I think there is a way we are being fooled by our emotions. It hinges on where we put the equals sign.

***

So there I am in Page One, the beautiful enormous sunlit bookshop in our local mall, the place where I wander idly looking at books, thinking things through, making notes for articles and products on Evernote, sometimes whipping out my Samsung NC10 and writing-publishing a blog post.

So… there I am, on Sunday, looking through the language books and I am suddenly hit by panic.

We are about to move where the nearest large-ish bookshop is 15 miles away, and the nearest really large bookshop more like 40 miles away.

What the hell are we doing, moving from a capital city to a small market town?

My first saviour was, of course, going to S and getting a squeeze, wiping my snot on his armpit.

My second saviour was having predicted this.

Predicting emotions

A while ago, I realised that, at some point, I would start to feel panic that we were making the wrong decision to move back to England.

Having, in a previous moment of clarity, sent a letter to my Future Self saying that panic was to be expected, and not to read too much into it, I was able to keep my perspective.

What is emotional algebra?

Ok. So I’m about to use algebra very loosely (sorry math kids).

What I notice happens is:

1. I feel an emotion. Let’s say panic.

2. Emotional algebra goes: Feel Panic = Something’s Wrong.

3. The mind starts looking for what’s wrong.

And you know what happens when the mind starts looking for something.

It finds it.

And the more evidence it finds, the more the feeling strengthens, and we know where that one leads.

Same with…

Feel Sad = Something’s Wrong.

Feel Angry = Someone’s Wrong.

Feel Scared = Something’s Wrong.

The truth

Rather than:

Feel Emotion = Something’s Wrong.

In truth, what’s happens is:

Trigger = Feel Emotion.

ie Think of No Bookshops = Panic.

The jiggery-pokery is : the original trigger is forgotten.

So what we need to do is to

(a) stay conscious of triggers and

(b) not extrapolate things from the emotion.

This is difficult to do once the trigger has been triggered unless you prepare.

What to do?

More useful is to think ahead, predict what you might be feeling (knowing the likely emotions especially being familiar with your triggers/Things), and have a way of not following the ‘logic’.

In short, you gotta put the = in the right place.

**

Now, ok, wait wait, I know that very often when we feel something, that emotion is information, often about something unresolved. And it seems that I’m asking you to disregard what you’re feeling.

And, of course of course it can be very useful to do personal work to resolve those issues.

However, there’s a difference between our aspirations (that the Thing be defused) and how things are right now (that the Thing is a Thing).

It can be helpful to be able to see that the information the emotion is giving might be more about your triggers than about the current situation.

Emotional algebra can be very persuasive, and in the end, it often has very little connection to how things are right now.

**

Back to the bookshop.

Thanks to a bit of preparation, rather than thinking:

I am feeling panic therefore we are making the wrong decision.

I can more clearly see:

We are making a big decision therefore I will feel panic, at times. This is one of those times.

That doesn’t mean I suppress the emotion, it just means I do my best to not extrapolate anything from it.

It’s just a feeling.

Helps to have an armpit to wipe your tears on, as well…

***

Comments? Comments? Love ‘em!

Only rule: only half-baked thoughts, please. No dogma/advice. No no no.

***

And yes, of course, if you want some help with getting familiar with your triggers, you could always have a look at Do I Have A Thing About This?

Of course.

***

Related posts:

1. Why you need to work on your (emotional) stuff
2. What feelings want
3. Creating a Trigger List and freaking out less

Meta-blogging: I have a bunch of posts lined up, but none of them seem relevant today. So I’m just writing from my heart, which is a bit grief-y, to be honest.

Here’s what I do have.

***

I was reading something the other day and they asked what your message to the world would be.

I think mine would be:

It’s ok.

You know, in the main, outside of the drama, it’s all really ok.

I’m going through another transition and what I need most is gentleness and do-able goals and permission. Permission to not be totally on top of my game. To be a bit thrown off.

Permission to not be perfect.

What are you denying yourself permission to do?

Here are some of things I’m telling myself…

It’s ok to feel sad.
It’s ok to find it difficult to focus.
It’s ok to be tired.
It’s ok to be happy.
It’s ok to be hopeful.
It’s ok to not start work til 6pm.
It’s ok to have a nap.
It’s ok to sit down to something and not find it hard.
It’s ok to sit down to something and find it really hard.
It’s ok to feel spent.
It’s ok to have a cup of tea, or coffee.
It’s ok to go over your food Points.
It’s ok to feel lonely, to want community.
It’s ok to feel swirly, to feel your broken heart.
It’s ok to crave some gentleness.
It’s ok to be brilliant.
It’s ok to not be brilliant.
It’s ok to not be certain about your message ‘be less certain’.
It’s ok to feel lost. We all do.
It’s ok to miss your old homes.
It’s ok to miss Home.
It’s ok to want to watch TV series where people are friends.
It’s ok to be scared, to panic.
It’s ok to sleep in when it’s raining.
It’s ok to eat things on toast three meals a day.
It’s ok to not speak to people you don’t want to speak to.
It’s ok to be confused.
It’s ok to want to change the world.
It’s ok that you didn’t change the world entirely today.

