Stop and Think (and then Feel)

"We cope well with loss because we are equipped--wired, if you will--with a set of in-born psychological processes that help us do the job.  The most obvious of these is our ability to feel and express sadness."--George Bonnano, The Other Side of Sadness, page 198.

French neurologists were testing a new way to treat Parkinson's disease.  The possible treatment involved implanting tiny electrodes at specific points in the midbrain of the sufferer.  The scientists then electrically stimulated the various electrodes to determine which specific location in the patient's midbrain would produce the best treatment results in relationship to the Parkinson's symptoms.  Anthony Damasio reports this incident in his book, Searching for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain.

The testing with one patient produced surprising results.  When the scientists stimulated one of the electrodes, she plunged into deep and immediate sadness.  The neurologists knew they had stumbled on to some new information.  When they quickly withdrew the stimulus, it only took about ninety seconds for the patient to return to a pleasant, happy emotional state.  And she wondered what precisely had happened to drag her into the emotional abyss.

The French neurologists had charted--in a basic way--how emotions, feelings and thoughts are related.  Emotions are the neurological processes that happen in our brains.  Feelings are the conscious experiences we have of those processes.  Thoughts are the cognitive responses we make that can sustain the emotions and feelings or bring those processes to an end.  Thoughts of particular types can prompt emotions that lead to feelings.  Those feelings can lead to further thoughts.  This is the cycle of our neuro-emotional life.

One of the benefits of this useful accident is that we can better understand that cycle.  Emotions can come completely unbidden sometimes.  I have those moments when I am sad for no reason that I can discern.  If I am not paying attention, I will go ahead and feel sad in order to make sense of and accommodate the emotion that arrived on its own.  And then, in order to justify that feeling, I will engage in thoughts that fit with being sad.  If I'm not careful, those thoughts will produce deeper emotions of sadness, more feelings, further thoughts and....off we go.  Damasio lays it out:

"When the emotion sadness is deployed, feelings of sadness instantly follow.  In short order, the brain also brings forth the  kind of thoughts that normally cause the emotion sadness and feelings of sadness...Psychologically unmotivated and 'acted' emotional expressions have the power to cause feeling.  The expressions conjure up the feelings and kinds of thoughts that have been learned as consonant with those emotional expressions" (Looking for Spinoza, page 71). 

If we are relatively unaware of ourselves, we can believe that we have some reason to feel, for example, sad.  But if we are paying attention, we will discover that oftentimes a neurological switch has been accidentally flipped.  We are not required to generate the feelings and thoughts required to justify that tiny chemical accident.

The other side of this is the neurological basis for "fake it till you make it."  We can choose thoughts that will produce emotions that will produce the feelings we seek.  If I thin and act happy, and keep thinking and acting happy, my brain and mind will at some point catch up.  It's in the nature of our emotional brain.  "All emotions, including sadness, are designed to be short-term solutions," George Bonnano writes.  We are not required to make them into long-term realities just to make sense of some brain chemicals that made a wrong left turn.

We are confused about this because of the speed at which all of this can happen.  If, however, we can train ourselves to stop and think (a great AA slogan, I believe), then we can have greater control of our feelings and thoughts.  I find myself more and more often asking, "Do I have some reason to feel the way I do?"  And often, the answer is, "No, not really."  Then I can choose to feel a different way.