Emotional Beings Being Emotional

Emotional Beings Being Emotional A Basic Primer on Feeling our Way Through Life By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof October 12, 2014 During a 2007 TED talk, psychologist Daniel Goleman spoke about his brother-inlaw’s interview with the Santa Cruz strangler, in preparation for a book he was writing about serial killers. During the interview he asked, “How can you have done it? Didn’t you feel anything for your victims?” The killers response was, “Oh no. If I had felt their distress I couldn’t have done it. I had to turn that part of me off.”1 As disturbing an anecdote as this is with which to begin, this seeming ability we all have to turn off our feelings is precisely why it is necessary, if not vital, for us to better understand the pivotal role of emotions in our lives. For, as the 20th century English writer, G. K. Chesterton once said, “The madman is not the man who has lost all reason. The madman is the one who has lost everything except his reason.” 2 Indeed, the Santa Cruz strangler, Herbert Mullin, who murdered 13 people before his capture in 1973, was a registered genius with an IQ of 160. So it isn’t our mental acumen, but, as Goleman says, “our empathy, our tuning in that separates us from Machiavellians or sociopaths.”3 Even so, as prominent a role as emotions play in our lives, as the underlying catalysts of everything we do, the forces that move us and cause us to act and behave as we do, we are often not tuned in to our feelings or to the feelings of others. We tend to experience and identify more with our thoughts, with what we are thinking, that with what we are feeling, even though our thoughts are more often guided by our feelings, than are our feelings by our thoughts. This is why we cling so desperately to our ideas, fighting and killing and even dying for them if necessary. Just think of all the wars that have raged and the atrocities that have been committed over ideology. This schism between mind and emotion, between the central nervous system and the more ancient sympathetic nervous system, between the brain and the gut, is no more prevalent anywhere than it is among westerners, especially Americans. As a Pueblo chief once told psychologist Carl Jung, “We hold that all Americans are crazy because they believe that they think in their heads, while we know that we think with our hearts.”4 Jung went on to suggest, quite profoundly, as rudimentary as it might seem, that we can also think with out guts. “Yes, the plexus solaris,” he said, http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goleman_on_compassion#t-460659 Lehrer, Jonah, How We Decide, Mariner Books Edition (2010), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., New York, NY, 2009, p. 171. 3 TED.com, ibid. 4 Jung, C. G., Dream Analysis, Bollingen Series XCIX, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1984, p. 333. 1 2

Emotional Beings Being Emotional

“the brain of the sympathetic nervous system; it is less concentrated than the brain, but it is the center of all vegetative function.”5 By this he means the part of the brain at the base of the skull responsible for regulating all of our autonomic functions, like respiration, digestion, eye dilation, heart rate, blood flow, kidney function, bladder control, salivation, and everything else we don’t have to waste energy concentrating on to make happen. It is directly wired through our spinal chord to our organs and the rest of our bodies via long strands of nerve cells called ganglia. “…it is of prehistoric origin,” Jung continued, “having lived vastly longer than the cerebrospinal system, which is a sort of parasite on the plexus solaris.”6 So for Jung the schism between mind and body seemed so great that he viewed the thinking part of us, the part that has thoughts, as parasitic. More significantly, he laid the groundwork for understanding that there are different kinds of intelligences, intelligences that don’t involve mental constructs. For Jung these included the brain, the heart, and the gut, as exemplified by the archetypal characters in The Wizard of Oz—the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. In 1975, developmental psychologist Howard Gardner took this notion to the next level in his book, Shattered Minds, in which he first introduced the idea of multiple intelligences. He didn’t fully develop the theory, however, until 1983, with his bestselling book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Although he doesn’t consider his list exhaustive, he outlines six core intelligences, linguistic intelligence, musical intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, and personal intelligence (how well one knows oneself). Unfortunately, as intriguing as this list is, delving more deeply into it now would take us too far from the subject of emotions. Before moving on, however, it should be noted that Gardner defines intellectual competence in general as the ability to “resolve genuine problems or difficulties.”7 In short, intelligence allows us to adapt to changes in our environment. Seven years later, in 1990, psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer added to Gardner’s list with their groundbreaking article, Emotional Intelligence, in the journal of Imagination, Cognition, and Personality. They begin by asking, “Is ‘emotional intelligence’ a contradiction in terms?”8 In doing so they acknowledge the perceived divide between mind and body—reason and emotion—that goes back to ancient times. They remind us, for example, of 1st century (BCE) Syrian philosopher, Publilius Syrus’ maxim, “Rule your feelings, lest your feelings rule

