If your everyday practice is to open to your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that—then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
—Pema Chödrön (Buddhist teacher)
Neuroscientists can tell us where in the brain various emotions reside. However, they tell us precious little about how we can change “undesirable” emotions such as sadness, anger and fear. Nor do they shed much light on how people change in general.
Whether we admit it or not, we all want to change something fundamental about ourselves. Most likely though, being human, our first effort may be targeted at changing whoever is in our line of sight. We look for ways to get others to change—be they our spouses, employers, children or parents—and search out ways to cajole or coerce them to get with the program. With a modicum of insight, however, we will probably recognize that deep change must occur first within ourselves. Yet, just how this long-term change process occurs remains elusive.
In the attempt to improve our lives, we may urge ourselves with the familiar refrains: “Just apply yourself … Start exercising tomorrow … Cut down on the sweets, booze, shopping … Pull yourself together … Come on, shape up, work out … You can do it if you really want.” And so it goes over and again. These exhortations and good intentions are all admirable efforts at what we call self-control. While this ability is an important life skill, it is often modest in what it can accomplish and is fraught with obvious shortcomings. Frequently, this strategy only works in the short run, leading us blindly into the quicksand of guilt and self-recrimination. Ironically, there are some days when it is no simple matter just to schedule a dental appointment or arrange for an annual medical exam.
Consider the following snapshot of goal setting: On Monday, John and his wife conclude that they could use some extra income for their daughter’s dental braces. John, seeking a raise, summons his capacity for self-control. While keeping in mind his value to the firm, he awaits a strategically opportune moment. When he receives a generous compliment from his boss during their routine Friday meeting, he is cued to delicately broach the topic of the raise. In order to hold all of this information in check, until the ripe moment, his brain must employ volitional memory. John’s voluntary memory has to keep his clandestine intentions intact for four days. That’s not too hard, but not simple either. Anyone who has ever said to herself, midweek, “This weekend I will go the gym and work out,” knows how elusive it can be to keep that intention fresh. To get up on Saturday, pull the jogging shoes out of the closet and go to the gym before family responsibilities crowd out precious personal time is no small achievement.
Accomplishing the larger, longer-range goals, such as losing weight, “making ourselves” more attractive or creating more freedom in our lives, can be so intimidating that we may give up early or never approach them at all—even at serious costs to our health and well-being. This is where self-control falls short. Resolutions falter as soon as we are under stress or get distracted by the myriad of day-to-day tasks. For more sustained and meaningful goals, volitional memory is inadequate. Self-control is not able to support enough sustained (retained, i.e., remembered) motivation to achieve our big plans over the long haul. For those grand projects and aspirations we need to access a deeper, more intrinsic, memory system, one that engages our emotional compass and guides our responses without overt conscious directives.
For long-term goals (e.g., losing weight, changing careers, getting in shape or forming intimate enduring relationships), emotional-experiential memory must be evoked. This type of involuntary memory grabs our attention and continuously motivates us through emotional signals well after declarative (laundry list) memory is completely forgotten. Long after the health goals we set for ourselves some months ago have evaporated, emotional memory comes to our aid when we least expect it. It may visit us in the form of an especially vivid dream or an unexpected attraction. For example, casually walking through a farmers market, a display of brightly colored fruits and vegetables may catch our eye. As our senses absorb this yummy array of healthy foods, we begin selecting some of the produce. This beckoning is not due to our conscious determination to lose weight, but rather because the signals from the primitive instinctual regions in our brains (programmed for nutrient-seeking behaviors) are no longer overridden. These brain mechanisms signal positive nutritive choices by evoking certain subjective feeling states that guide what we pick—those of attraction and avoidance. Similarly, our sexual partner selections, which may have been previously driven by compulsions and risky flirtations, will be guided by affinities for soft nurturing feelings, erotic tenderness, goodness and safety.
