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Weekly Tidbit: Emotional Intelligence

10/28/2009

People tend to think of their cognitive brain as the source of their intelligence. Our society has devised highly structured IQ tests to measure "intelligence" and our educational systems focus pretty much on left brain thinking. Perhaps emphasis is on the superiority of logical thought because it can be manipulated more easily than emotional intuition. Or maybe the reason most people believe that logic is more important than emotion is that we don't understand the connection between the two.

Dr. Antonio R. Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has done extensive research to prove his belief that rational thinking cannot function without emotional input. He studied patients who had frontal lobe surgery and lost the ability to use their visceral emotions, their "gut intuition". These patients were unable to function in the world on their own even though they evidenced normal IQs, had functional working memories and logical reasoning abilities. They had to have caretakers because they could not make decisions that had no logical structure ..... they would get stuck in endless rumination. Without emotions to guide their logic, something as simple as choosing between two days to make an appointment was beyond their capabilities.

Abraham / Hicks agree that our emotions are our inner guidance system. "Your loving Inner Being offers guidance in the form of emotion. Entertain a wanted or unwanted thought and you feel a wanted or unwanted emotion. Choose to change the thought and you have changed the emotion --- and you have changed the creation." During my years as a psychotherapist in private practice, cognitive restructuring was highly regarded as a treatment for changing behavior and for improving emotional affect. Cognitive restructuring works to change thought patterns by intentionally choosing new words to shape new thoughts. And when you change your thoughts, your feelings change also in response.... and visa versa: they are in intimate relationship with each other.

We live in a society that invites us to lose connection with our emotional guidance. Technological overstimulation, overuse of medication, and policies of disinformation encourage us to go along with consensual reality rather than attune to our own inner knowing. Paying attention to our emotions, learning to trusting our intuition, and opening to our inner guidance allows us to be more fully wise. The collaboration of right and left brain enhances our ability to know ourselves and manifest what we truly desire. A beautiful illustration of this is the creation of music, for music combines emotion and intellect seamlessly, and it transcends all cultures and languages. We all have music inside of us.

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Weekly Tidbit: More on Stories

10/21/2009

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I recently wrote about the way our tenacious holding onto a belief or story about ourselves determines how we create our reality. My perspective on this was coming from my observations as a therapist and a coach, and I was delighted to come upon some additional insight in Temple Grandin's book, Animals in Translation. She wrote, "Normal people have an interpreter in their left brain that takes all the random, contradictory details of whatever they are doing or remembering at the moment and smoothes everything out into one coherent story. If there are details that don't fit, a lot of times they get edited out or revised. Some left brain stories can be so far off from reality that they sound like confabulations."

She offers a conceptual picture of how, once we decide on our story, we unconsciously edit our experiences to prove that we are right, often with little regard to the consequences. In an example, a group of rats and a group of humans were set up in an experiment where they would be rewarded for pressing a bar when a dot appeared in the upper half of a TV screen. The dot appeared in the top half of the screen about 70 % of the time. The rats pressed the bar every time the screen changed and so got rewarded about 70% of the time. The humans on the other hand, tried to figure out a story about the dots and when they had one they tended to stick to it even when it was wrong. As the result of adhering to their stories, the humans received fewer rewards and did worse than the rats.

Given that we are biologically predisposed to interpret what we see as a coherent story, it requires an awareness of this human trait to gain freedom from reliving the stories that repetitively engineer our own suffering. In a sense, we are still living in the past when we view our present with the same lens and perspective that recreates the same experience. If we shift our point of view to emphasize what we can find to appreciate about the current situation instead of looking for how it confirms our story, we can also shift our creation pattern, and perhaps even change our biology in the process. Paying attention to breath is a good way to bring us into the present moment and offers us clues to what we might be feeling as breath mirrors our emotional process. When we are calm it tends to be slow and deep, and when we are upset or frightened, breath becomes rapid and shallow. Allowing ourselves to recognize a feeling as familiar gives us the opportunity to ask if it belongs in this moment or whether we are unconsciously re-living our story. By simply making this process conscious we change it, and afford ourselves the opportunity to step outside the story and edit the script, or maybe even write a new one. Including the practice of appreciation in the new script brings the power of gratitude to our conscious creation, and that in and of itself supports a positive manifestation.

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Weekly TIdbit: Emotional Management

10/14/2009

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One of the more interesting experiences I have had involved witnessing a man literally bounce off walls. I was working in an inpatient addiction rehabilitation program and had the task of informing a client that his father had just died. We were alone in my office when I told him the sad news and he stood up from his chair and ran into a wall, bounced off, did it again with another wall, and again, and again, and again. I remember noting with surprise that the phrase "bouncing off the walls" was not a just figure of speech, and then deciding that he was just releasing his anger and heartbreak and that it would be better to let him run it out as long as he didn't seem to be injuring himself. When he finished careening off the walls I just held him while he sobbed, and when he quieted he seemed very lucid and able to accept his father's death and commit himself to his own recovery process. I remember wondering afterwards if another staff person had been in my place whether the client would have been restrained and possibly sedated. And I wonder now if part of our struggle with anger is that we are afraid of strong emotions, and we don't let them run their course because of that fear.