Ibid., p. 333f. Ibid., p. 334. 7 Gardner, Howard, Frames of Mind, Basic Books, Perseus Book Group, New York, NY (Kindle Edition), 1983, p. 64, loc., 1939. 8 Salovey, Peter, and Mayer, John D., Emotional Intelligence, Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc., 1990, p. 185. 5 6

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you,”9 and of contemporary psychologists like Paul Thomas Young, who has defined emotions as, “acute disturbance[s] of the individual as a whole.”10 This notion of emotions as something subordinate to reason that must be controlled and suppressed by mind, however, no longer makes sense if we accept that there are numerous kinds of intelligence including, especially, emotional intelligence. Like Howard Gardner, Salovey and Mayer broadly define intelligence as more than just “the ability to carry on abstract thinking.” They prefer psychologist, David Wechsler definition of intelligence as, “the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with [one’s] environment.”11 They go on to define emotional intelligence as a subset of Social Intelligence, which, briefly, is what allows us to effectively deal with and relate to others. Emotional Intelligence, they say, “involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”12 So all of us have emotions that can prove overwhelming, like fear, anger, grief, and desire. Emotional intelligence, however, isn’t just having emotions, or controlling them for that matter. It involves being emotionally literate, that is, being able to correctly read our own emotions and the emotions of others—to, in effect, decipher the meaning of emotion, or, at least, its affect. And it involves emotional competency, the ability to use this awareness to help us adapt and problem solve in ways that are productive, not destructive. The serial killer I spoke of earlier may have been a genius, but he was emotionally illiterate because he was unable to read the emotions of others, which made him horribly destructive. This doesn’t mean that if we “turn off” our own emotions, or “tune out” those of others, that we will become sociopathic. In fact, this is something Daniel Goleman says we all routinely do. In his own book on Emotional Intelligence, Goleman says, “Academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. The brightest among us can founder on the shoals of unbridled passions and unruly impulses; people with high IQs can be stunningly poor pilots of their private lives.”13 When we aren’t emotionally intelligent, or close ourselves off to emotions, we sacrifice vital adaptive skills, “abilities,” Goleman says, “such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustration; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope.”14

Ibid. Ibid. 11 Ibid., p. 186. 12 Ibid., p. 189. 13 Goleman, Daniel, Emotional Intelligence, 10th Anniversary Edition, Bantam Books, New York, NY, 1995, 2005, p. 33f. 14 Ibid., p. 34. 9

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And this is why I feel this subject is so important for us to consider. If we aren’t emotionally intelligent, able to read our own emotions and those of others, and to translate that understanding into meaningful responses, our emotions can become destructive. Although his book deals largely with the consequences of not teaching emotional literacy to children, Goleman gave a couple of more ubiquitous examples of emotional illiteracy during his TED talk. “Think about going shopping and think about the possibilities of a compassionate consumerism,” he says: Right now… the objects that we buy and use have hidden consequences. We're all unwitting victims of a collective blind spot. We don't notice and don't notice that we don't notice the toxic molecules emitted by a carpet or by the fabric on the seats. Or we don't know if that fabric is a technological or manufacturing nutrient; [if] it can be reused or does it just end up at landfill? In other words, we're oblivious to the ecological and public health and social and economic justice consequences of the things we buy and use.15

Shopping without compassion, shutting off our emotions while we are consuming, is far from being homicidal, but it can be destructive in other ways. The specific example Goleman gives is that cotton t-shirts are resistant to textile dye, which means 60 percent of such dye drains into wastewater. “And it’s well known by epidemiologists,” Goleman points out, “that kids who live near textile works tend to have high rates of leukemia.”16 So keeping ourselves emotionally aware when we shop can move us, literally e-mote us, to look for products that are the least harmful to others and to the environment. Another good example involves a personal experience Goleman had on his way to the subway station: And all of a sudden as I was going down the stairs I noticed that there was a man slumped to the side, shirtless, not moving, and people were just stepping over him— hundreds and hundreds of people. And because my urban trance had been somehow weakened, I found myself stopping to find out what was wrong.