In contrast to volitional memory, feeling-based memory function stores all experiences implicitly (like learning how to ride a bike) and evaluates them from the emotional tone they evoke. It is this attention-grabbing reaction that prompts us to retain or reactivate our motivation and sustain determination to go the distance required for substantive change. One example is the woman who wants to lose weight for health reasons (a mental idea—unable to sustain the goal) and adapts the (emotional) strategy of imaging herself, in a sexy dress, walking into a party and turning heads. Leaving aside the possibility that one of the reasons for the woman’s excessive weight might have been a desire to not have just such attention called to her body, the imaging strategy is a reasonable one. The point here is that conscious deliberation is easily forgotten and buried among the flotsam and jetsam of our daily lives. However, this frailty is sidestepped when sensations and feelings are evoked. Perhaps the reason that “the elephant never forgets” is because her memories are emotional ones.
In contrast to volitional memory, emotional memory often operates outside the range of conscious awareness. Rather than holding a verbal idea in our conscious minds (“I have to wait until the meeting on Friday” or “Remember to eat salads for lunch to lose weight”), experiential memory makes use of what have been called somatic markers.138 These are emotions or physical sensations that inform us about a situation based on past experiences or feelings. Somatic markers might be the fluttering butterflies in our stomachs when we are anxious, the flushing of our cheeks when we are embarrassed, wide-open eyes when we hear an idea that excites us, the relaxation of our body muscles signaling the relief we feel when we complete a crucial task or the lightness and easy breathing we notice when we get something important off our chest.
The reason the bodily felt sense has the power to creatively influence our behaviors is precisely because it is involuntary; feelings are not evoked through acts of will. They give us information that does not come from the conscious mind. “Emotional intelligence” and “emotional literacy” communicate through the felt-sense/somatic markers and are vitally important to the conduct of our lives. Indeed, the writer Daniel Goleman139 claims that it accounts for eighty% of our success in life. However, emotions can also lead us astray.
When psychologists talk about change, they often equate it with insight. This assumption, though often subliminal, has had a profound influence on theories and therapies purported to help people deal with “mental” and “emotional” disorders. However, when we investigate this further, we see that understanding, talk and change frequently have little relationship to one other. Woody Allen, asked if he still had his same symptoms, quipped that he was only on his “fifteenth year” of psychoanalysis. If only he had known that the process of change has to do primarily with being able to alter one’s internal feeling states, and that “psychological” problems arise when these states have become habitual or “stuck.” These chronic emotional states in turn dominate our ways of thinking, imagining and behaving. An understanding of how deeply rooted feelings can change is at the core of any effective therapy. It is particularly germane to how traumatized individuals can begin to free themselves from the many behavioral reenactments and repetitive feelings of fear, numbness, rage, terror, helplessness and despair.
The disparate roles of sensation, feeling and cognition in therapy have followed a convoluted and confounding path. At times emotions have been neglected, while cognition was esteemed. At other times, cognition has been dismissed, while emotions were practically worshiped. And most of the time, with very few exceptions, the therapeutic role of sensations has remained unknown. The balanced attention to sensation, feeling, cognition and élan vital (life-energy) remains the emergent therapeutic future for transforming the whole person.
Freud, following his gifted teacher Charcot, initially believed that to cure neurosis, the patient must “relive” the painful (traumatic) memories that she had “repressed.” In addition, this reliving had to include a strong emotional component, a dramatic catharsis associated with the precipitating event. Employing this method, Freud came to believe that the precipitating event was frequently childhood molestation, usually perpetrated by the father on his daughter. (The vast majority of Freud’s patients were so-called hysterical women).