***

You know me – I love comments. So… got one?

Comments: no theories-of-the-way-the-world-works, please. No dogma. No advice. Fragments, ideas, thoughts? Lovely.

Related posts:

1. Recognising emotions as emotions
2. Why you need to work on your (emotional) stuff
3. How interrupters get conversation wrong

I’ve had a bit of a realisation about the mechanism of worry.

As some of you know, I’m moving continents in a couple of months.

The Move has been the source of lots of tears, worry, you know, ahngsht.

In my notes for a talk I’m planning about the not-freaking-out, there are three things it helps to be less certain about:

I’ve talked about the other two before.

The third, not so much.

I realised that all my anxiety was coming from predictions: we’re going to get stuck in England, we’re not going to make enough money to live, we’re going to need to get shitty jobs, I’m going to fight with my Mother-in-law, we’re going to be lonely….

Worry comes from predictions

Think about something you’re worried about.

What are you worried about?

See! Prediction.

Our worry comes, often, I reckon, from forgetting that predictions are just thoughts. We forget, especially because they come with such a punch, and then the more we think about them, the more we feel anxious.

And, yes, in theory we know there are other outcomes but what if the thing we are worried about does happen…

I think it may be a survival thing

Here’s my amateur evolutionary-pop-psychology explanation.

We have had to, as animals, take a small amount of data and rapidly extrapolate the future from it.

Sometimes that will have been in survival situations (Oooh, it’s running at ME) where presumably if it has evolutionary benefits, that’s where it got selected.

Other times in longer term situations (No rain, no crops… hmmm…)

That mechanism seems, at least in me, to be overactive, extremely sensitive.

It takes a tiny amount of data, a look, a word in an email, even just a thought, and it extrapolates a painful future, often so invisibly that I don’t realise the process has happens.

Bang – lost performative.

I really really realised this this week when I was thinking about The Move.

I finally remembered to do Find Five on it.

1. One great outcome.

2. One kind of good outcome.

3. One kind of bad outcome.

4. One disastrous outcome.

5. One just-left-field-out-there outcome.

(It seems to work well if all of them are possible from your perspective, but not necessarily probable.)

Suddenly, I realised that, er, I’m not omniscient, the future hasn’t happened yet, and maybe I can be a bit humble and open to possibilities.

Two things please-please:

1) This is not positive thinking. That would mean just. focusing. on. the. best. outcome. It seems to me that that kind of thing is motivated by fear, and grasping, and not a little self-delusion, plus guilt if you dare to think a ‘bad’ thought. Find Five is about possibilities, about reminding your consciousness that anything apart from what you can see and hear and touch and sense is a thought or a feeling. Being less certain can be a key to peace.

2) I’m not saying don’t plan. Duh. Of course you’re going to think through contingencies, and make some kind of plans for them. At times, anyway. What I’m saying is if you can remember they are just finger-in-the-wind puh-and-it-blows-away thoughts, you might have less stress in the present moment.

Short version: being less certain about your predictions can free you from unnecessary worry.

***
Comments comments comments – comments are my favourite! Got one?

You know the comments-drill: only half-baked thoughts allowed in the comments, dogma/advice no thank you!

Related posts:

1. Recognising emotions as emotions
2. What if anger isn’t anger
3. Freakus Interruptus Tool Numero Uno

Bindu asks that today we write about what we’re scared of.

I am scared of:

Being alone
Not being alone
Being stuck in a marriage that is cold
Hurting someone irreparably
Being cut off from God
Feeling my longing for God
Feeling how lonely I am in the world
Coming up short
Finding out I’ve been fooling myself
Not making the grade
Missing my divine engagement
Getting a divine engagement
Having to leave my marriage
Taking drugs and liking it
Becoming an alcoholic
Getting to fifty and panicking
Selling out
Being asked to leave my tribe
Finding out I’ve been abused as a child
Knowing what attacks me in the dark
Finding out my path is to be completely solitary
Finding out it’s all a lie, I’ve been fooled
Being thought shallow
Finding out I’m up myself
Building my life on a lie
Being mocked on a grand scale, Palinesque style
Thinking a reaction is divine inspiration
Finding out it’s all an illusion
Drowning
Following the impulse to kill myself
Finding out I’m actually dead
Finding out I’m actually still lying in that field
Being patronised, tolerated
Being talked about behind my back
Never getting out of debt
Ruining S’s life
Being the one on the other side of the door
Accidentally killing a child
Finding out I’m just being dramatic
Realising the depth of my longing
Not being able to do what I love
Being a drudge
Never getting out
Er… pressing Publish!
Getting fat.
Being trapped
Wasting my life.

