In us, there is a river of feelings…. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears…. If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into the kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us. By the work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can illuminate so much for us, offering us insight and understanding into ourselves and society.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
In this lesson we’re digging into the neurobiology of emotion – which is the stuff I get really excited about!! You’ll find me in full-on teacher mode in the video – get ready to learn about your nervous system and the bodily basis of emotion!
Here’s a quick summary/preview:
We have three main emotional systems:
- Threat-detection and self-protection: to identify dangers in the environment and respond. This system is both activating (causing us to flee or fight) and inhibiting (causing us to “shut down”).
- Associated emotions/feelings: fear, anger, anxiety, disgust
- Drive and resource-seeking: to detect resources for survival (food, social connections, money) and motivate us to acquire them (by making us excited or happy when we do so)
- Associated emotions/feelings: excitement, pleasure, joy
- Soothing/affiliation system: to help us calm down during times when we are not threatened or trying to get things we want (i.e., when we are not avoiding or clinging).
- Associated emotions/feelings: content, peaceful, safe
Check out the video!
I can’t say enough times that none of these systems are inherently “bad” – we need to be able to detect threats, we need to have nervous system activation to engage in the world, and we need to have time to recover. (As I said in the video, we need to be able to pendulate between these systems).
Your funsheet for your Brilliant Binder for this lesson looks like this:
You’ll see three circles, one for each your emotional systems. In each circle, identify the activities you engage in each day that fit into that category – what excites and energizes you, what causes anxiety, what calms you down? Don’t worry about making it perfect – just write down the activities that you can think of. You may return to the sheet over a couple days as you pay more attention to the messages from your body.
Once you’ve completed the circles, take a look at how you are spending your days. The key here is balance – you will have items in all three circles! But maybe you’ll notice you’re not engaging in a lot of calming behavior, or that you’re not spending a lot of time on things that excite and delight you. Maybe you’re spending a lot of time in threat-detection mode.
Awareness of these patterns is the first step to meaningful change. What circle do you want to spend more time in? How could you do that?
This is all about considering the small changes you could begin to make to harness the calming and healing capacities that your body already possesses! What’s working and how can we do more of it?
Click to download the pdf: Emotional Systems