Now here’s the amazing thing. Once Goleman stopped, once, that is, someone finally stopped, half a dozen other people also immediately stopped to help. They found out the man, who was Hispanic and didn’t speak English, hadn’t eaten for several days and had passed out from hunger. A police officer got him some orange juice, someone else brought him a hotdog, and soon he was back on his feet. The reason so many had passed the man by until just one person stopped was because they were all thinking about their own agendas, getting to work before it was too late, and were not emotionally aware enough to feel compassion. When Goleman stopped, however, their mirror neurons, those wonderful little cells in our brains that cause us to imitate others, kicked in and those who stopped soon became emotionally available and, thereafter, emotionally aware. 15 16

TED.com, ibid. Ibid.

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Again, mirror neurons don’t cause us to feel empathy, but they do allow us to put ourselves into the shoes of others, which often leads to empathic feelings, that is, to relating to others. Autism, for instance, a terrible condition that impacts one’s ability to fully connect with others, is now being associated with compromised mirror neurons.17 As Giacomo Rizzolatti, a discoverer of mirror neurons, says, “They allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation; by feeling, not by thinking.”18 Thus, for our mirror neurons to work effectively, leading to our ability to empathize with others, we have to be emotionally intelligent. Empathy is a product of feeling, not thinking. Although he acknowledges they are “necessary but not sufficient in themselves for empathic experience,” Psychotherapist Ronald Potter-Efron writes that, “Mirror neurons act as both information receivers and action generators… [They] initiate processes that allow you to get a feel for another person’s actions and intentions. This creates a bridge between you and the people around you.”19 So, to return to our example, the stampede of those passing the man collapsed on the subway stairs continued until one person stopped, activating the mirroring neurons in the brains of others who immediately imitated his behavior, the same way a baby smiles when smiled at. Once their attention was drawn outside themselves, they could really notice the man in need and began acting with compassion toward him. Their turned off emotions turned on and tuned in. So here’s a more likely example. You ask a friend how she’s doing. She says, “I’m fine,” yet her body is slumped or sunken, her facial affect is sad or sullen, and her voice is tepid and uncommitted. If we take her statement from a purely intellectual point-of-view we accept her statement as fact and move on with the conversation. If we are emotionally attuned, however, we notice her affect and her words don’t jive, so we probe a little further to see what’s wrong and if we can help. Practicing emotional intelligence can also be fun. It’s kind of like discovering a superpower that allows us to understand the world around us in a new light. I like to watch the birds eating and drinking in the little sanctuary I’ve created for them outside my dining room window. When the sunlight is at a certain angle in the morning the birds can see me watching them. Whenever I make a subtle movement they all flurry off into a nearby crab tree for cover. Once they feel safe, they return. So I instinctively try not to move too much because I don’t like to frighten them. But the other day, when I really tuned in to this pattern, I realized I was aware of their fear. Their simultaneous b-line for cover was the affect of their alarmed emotional state. I was empathizing with birds. Even though they are creatures very different from myself, emotional intelligence allows me to know what they are feeling. Now that I realize I can interpret their emotions, I also experience the joy they feel when Lehrer, ibid., p. 185. Ibid. 19 Potter-Efron, Ronald, Healing the Angry Brain, MJF Books, New York, NY, 2012, p. 151. 17 18