I'm not saying that we should slam ourselves into walls when we are angry or upset, but just to recognize that our primitive brain is wired such that when the flight or fight response gets triggered it is good to let the system flow and flush. Otherwise the biochemical soup that is designed to speed and strengthen us floods our system and does not get used, often resulting in unwanted side effects. The extreme of this is post traumatic stress syndrome, and I suspect that given the constraints of our sedentary and technological orientations that many of us are walking around with adrenaline based emotions stored in the cellular structure of our bodies. Symptoms include and are not limited to sleep dysfunction, physical illness, chronic pain, an exaggerated startle reflex, nightmares, difficulty relaxing, anxiety, and depression.

It has been observed that animals in the wild are rarely traumatized, whereas domestic animals and humans frequently are. Wild animals usually give an energetic reaction to their stress events that releases the adrenaline and other chemicals that were generated in support of intense movement. In situations where the "freeze" response is used instead of fleeing or fighting, the animal vigorously shakes itself out of that state when the danger is past. One reason domestic animals may have more trauma stored in their bodies is that they are often restrained and not allowed to run out their experiences. I knew a horse named Arrow who could not tolerate to have his head tied because in his past he had been severely beaten while tied to a post so he could not get away. He was the sweetest, smartest horse you could ever hope to ride; but when his head was tied he went berserk and would hurt himself and anyone near him. Domestic animals may evidence more trauma in that they have acclimated to spending time with people, and we have our issues about emotions. Many of us humans have been taught to keep our feelings in, to deny them or intellectualize them, and have had no release for the accompanying biological stimulants that end up stored with the memories in our cells. In our culture people are often told "don't cry", "be a man", "you shouldn't feel that way", and if we exhibit strong feelings or find ourselves shaking after an experience are told "here, drink this, take this pill", and numerous other injunctions designed to suppress our emotions. Or some of us lose control of our feelings, and like Arrow, hurt ourselves and others; so maybe we clamp the lid down harder on our feelings..... until the next time they erupt and the cycle starts again.

Suppressed emotions coagulate energy. To keep from accumulating energy blockages, find safe outlets for emotional experiences as they occur instead of repressing the feelings. Talking to someone you trust, running or other physical exercise, visualization, chakra balancing, journaling, dancing, singing, drumming, and other expressive modalities are helpful in giving release. And if you suspect you might be harboring some old emotions that block the full flow of your life force, hypnosis and the energy psychologies (TAT, EFT) have proven very effective in clearing emotional blockages. All of our emotions are gifts and have significance; one of our lessons here on earth is to learn how to work with them for our highest good and benefit.

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Weekly Tidbit: Successful Thinking

10/7/2009

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Someone recently wrote me about the impact of "failed situations" on their life. I invited a shift in perspective suggesting that there are no failures, only lessons. I truly believe that all of our experiences contribute to our education and growth, especially the ones that don't turn out the way we want as they offer the biggest opportunities to evolve, to know ourselves, and to learn something new. "There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error; experimentation. The 'failed' experiments are as much of the process as the experiment that ultimately 'works'." (The quote is from Rules for Being Human, rule number 3.)

I just celebrated the success of selling a pair of hand knit cashmere socks on Earthwise Designs, my Etsy shop, and the "failed situations" comment reminded me of the first time I tried to knit. I ended up with a tangled pile of yarn that looked like something cats had been playing with for days. I felt frustrated and discouraged and wanted to give up. But being a persistant person (some have called me stubborn) I picked up the needles again, looked at the mess I had made and tried a different approach. Many attempts later, I had a piece of knitting that actually sorta resembled the picture I had in front of me. The most difficult part of this experience was dealing with the voices in my head that told me "what a piece of garbage, you'll never get it right, give it up, what a failure, stupid girl". If I had given credence to those thoughts, I would never have learned to knit, and would have missed out on a tremendous amount of joy in my life. Knitting, by the way, is a great form of meditation, and if you are local to Florida's Treasure Coast and want to learn, please email me for information on The Black Sheep Knitters. I can guarantee there will be a lot of educational mistakes.

How we deal with our mistakes determines how much we learn from them and whether or not we will continue to repeat them. When I was teaching in a lecture format, I would tell stories to encourage people to laugh because people are more likely to take in new information when they are in a good mood. The first time I heard someone say "oh, good I made a mistake; I'm getting ready to learn something!", I thought they were nuts. But wasn't it sweet to embrace an error with such enthusiastic appreciation instead of the doom and gloom I learned growing up? So I tried it, and lo and behold, the more mistakes I made with that attitude, the more I learned, and the less likely I was to repeat the same mistake again. There was nothing "wrong" with me because I made a mistake; I was just getting ready to learn something.

Cognitive restructuring, changing the internal thinking process, is a proven way to change both attitude and behavior. Thinking of unpleasant experiences as "failures" tends to make us reluctant to try again and invites feelings of discouragement and self doubt. Reframing those experiences as "lessons" or "opportunities" encourages us to move forward, to be creative, to find a way to manifest our heart's desires, whether it be knitting a sweater, or finding that great job, or building your dream home. Choosing to replace our self defeating thought patterns with conversations that support positive change is similar to knitting in that it requires both discipline and attention, and really is pretty easy if you give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from them. And they both invite you to vibrate at an emotional level of joy and acceptance that leads to bigger and better things.

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Weekly Tidbit: Emotional Intelligence

Weekly Tidbit: More on Stories

Weekly TIdbit: Emotional Management

Weekly Tidbit: Successful Thinking

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