And heights.

Related posts:

1. Permission
2. Handling your feelings, their feelings, your feelings about their feelings
3. What if anger isn’t anger

I have spoken before about how we need to be less certain about people’s intentions. I learned-learned that a couple of weeks ago when I was having the freak-out which started off my first note to my Future Self.

Me and a Person I Care About were having a bit of a… to-do, as my Nan might say.

And I was shouting, stomping, slamming. Classic anger signs.

But inside, I wasn’t feeling angry.

I was feeling hurt, sad, scared.

Warning – ew-y metaphor alert

I’ve had an ingrown toenail for a few weeks. Embarrassing. At 35, it turns out I don’t know how to cut my big toenail properly. Really. I had to google it.

Thing is, it’s bloody painful.

And what I was doing was if anyone came anywhere near it, I would pull away, even wince a bit, sometimes even say ‘Ow!’, totally in anticipation.

This was a bit like that.

Yes, my feelings were like my toe.

I was feeling something that felt a lot like a wound, and as the Person I Care About was poking around near it, I was very sensitive about it.

And that expressed itself as anger.

Afterwards (much afterwards) I realised that this might be a good lesson to learn.

I often default to anger, when what I’m feeling is hurt or threatened.

You know that bit in Billy Elliot where he does that kicking dance of rage?

(Ok, I know that’s SUCH a gay reference, but, go with it.)

S says he can recognise that anger in me.

Lesson alert

Even when it seems obvious to us what is going on inside someone, we really really might be wrong. No. Really. Really really.

And we are trained to be certain about it.

A little exploration, a little less certainty around people’s intentions might serve us well, especially in situations of conflict and crisis, when the stakes are high.

***

I LOVE comments.

Got any?

Comments yay: sharing of your take on things, thoughts, half-thoughts, tiny bits of whispers of thoughts.

Comments boo: Advice.

Related posts:

1. The Impact-Intention Trap
2. What feelings want
3. How to worry less

The good news is my note to my Future Self was received!

I have to be a bit circumspect about this, but yesterday I received a communication that set our worlds aspin. And not in an obviously ‘positive’ way.

In conversation with S, I felt my panicky-anxious-want-to-pick-a-fight reaction coming up. You know what I did?

I said, ‘I’m going for one of my walks.’

I stopped talking.

I closed the door (reasonably) gently.

I went for a walk.

I stomped.

I cried.

I got back some clarity.

I felt the reaction subside, enough so I could begin to not believe it.

I came back.

Sanity regained!

Hurray! Just like my Past Self told my Future Self. Who is now my Past Self. (Let’s not get into that.)

Thing is, the reaction is carrying on into today.

So, I thought I’d send a message to me over the next few days.

Ahem.

***MESSAGE TO FUTURE SELF BEGINS***

Andrew.

Darling.

You’ve had a communication which is causing all sorts of reactions.

I notice: fear, panic, anger, sadness, excitement.

Just to say, if you feel one of these over the next few days:

a) It’s ok. Just stop what you’re doing. It’s fine. Ow ow ow. I know.

b) You might want to gently ignore any action they want you to do. Like saying stuff, making phone calls, writing emails.

c) It could be a walk might help, but going wide definitely could.

I love you.

You’ll get out the other side, even if a part of you feels out of control.

Andrew

***MESSAGE ENDS***

I vaguely remember hearing something from Pema Chödrön (was it one of the Lojong slogans? See this is why I’m only Buddhish) saying:

Recognise neurosis as neurosis.

I’m taking that to mean, to me, today:

Recognise reactions as reactions.

Let’s see if I can refrain from acting on the reaction. Just for now, of course.

***

I love comments. Got one?

Comments yay: your experience, support, thoughts, epiphanies, quotes…

Comments boo: advice.

Related posts:

1. Freakus Interruptus Tool Numero Uno
2. What if anger isn’t anger
3. Help! The Blogging Shoulds got me…

Dear Future-Freaking-Out-Andrew

There is a particularly desperate type of anxiety that grips you at times, isn’t there?

You can feel it coming… And you know you need to get out of it before it wants to bite the people around you.

Right?

Well, put your shoes on.

