into a brain mechanism that already exists for our own pain, which makes us believe we are feeling pain emotionally even when we are not feeling it physically. When empathy is used as the source for helping another, the central motivation is to alleviate our own pain and stress.
Compassion’s strength is that it is not only derived from the same neural networks as love but it is focused on the concern and care for others.
The neuroscience effect of having compassion at the forefront of our thinking is that when we think from a compassionate mindset, we release the hormone oxytocin, which then activates dopamine (brain reward) and serotonin (anxiety reduction) contributing to a feeling of happiness and optimism.
Studies also suggest that we can better cope with others’ negative emotions by strengthening our own compassion skills. They found that practicing compassion led to people experiencing significantly more positive emotions. We can increase our own levels of compassion through things like practicing self compassion, small acts of kindness and metta meditation.
The most immediately useful thing I took away from the video is that I should not make assumptions about other people’s expression of emotion. I should ask and believe what they’re experiencing. And when I catch myself in a cycle of worrying, ask myself those three questions Brown poses and I’m far more likely to stop worrying.
I hope your day is a good one. May you find connection with yourself and others. May your day be one without worry. May your day be full of sincere compassion for yourself and others.
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