I am aware of these limitations, I rarely take the driving seat. When I do, I always restrict myself to routes where I know I can readily get help, and I proceed at a very cautious safe pace.
I bet some of you have started thinking ‘No wonder she gets bored and no wonder she’s such an unconfident driver!’ But I would argue that my car is by no means essential to my health, welfare or happiness, so I am quite content to maintain this level of driving confidence and to remain dependent on the knowledge and skill of others to transport me from A to B.
In contrast, I would never again accept being equally ignorant about the emotional machine within me. I am glad that I have now acquired sufficient knowledge about its inner workings to feel free to drive it wherever and whenever I want. I enjoy being able to ‘rev’ its engine up and down to my heart’s content and still feel competent and in control even when I am driving my feelings at full throttle. Should this particular ‘engine’ break down or show any signs of wear and tear, I know how to repair it myself, quickly and efficiently. Although in a major crisis I might one day be happy to turn to professionals for some extra wisdom and support, I’m certainly glad I no longer have to run to them for every minor emotional wobble.
I am not suggesting that everyone needs my level of emotional knowledge to be able to run their own feelings with confidence. But I do know from my work in the self-help field what a tremendous support it can be to have, at the very least, a DIY level of emotional understanding. In recent years there has been a surge in research findings in this field particularly as a result of the developments of neuroscience and brain imaging. I have found these developments fascinating. Psychologists are now better able to see in colourful imagery the emotional response patterns in the brain. They are also more able to say with some confidence how our genetic inheritance affects them. Interesting as these developments are, my main focus is always on how we can gain better control of our problematic emotions. So each time a new piece of research emerges I do a mental check to see if the findings still fit with the self-help methods I use and write about. So far, so good, is my current conclusion!
So I am still confident that the following summary will provide a helpful background to the self-help exercises and strategies in this book. I have tried to keep the language simple and used everyday examples to bring the theory to life. But it will mean much more to you if as you read, you also do the exercises I suggest. These will make the theory even more memorable and useful as you will be applying it to your own personal experiences.
If later you would like to extend your study further on the workings of our emotions, there are plenty of interesting new books on the subject. But the research is developing so fast that you might be best doing regular checks on the internet for the latest findings.
WHAT IS AN EMOTION?
Having unsuccessfully scoured the dictionaries and psycho logical literature for a simple, concise definition, I’ve taken up the challenge to write my own. That’s how I’ve come to understand why it was so difficult to find one!
Emotion is not easy to define or describe because it is a description of a series of complex, inter-connected ‘happenings’ in a number of different locations in the body and mind. The task becomes even more awesome when you realize that emotion can be described as either a personal internal experience or as a series of scientifically observable facts.
My final attempt at a definition (in the box) is perhaps still a little too wordy for my own liking, but the examples and details given below should help to bring it to life.
| An emotion is a set sequence of responses automatically triggered by the brain to prepare the body and mind for appropriate action when our senses perceive that something relevant to our well-being is occurring. |
WHY DO WE HAVE EMOTIONS?
The reason which evolutionists have given for the origin of emotion is that, as animals grew in sophistication, their young needed a longer period of parenting to safeguard their survival. The emotional bond between mother and child ensures that both act in ways that will mean that the young are less likely to be abandoned until they are fully capable of surviving by themselves. Interestingly, scientists have found that the brains of the very earliest of animals, the reptiles, are totally devoid of emotional neurons. On birth, baby lizards, I am told, instinctively stay motionless to avoid being instantly eaten by Mum. In contrast, today’s young humans, with their sophisticated emotional brains, seem to know instinctively how to take actions which tug on Mum’s guilt strings to keep her hovering around for a lifetime!
But of course, emotions can do more for us than ensure we get protective bonding with a parent. They also help us to make decisions and act in ways which will sustain other key relationships. As life on earth has progressed, we humans have become faced with more and more choices concerning our means of survival. Emotions may have been designed in part to stop us becoming paralysed by an otherwise overwhelming array of options. For example, it is thought that love and jealousy are the ways nature devised to help us select and stay in a long-term, stable relationship to rear our young when social and geographical mobility greatly extended our choice of mates. Similarly, shame and guilt may have evolved to keep us tied to specific sets of people. Being bound by shared ‘restrictive’ values means that we are more likely to stay working co-operatively while we are completing the kind of complex tasks which modern civilization requires and which cannot be undertaken by lone individuals.
So, in short, the reason we have emotions is to motivate us to take actions which will be beneficial to the maintenance of our well-being and the survival of the human race.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN OUR BODIES WHEN WE FEEL AN EMOTION?
Our emotional responses start their lives as soon as one or more of our senses detects that something is happening (either internally or externally) which could have some bearing on our well-being. This ‘perception’ by one or more of our senses sets off a kind of trigger switch in our brain, which then sets in motion a complex chain of physiological changes designed to make us react and act appropriately. For example:
– my eyes see a juicy ripe orange → the weather’s very hot and I’m ‘dying of thirst’, so I feel excited → my mouth waters → my hand moves speedily to grab the orange before anyone else in the crowded room can get to it
The diagram below illustrates the route this feeling response travels as it passes through the different centres in our emotional brain.
Instant Exercise
Think of an emotional response you have had in the last couple of days and imagine its journey from its trigger through to its action.
Now let’s take a more detailed look at information on the two parts of our emotional brain which have most relevance for our emotional confidence – the neocortex and the amygdala.
WHAT IS THE NEOCORTEX AND WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT DO?
This is our sophisticated comprehension centre situated in the limbic system surrounding the stem of the brain. It is made up of a complex set of layers of neural circuitry. It evolved originally from our ancestors’ primitive ‘nose brains’, when smell was the only tool they needed to help them distinguish between what was good and what was bad for them.