It’s time you walked around the block.

No really. Right now.

Maybe take an apple with you, because it’s probably a while since you ate, eh?

But no talking!

Say, ‘Excuse me, I’m going for one of my walks,’ and go.

And, to avoid misunderstanding, close the door quietly.

Remember:

~ Your freaking out freaks out the People You Care About around you.

~ A walk stops you pouring self-righteous gasoline on the fire. (I know, I know, they’re being totally unreasonable, and you were only trying your best… If there is still something to say when you get back from your walk, you can say it, I promise.)

~ There’s something about being outdoors, able to stamp and anonymously grunt/cry/wail that just helps you to get some perspective and figure out what’s going on. And if you don’t stand still, no one knows it’s you.

~ Maybe it’s the rhythmic left-right left-right, maybe it’s the removal from the physical environment, maybe it’s the focus on the middle distance, but, honey, angel, it works.

Don’t wait until you’re storming out,  head off at the first sign of tensing.

Just GO. Good boy.

You’re welcome.

(This is a note I wish last-Tuesday me had read. Hopefully future-me will receive it and remember.)

What note do you need to send to your future-freaking-out-self?

Related posts:

1. Recognising emotions as emotions
2. How to worry less
3. What if anger isn’t anger

There’s a funny thing that happens sometimes and it normally involves me saying (ornery voice):

Well, I didn’t mean it like that!

I first came across this laid out in the pretty damn good Difficult Conversations by the descendants of the Harvard Negotiation Project (the Getting to Yes/Getting Past No people).

In an emotional exchange, there are two things.

Imagine…

(My head) My intention carried by my words, which create…

(Your heart) impact on you.

(Your head) Your intention carried by your words which create…

(My heart) impact on me.

Here’s the rub.

I can only clearly know what’s going on on my side of the exchange: my intention and the impact I receive.

We tend to:

a) presume the impact of our words will be the same as our intention

b) mind-read the intention of the other person by the impact that their words had on us.

And sneakily, forget that we’ve done both of those calculations.

Upshot (a) : If our words don’t have the impact we intended, we are at the very least surprised.

Upshot (b) : If their words hurt us, we tend to think that they intended to hurt us.

What do you mean you’re angry?

No no no…

Warning!  Defenses activated! Whoop whoop…

(Especially for me, who has a Thing about being judged unfairly and that everyone must not be angry – at least not at me.)

My sanctimonious well-that-wasn’t-my-intention habit is perhaps not the most helpful one.

What might be more helpful

~ Deal first with the impact that my words had, as if it had been my intention.

~ Say sorry.

~ Let them be feeling what they’re feeling, listen to what they want to say, or not.

~ Find out, when it’s right, what I could do differently next time.

All the while, letting myself feel what I’m feeling, but working on seeing if I have a Thing, and maybe gently letting my feelings settle before acting on them.

(Yeah, let’s file that under Easier Said Than Done and Work In Progress and Something To Aspire To.)

Realistically…

I think practically what I’d like to try out is when someone reacts ‘badly’ to something I’ve said is to make the first words that come out of my mouth be:

Oh, crap. I’m sorry.

…and then make an effort to shut the hell up for a minute, breathe, go wide, shut up and listen.

Bloody mind reading

Now we know how hard-wired mind-reading is, right?

What helps here when I’m mind reading someone else’s intentions is to Find Five other possible explanations, to think what else might have provoked their words. Often I’ve forgotten what else is going on in their life, what their Things are, and find that what they had to say has little to do with me.

However, if I let my defensive Inner Fighter get control of the emotions and the mouth, I often don’t find that out til much later.

***
Hmm… Impact. Intention. Mind reading.

Thoughts?

(Book link is Amazon affiliate link. Only use it if you were going to buy at Amazon anyway. Remember, kids, buy at your local book store and stay in school.)

Related posts:

1. What if anger isn’t anger
2. I am not a mind reader and neither are you
3. Speak mindfully

See, it’s not the feelings that are the problem.

It’s what the feelings want.

Primary emotions

I’ve been looking at what I’m feeling, and notice that there are three primary emotions:

Anger, Sadness, Fear.

These have lesser siblings:

Irritation, Pissed-off-ness, Anxiety.

And big Mommas:

Rage, Grief, Terror-Panic.

(For the moment, we’re ignoring weird meta-emotions like guilt, jealousy, antsiness.)

Feelings are an unavoidable fact of life, a product of shoving a soul into a chimpanzee.

(Note to Creator: whose idea was THAT?)

Stopping yourself feeling these is like… I want to use some metaphor like stopping a river with a toothpick, but, you know, a losing battle (unless you’re going to spend a fuck of a lot of time working towards enlightenment, and even then…).

