Emotions: Natural vs. Manufactured

Hi there, folks. For those of you thoroughly uninterested in fashion, I apologize for the last 3 posts. Go on and ignore them and tune in to today's topic: Natural vs. Manufactured Emotions.

I'd like to talk about two different states of emotions so that we can talk about how to work through them. The first category is Natural Emotions. Natural emotions are hard-wired - we all have them. These are emotions that have been found throughout human generations and across many, many different cultures. See the research of Paul Ekman, Ph.D. for more information. By hard-wired, I mean that these emotions are biologically-driven. Certain life experiences and situations are naturally bound to elicit these hard-wired emotions.

For example, when a loved one passes away, a natural emotion is sadness and grief in response to a loss.

When you see an attractive potential mate, natural emotional responses are arousal or lust (disclaimer: it is not hard-wired to act on these feelings).

When you encounter a something smelling or icky (e.g., stinky old food in the fridge, certain kinds of injuries if you aren't desensitized to them), disgust is a natural emotion to have.

Natural emotions, if allowed to be felt, run their course and dissipate on their own! All you need to do is allow yourself to feel them. A very funny (though crude, at times, be forewarned) comedian gives an excellent description of responses to natural emotions. I'd like to share it here because I think he explains the way natural emotions can be felt and dissipate. As a disclaimer, this is a pretty simplistic and comedically-oriented explanation, but I think it works just fine for our purposes. He starts talking about emotions and our modern approach to them (unhealthy distraction) at 00:56.

He talks about how we always have this "forever empty" inside of us - I like to think of that as comedic hyperbole and don't agree with that. Overall, though, he gives a good description about how if we just simply sit with natural emotion, allow ourselves to feel and process it, it dissipates and fades away.

The other, likely more common (depending on your personality and current circumstances), state of emotions that shows up for lots of people is Manufactured Emotion.

Manufactured emotions are not hard-wired or biologically-driven. They are produced by the way we are thinking, or viewing the world. Our thoughts produce many, many of our emotions and many of the negative emotions people feel day-to-day can be altered depending on how they are thinking.

While natural emotions dissipate if you sit with them, in contrast, manufactured emotions simply persist the more you sit with them. If you simply sit and stew with the same unhelpful thinking, the resultant negative emotions will often simply grow stronger rather than fade away.

Therefore, with manufactured emotions, you want to notice your thinking style and see if you can adjust it to make your thinking more balanced.

This is a very simplistic way of describing Cognitive Therapy. If you are interested in learning more about how to adjust your thinking style, there are tons of resources available. It is often helpful to talk with a professional about your thinking style because it can be really tricky to catch and address your thoughts all by yourself. I encourage you to seek professional help from a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist trained in Cognitive Therapy if you are interested in learning more about professional resources for maladaptive thinking styles.

To sum up -

Natural emotion, sit with it, let it ride through you, and let it fade away!

Manufactured [negative] emotions: notice the thinking that came right before the emotions showed up and see if you can find a more balanced way of looking at things!

I'll give more information on balanced thinking in a later post.

Feel more, do less :).