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half a dozen or more enter the birdbath together and begin splashing about with abandon. So that’s a very basic introduction to emotional intelligence and its importance. I want to spend the rest of our time briefly discussing emotions themselves so we have a better understanding of what they are and how they work. For this I’m indebted to Ronald Potter-Efron’s book, Healing the Angry Brain, in which he offers an excellent summary of our primary emotions. These include anger, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, and disgust. Just as there are more colors than the three primary colors, there are lots of secondary emotions too. And because, as Potter-Efron says, “emotions are both a personal and a social event,”20 there are also a few basic social emotions. These include shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride. It is also important to remember that emotions aren’t just feelings. They are more like engines that lead to action. Emotions have force. They e-mote. They move us. Potter-Efron says, “Emotions are brain-generated physical and mental states that both motivate people to take action and energize their ensuing behavior.”21 Thus he associates a particular kind of action—what we might call an affect—with each of our emotions. Anger moves us to fight or attack. Fear, like the birds in my yard, moves us to flee and escape. Joy moves us to continue what we’re doing and to get closer to the pleasant activity. Sadness moves us to retrieve what’s been lost, or to comfort others. Surprise moves us to stop what we’re doing and to pay attention. And disgust moves us to expel or throw away whatever is offending us. As for the social emotions, shame moves us to hide or submit; guilt moves us to repair what damage we’ve done; embarrassment moves us to change our ways and act appropriately; and pride moves us to dominate others or to grow larger.22 As different as these emotions and their consequences can be, every emotional episode goes through the same six-stage process—activation, modulation, preparation, action, feedback, and deactivation. Emotions have evolved to help us survive changes in our environment, so once an episode is over, we should return to a state of emotional equilibrium. If an emotion lasts much longer than the event that initiates it, it is no longer an emotion but a mood, perhaps even a chronic condition that prevents us from feeling emotions more appropriate to what’s actually happening around us. To understand a complete emotional episode, lets return to the example of the birds in my yard. The emotion of fear became activated when they noticed movement inside the window. They then had to very quickly modulate the emotion by determining the threat level. Is the movement a small or significant threat? Was it something worth just keeping an eye on or something worse? Next, they prepared for action, perhaps through a physiological rush of adrenaline, increased blood Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 17. 22 Ibid., p. 18f. 20 21

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pressure, and the ruffling of their feathers. At stage four they actually moved by fleeing the immediate vicinity. Flight, literally, is one way an emotionally intelligent person recognizes fear. “Emotions don’t merely prepare us for action,” Potter-Efron says, “they are part of the action itself.” Emotion is motion. At stage five, once under safe cover, the birds sought feedback, to determine if it was safe to return to their source of food and water. Potter-Efron says, “feedback helps us refine our actions, thoughts, and feelings. Gradually we get better at what we do, how we think, and what we feel, all thanks to the brain’s ongoing ability to inspect its creations.”23 Finally, once the danger is clearly over, the emotion deactivates and the birds return and resume feeding. The human brain, of course, is a bit more complicated than those of birds. “Emotion takes energy,” Potter-Efron says, “and energy demands calories. Naturally, then, your brain will shut down emotions when there is no need for them. That’s why people exist in a state of emotional neutrality most of the time.”24 Thus, for some, shutting off our emotions can be as big a problem as turning them on. Chronic anger, depression, and grief, are examples of emotions that don’t readily find equilibrium in some people. Being able to turn emotions on, handle them, learn from them, move through them, and turn them off again, is all part of what it means to be emotionally intelligent and competent. I realize this has been a lot to go through in one sermon, even though I’ve tried to move through it as quickly and succinctly as I can. Yet our emotions, our emotional life and wellbeing, are such an integral part of who and what we are, that it would be irresponsible for us not to explicitly examine this subject in church. When I consider my thoughts, I consider them as just that, my thoughts. I possess them, but they are not me. Yet when I consider my emotions, my feelings, I identify with them. I am my feelings and they possess me as much as I possess them. And in this day and age when ideologues wage war against those with whom they differ, it is especially important to remember our ideas do not move us to act, our emotions do. Nor do our ideas move us to feel, at least not as much as our emotions move us to think. The ideas we cherish so profoundly, for which we are often ready to kill and die, represent more the rationalization of our feelings than genuine ideas. Becoming emotionally intelligent, learning to properly recognize and regulate our own feelings, helps us better recognize the feelings of others, enabling us to empathize with them, less we should just step over them, or pass them by, or seek to destroy them in the name of reason.

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Ibid., p. 30. Ibid.

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