Needless to say, Freud’s theory was not well received by the professional community, many of them doctors, bankers and lawyers. Most of them were fathers as well. From what is now known about the prevalence of sexual abuse, some of them almost certainly had been guilty of incest themselves. For this and other reasons, Freud backed away both from the seduction theory (as it was ironically labeled) as well as from his therapeutic method of uncovering repressed memories in order to relive them through strong emotional catharsis. In what must have been a profound betrayal to many of his patients, Freud began to interpret their symptoms not as deriving from sexual violation, but as being rooted instead in their childhood “oedipal” wishes, fantasies to have sex with the parent of the opposite gender. Freud may have also been unnerved when, during the intense cathartic reliving, patients would frequently transfer those (alleged) oedipal lusts onto him. Freud, with a discomfort in his own sexuality, appears to have shrunk from staying present with his patients’ confused, volatile sexuality and, thusly, betrayed them in yet another way. For these and other reasons, it appears that Freud abandoned the “hypno-abreactive” techniques in favor of free association to “help” the patient become conscious of their oedipal wishes and then to (somehow) sublimate these infantile “lusts.” In this way, Freud believed that by recognizing their fantasies, his patients’ neuroses could be transformed to “ordinary suffering.” A contemporary (Pierre Janet140) and a student (Wilhelm Reich) of Freud saw things differently.
The Austrian-born psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich was convinced that his teacher had made a terrible mistake on two accounts. First, Reich believed that neurosis arose both from real events as well as from deep conflicts. Secondly, he was adamant that cure could only be realized when there was a powerful emotional release at the same time as the patient remembered a traumatic event. However, Reich went further than Freud in his treatment. He clearly recognized that the painful emotions evoked in reliving traumas had to be replaced (in the course of treatment) with deeply pleasurable sensations in order for health to be restored and maintained. Reich also believed that repression, of both the negative emotions as well as the pleasurable ones, was a physical reality, manifest in chronically tight and spastic muscles. These bodily restrictions caused constrained breathing and awkward, uncoordinated or robotic movements. He named this muscular rigidity character armor and perceived it as a mechanism having two unitary functions. While enabling the emotional component of the memory to be repressed, it also stifled the capacity to feel pleasurable sensations.
Reich had a further conceptual breakthrough with the realization that one did not have to dig for traumatic memories as Freud believed. (This excavation was a central part of Freud’s free association treatment.) Rather, Reich’s therapy addressed the “body/character-armoring,” which had the function of freezing the emotions while maintaining the neurotic symptoms in the present. His therapy worked aggressively on two fronts. First, he brought the patient’s characterological defenses to their awareness by confronting their behaviors such as obsequious politeness or passive-aggressive hostility. In addition, he “attacked” the muscular armoring, directly, through vigorous manipulation and massage of the tight muscles. Reich also believed that the repression (the damming up) of adult sexuality was in itself one of the main causes of the neurosis. This is not dissimilar to Freud’s very early belief that “aktuelle” neurosis was the result of certain sexual aberrations such as masturbation and “coitus interruptus.”
The end of Reich’s life was truly a national disgrace. In the sulfurous cloud of the McCarthy era, his books were burned by the FBI. Because of his radical ideas about sexuality, Reich was imprisoned for the trumped-up charge of violating interstate commerce laws. He died, in 1957, in the Pennsylvania federal penitentiary, an embittered visionary. With his death and Freud’s abandonment of both “real” trauma and emotional catharsis, the therapeutic interest in emotionality waned. Meanwhile, the movement toward behaviorism and rationality came into its ascendance. By the 1950s, such therapies as Skinnerian conditioning and Albert Ellis’s rational emotive therapy (RET) were dominating psychotherapy. (Incidentally, this therapy had very little to do with emotions.) The synergism of these approaches is now generally known as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). However, by the 1960s, the pendulum had begun to swing in the opposite direction. Emotions were finding their way back into the therapeutic community.
Two of Reich’s patients (who later became his students) were Alexander Lowen and Fritz Perls. The first he referred to as the “uppity uptown tailor,” while the other he contrasted as “the dirty old man from the Bowery.”141 Both developed parallel extensions of Reich’s work, incorporating various aspects of his ideas and methods. While Lowen continued to emphasize emotional expression, and added the function of the legs in “grounding” emotions, Perls held to a more complex view of the organism. His therapeutic approach incorporated many ideas taken from the gestalt psychologies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including those of Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Goldstein. However, in the anarchy of the 1960s, with its revolutionary disregard for rationality and the status quo, emotional catharsis was resurrected as a sure path to “liberation” and “freedom.”
