emotional soup

 
       I often visualize my emotions as a cauldron of soup where feelings are continuously
 appearing and disappearing, a primordial stew. And when I’m feeling more linear, I visualize
 a wall of pigeonholes holding emotions and I’m endlessly cleaning out niches or stuffing my
feelings away to deal with later. And, granted, often feelings crop up that I recognize as
harmful, for others and myself, and I try to force them away. Off the streets with you! With
an inner cook, postman or policeman, this visualization does no good in coping with fear and anger and anxiety or the multitude of states I work myself into.

 
Emotional Soup

The Rand-McNally Atlas of Emotion

Yin and Yang and the Five Phases

A Bit of Ancient History

        How do you visualize your emotions? Or do you even consider visualizing them? What does that mean and frankly why should you or I care? Emotions are not visualized by most, they’re felt; and we deal with them if we recognize that we’re having them. And, maybe, we can attach some significance to outside events that are causing these feelings…or not. We know our emotions are often set off by outside events and sometimes we can tie a string line from an event or set of events to a feeling or emotion we’re experiencing.

         “That driver cut me off and it makes me so angry! It makes my stomach upset for
hours afterward.”

          “My father is so old and I know he may die soon and thinking about that makes me sad.”

            “I am always afraid I’m going to fail when I take a test. I get really angry and upset 
at myself and the ‘system’ because my fear keeps me from doing my best.”

“If I start to think about where I am in my career, I start to worry and can’t easily stop and then I become anxious about the future and the unknown.”

All of these emotions are initiated by outside events or tied to the outside world and are linear in nature - action A causes B inside of us. But what of the emotions that come from seemingly nowhere? What of depression or sadness when waking up in the morning that stays with us all day or all week? Why are we sometimes irritable for no reason? And what of the emotions that seem to hook-on and can’t be shaken, causing free-floating anxiety, anger management problems, apathy, angst and obsessive worry? Often there is no outside event to tie on to the feelings. And what of temperaments? We all have known family and friends that have personalities that are overly irritable, obsessive, emotional or suspicious. We say its part of who they are.

Neurobiology informs us that many emotions, especially primal emotions, arise from structures such as the amygdala, an almond-shaped piece of the mid brain about the size of your nostril. Amygdala is the Latin word for almond and is responsible for the emotional state of fear, anger, and perhaps many more emotional states. Is there not so much trouble in such a little package, responsible for much of our society’s ills including divorce, drug abuse and war? But let us not blame the poor little amygdala, its just doing its job. It merely receives messages from the thalamus (an interpreter of our senses), or cerebrum (our higher thinking and reasoning brain) or the hippocampus (involved in long-term memory consolidation). The amygdala reacts to content and intensity and sends impulses to other structures to activate appropriate hormones and the autonomic nervous system. It also is key in the attachment of emotional content to memories and thus aids in memory retention. Clinical studies of amygdala-damaged subjects have shown a strong decrease or lack of emotions, absence of fear and hyper-sexuality. The amygdala is a principle structure in the responses of fear, anger and the emotional content of memory and has also been linked to depression.¹

The cerebrum, the thinking reasoning CEO, can modulate actions of the amygdala but by
that time, well, the cat’s out of the bag. It’s the CEO’s problem now. The body is now primed
with hormones and autonomic nervous system responses for fear, anger, hyper-excitability 
or panic. The cerebrum, since it is so rational, will rationalize the content, ignore the content,
dispute the content, suppress the content, or act on it. And depending on the decision, it will
usually work. The autonomic system will rebalance, the hormones will be absorbed and the
emotion will evaporate, but alternately the physical results can be lasting. Unfortunately, the
amygdala is unaware of itself, but there is intelligence in its machine-like system, a result of
many millions of years of evolution and its reactions are of immense benefit to us. Emotion is
good, is it not? Who would want to live in an emotion-less world? Hail Amygdala!

But surely, this is too much to put on the little shoulders of the poor amygdala! The amygdala is highly involved in the primitive emotions of fear and anger and the memory of dangerous situations. These are emotions of survival, but what of pleasure and joy? The amygdala is part of a neural loop of many structures that mediate emotions called the limbic system. In this system are the amygdala, thalamus, and hippocampus and many other identified structures. Also involved is the nucleus accumbus which is center of pleasure and reward. The hypothalamus is involved in the activation of the autonomic nervous system, release of hormones, hunger, thirst, sleep, blood pressure, heart rate and sexual arousal. Also in this system, with other components, is the orbital frontal cortex, which is the decision-maker, the CEO. The amygdala has lots of codependent associates.

The limbic system isn’t just a conglomeration of structures in the brain that seem to work together but a definite evolved structure that is present in all mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians.² In some of these creatures this is the higher brain, minus the cerebrum (orbital frontal cortex), which is the decision maker. Mammals have cerebrums attached over and around the limbic system and humans have cerebrums with intricate folds increasing the surface area of the brain. But the limbic system is still there deep within the brain pumping out emotions. Problems arise because of repeated or learned stressors that we may face in everyday life, emotion-laden memories or over-concentration on internalized problems that causes the limbic system to continue to activate in a circuit pumping out hormones and altering the bodies response systems. This leads to what we perceive as stress and can also lead to chronic or long-lasting feelings of fear, anxiety, depression and hyperactivity.

 If there were ways to map our emotional landscape that would allow us to, not only to 
understand our inner workings and the relationships between our emotions, but also provide 
a framework in coping with our feelings, it would greatly benefit our peace of mind. 
Fortunately, there is a way…a way that is easily grasped and put into practice, and on which 
we can locate our feelings and discover where we came from, where we’re going, how we’re 
getting there and how to avoid those places where we don’t want to be. Any map, even a very good map, does no good unless we know where we want to go, where we’ve been or where we are at any moment.

    This book is about a particular map has been around for a long time and requires our fresh
eyes to find new ways of using it. Included are exercises to bring your emotional life into
balance and reduce anxiety, anger, depression and fear. The philosophical underpinnings of
this map come from what is called Five Element Theory or more accurately Five Phase
Theory. Originating in China, it is a Taoist tradition of observations of nature going back
thousands of years. Before delving into this system, let us see what maps have come to us
from Western psychology and philosophy.

1.                  Restak, R. (2001) The Secret Life of the Brain. Washington D.C., Joseph Henry Press

2.                  Zautra, A. Emotions, (2003)  Stress and Health. Oxford, Oxford University Press