July 10, 2022: Frankly, Your Emotion is Up to You

The Cringeworthy, “tell me how you feel . . . “

“When you say that, it makes me feel sad.”

No, another person cannot make us sad . . . or angry, or happy; it isn’t possible. Crazy assertion, right? It’s true.

While some people can say some pretty nasty things, it’s not possible for another person to make us feel any emotion. It is entirely up to us to create our emotion.

I learned this after “skillfully” applying the stereotypical “tell me how you feel” line as a student in the late 1990s. I can still hear my mentor say, “stop asking how they feel; ask them how they think.”

I was perplexed. Isn’t this whole therapy thing about emotions!?

I have since come to understand that the development and expression of human emotion is complex. It’s a physiological process, driven by genetic and social influences . . . and by our own thoughts. I have since learned that emotions deserve more than to merely be identified.

What is an Emotion?

Emotions are the sensations that we experience when amounts and combinations of hormones, steroids, and neurotransmitters are secreted from the glands, tissues, and neural systems in our body. While science has identified over 50 hormones in the human body, my favorites are those that play a significant role in the development of emotion, including epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenaline (anger), cortisol (anxiety), dopamine (pleasure/addiction), and oxytocin (socialization, parent-child bonding, and even aggression toward groups that threaten our kin—think, “mama bear!”).

You might think, “well, I’m not always happy, sad, or angry, so what determines the amount and combination of these chemicals?” This is where it gets interesting!

How Do We Create Emotion?

Exercise and diet do influence the amount and combination of these chemicals (booooringgggg!) But there is another more interesting and powerful determinant of emotion:

Our bodies are designed to release chemicals consistent with our thoughts! This is a very powerful and, to many, unexpected process in the management of emotions.

Here’s how this works: some event happens . . . you have a thought about that event . . . that thought creates an emotion . . . the emotion fuels our behavior.

Event – Thought – Emotion – Behavior

This sequence happens hundreds of times a day.

Imagine sitting in my marriage therapy office, staring out the window (or glaring contemptuously at your spouse—eek!), and you feel my foot hit your shin. You could interpret that in at least two ways: “this guy can’t control his feet; I’d better pay more attention.” Your body would respond to that thought as if to say, “oh, ok. [yawn]. Here’s a little bit of adrenaline. It will help you stay more alert . . . you’re welcome.” This wouldn’t cause you to hit me or run away, just to be more alert.

On the other hand, if you thought, “that S.O.B. kicked me in the shin on purpose, and I know he did,” then your brain will get all in a tizzy: “REALLY!? Let’s DO this! Here’s a lot more adrenaline; and I’m throwing in some cortisol and noradrenaline for free. . . GO GET HIM!” Your thoughts will begin to race, your heart rate will increase, your palms will get sweaty . . . you’ll want to take a swing at me or run away; you’ll experience a fight or flight response.

IMPORTANT! Your body doesn’t care whether your interpretation is reasonable or accurate. If you believe that I kicked you in the shin on purpose, your body will develop the emotion that is consistent with that thought. This is physiology; it’s science.

The Function of Emotion

A primary function of emotion is to drive behavior. For example, the function of anger is to fend off an immediate known threat, while the function of anxiety is to fend off an unseen threat that you think is out there.

Useful, right?

The problem is that we often interpret the environment the wrong way, evoking an emotion that is not consistent with the demand of the environment. This can be a big problem. If your body gears up to fight in the absence of threat, you run the risk of a major social blunder! Even if you don’t act upon it, anger is a physiologically expensive emotion to hold onto—chronic anger can lead to illness, even death.

We shouldn’t create emotion that we don’t intend to use.

Emotion in Relationships

We use experiences from our past to guide our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in the present. These rules speed up cognitive processing and response times—therapists call these automatic thoughts. These automatic thoughts, however, can also be problematic: it is very common for these rules to become irrelevant, outdated, no longer useful. This is especially true if the rules were developed during events that have a low chance of happening again.

A major task in communication is to ensure that we aren’t using outdated guidelines and rules to drive our interpretations and emotions. For example,

“I was bitten by a dog as a child so I will fear all dogs for the rest of my life” (actually, one dog bite is not sufficient evidence that all dogs will bite you)

“My last wife betrayed me; I’ll never trust another woman again” (betrayal can hurt . . . badly . . . and trusting again can be difficult. However, most relationships do not end in betrayal; in fact, like learning to ride a horse, you will probably get bucked once or twice—that’s a safe guideline; “I’ll get bucked every time” is not.

“I was mistreated for years as a child; I must really be a terrible person.” Yes, it can be easy to imagine that. That’s because the event can be so powerful and emotionally draining that it’s hard to pay attention to the huge amount of evidence to the contrary—it’s there, I promise!

The Process for Managing Emotions

The good news is that you can identify and change the outdated thoughts or misperceptions that are creating problematic emotions:

1. Identify the Emotion. Be aware of what emotion you are experiencing during a social interaction or event.
2. Is the Emotion Useful or Appropriate? Determine if the emotion is one that is useful or would lead to socially appropriate behavior (that is, what would happen if you acted on the emotion?) If the emotion makes sense and you’re okay with the associated behavior, then you are likely using the correct interpretation of the situation.
3. Find the Thought Creating the Emotion. If the emotion and behavior don’t work for you, then you will need to find the thought creating the emotion. Since you are thinking several thoughts at the same time, you’ll need to dig around for the thought. This can take a lot of patience and practice, since thoughts that have been lingering in the far reaches of your mind, sometimes for decades, can be tough to find. Mental health counselors are trained to help clients identify thoughts that are silently wreaking havoc on our emotions and behaviors, so don’t rule out a need for some professional help in identifying outdated rules and guidelines.
4. Evaluate the Thought. Once you find the thought, you need to critically evaluate it. IMPORTANT: If you are experiencing a strong negative emotion, such as anxiety, anger, or depression, it is very possible that you are using outdated thoughts to maintain the emotion–remember, for most of us, outside of warzones, domestic violence, or bank heists, there is little need for anger or even anxiety. Are you generalizing a non-relevant experience to the present? Are you placing too high of a likelihood on a negative outcome? Are you ignoring positive aspects of the situation and overfocusing on the negative aspects? Are you coming to a negative conclusion without sufficient evidence to support that outcome?
5. Change the Thought. If you determine that the thought creating the emotion is distorted by outdated rules or experiences, you’ll need to change the thought to something more adaptive.

This is simple and challenging, and it can bring up events from your past that can be difficult to think about. That’s the hard work of emotion management and therapy.

Remember, no one can make you feel an emotion; you are in complete control. Appropriate, adaptive thoughts will lead to healthy adaptive emotions . . . you just need to perform a manual system override!