However, the thing that seems to cause the damage is the action that comes from the emotions.

So what do emotions want?

Here’s my half-thought-through instincts:

Anger wants to hit out, to attack.

Sadness wants to stop.

Fear wants to protect, to freeze, to hide, and when cornered, to attack.

Feel the emotion, refrain from the action

I’m exploring if the ‘trick’ is to feel the emotion, but gently shortcut the action.

So, I can feel angry, but not attack, not physically/verbally to begin with, then maybe maybe not even inside my head.

I can feel sad, but keep quietly, slowly (perhaps) moving.

I can feel scared, but stay a little bit visible, keep a little bit of motion…

Well, it worked this afternoon

And I only thought of it (or, rather, it arrived) this morning.

I read 2 posts by 2 someones that really hit home on, well, a private issue. I was already a bit hungry, a bit tired, a bit screen-blind, and we had a house full of people.

A wave of (old) sadness appeared and I escaped to the bedroom, curled up on the bed, closed my eyes, even though I had a meeting. Just wanted it all to go away.

Then a wee small voice asked:

What am I feeling?

Sadness.

What does sadness want?

To stop.

So…

So I gently got up, opened to the sadness, but gently, quietly carried on, got dressed, kept going.

And it helped.

***

I am very interested in your take on this.

Comment loveliness:

~ Is there a fourth primary emotion? A fifth?

~ Is that what those emotions want (for you)?

~ What does this spark for you?

No right answers.

Comment horribleness:

~ Theories, especially other people’s.

So… whatcha reckon?

(PS For those playing along at home, I know this is a listening week, not an emotions week, but it might be stale in four weeks’ time, so, well, you’re getting it now.)

Related posts:

1. Handling your feelings, their feelings, your feelings about their feelings
2. Recognising emotions as emotions
3. Improve your emotional algebra

Feelings are almost never fresh out of the box.

They are almost always (and I’m saying ‘almost’ just to seem all cool and provisional and fair and not-totally-certain but I really mean always) about something that has happened before.

They are (almost) never about what seems to be happening in front of you.

We have a variety of triggers – things that start an automatic chain of reaction which leads us down a particular path.

Catching the trigger as it starts is A Good Thing, because sometimes by bringing consciousness in, you can put the brakes on the train before it hurtles onto the broken bridge and off the edge of the cliff.

Consciousness is hard work

Thing is, the mind is slippery.

The mind doesn’t want you to be conscious.

It wants to keep running its patterns, because that’s what keeps you safe (in its very limited view).

Or maybe it’s even more mechanistic than that and it ‘wants’ to run its patterns because that’s what it does.

So we (I) need ways to get around the sleep, the automaticity of the mind.

One of the questions I am asking myself (as part of The Steps to not-freaking-out-ery) is ‘Do I have a Thing about this?’

Well, turns out that keeping track of if I have a Thing isn’t necessarily easy.

For example, this morning I was helping a Person I Care About do a thing, but when they came over, it looked like I was doing something totally different and to do with my interests, even though that really really wasn’t the case, and I got defensive and angry and tight-lipped and pokey-fingered.

Hmmm – could that be a Thing?

When I float the nostalgia boat back along that particular emotional river, I notice that I can remember times in my childhood where I was unfairly ‘caught’ doing something that I wasn’t actually doing.

Plus there’s a Thing about being in my own little world and then being brought out of it by being teased (I’m often really really not a good sport about being teased).

And I have a Thing about unfairly being seen as being selfish, especially when my intention is to be helpful.

So all those things together? Reaction. (Choo choo… Shh-tickuk, shh-tickuk… here comes the Trigger Train…)

A Trigger List helps you remember earlier

A Trigger list helps you to get conscious when in the middle of the thing that’s being triggered because, just like when you haven’t looked after the chimpanzee, when you’re in the middle of an emotional reaction, the ability to see you’re in one is impaired by the fact of being in one.

So the Trigger List helps you to poke the bubble a little and let some other options in.

Back to this morning…

Then ‘all’ I had to do was allow the adrenalin to subside, let myself feel what I was feeling, but at least it helped me to refrain from acting on the reaction any more than I already had.
Helps to see that the reaction has nothing to do with the person in front of me too, and allows me to take responsibility for what I’m feeling, rather than getting all Blaming Barry.

So…

…One more step towards bringing consciousness into the process earlier than otherwise might happen.

And yes, I really do mean a list, like,  outside of your head.

What do you reckon?

Related posts:

1. Improve your emotional algebra
2. Why you need to work on your (emotional) stuff
3. How to be less grumpy