However, this process of emotional abreaction can become a self-perpetuating mechanism by which patients crave further “emotional release.” Unfortunately, this process moves into an ever-tightening spiral that frequently culminates in a therapeutic dead end. Such was the case, for example, in the 1970s, when Arthur Janov promoted his primal therapy. (Reich had warned his contemporaries about mindlessly using emotional catharsis, pejoratively calling its promoters “freedom peddlers.”) “Neo-Reichian release,” “encounter groups,” “primal therapy,” “rebirthing” and other dramatic therapies co-opted the staid preeminence of the “talking cure” with an exuberant expressive zeal. Presently, at the beginning of the third millennium, we are seeing an emerging synthesis, a movement toward a more balanced emphasis on emotion and reason. In particular, experiential therapies are emerging, such as those described by Diana Fosha and others.142 These include dialectical behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).
The ability to effectively contain and process extreme emotional states is one of the linchpins both of effective, truly dynamical trauma therapy and of living a vital, robust life. While love can sway us off our feet, powerful emotions like rage, fear and sorrow can pull our legs out from under us. We can be driven nearly insane by rage, paralyzed by fear and drowned by sorrow. Once triggered, such violent emotions can take over our existence. Rather than feeling our emotions, we become them; we are swallowed up by these emotions. This can be quite a dilemma because being informed by our emotions, not domineered by them, is crucial in directing our lives. We may have too much or too little; they may come upon us like a torrential flood or leave us dry like a parched desert. They may lead us in a positive direction or cause us untold suffering. They may prompt creative exultation or may provoke disastrous actions and poor decisions. They can lift us up or tear us down. No matter what the case, most of us realize that emotions (whatever they are) play a central role in the conduct of our lives.
The key to not being swept away by intense emotional states is to catch them before they ignite and inflame us. The Buddhists have an expression for this: to “cool and extinguish the glowing embers before they ignite into a consuming flame.” Constraint allows us to tame and befriend emotions so that we may be guided by them. It is the way we can become aware of our emotional undercurrent before it becomes an out-of-control emotion. The tools that allow us to do this are the twin sisters of awareness and embodiment.
As people learn to master their emotions, they also begin to harness the underlying impulses to action. For example, underneath the emotions of rage and anger are the impulses of aggression. Healthy aggression is about protecting ourselves and those who are close to us. It is also about setting clear boundaries and getting the things we need, including food, shelter and mating partners. It is what empowers our lust for life. This passion for life must be supported by a capacity to embody a range of purposeful emotions. For now, let us back off and ask the following question: What is an emotion, anyway?
Binet posed this very provocative question at the dawn of the twentieth century.143 He opened the debate with a salvo that eludes a solution even to this day, despite the most vigorous of arguments. Simple to ask, though difficult to answer, the question remains: What the heck is an emotion?
Theories of emotion, abundant and diverse, have had a long, twisted, confounding and often-contradictory history. They have been grappled with in turn by philosophy, psychology and evolutionary biology. Each of these disciplines has attempted to define, refine or, simply, understand emotion.
“Emotion as a scientific concept,” wrote Elizabeth Duffy, the matriarch of modern psychophysiology, “is worse than useless.” On the basis of extensive physiological recording, she felt that there was no way of differentiating one emotional state from another. In other words, distinguishing an emotion solely on the basis of physiological measurements (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, temperature, skin conductance, etc.) seemed impossible. Thus, emotions, from her vantage point in 1936, were unworthy of scientific study. Yet recently there has been a rich vein of inquiry and grounding in the emerging field of the “affective neurosciences,”144 demonstrating distinct brain systems involved in the expression of various emotions (e.g., fear, anger and sadness). However, the question of felt (as opposed to expressed) emotional experience has been all but neglected. Psychology, questing for objective respectability, has attempted to purge subjectivity from its midst. It has, in the process, unwittingly thrown out the proverbial baby (the subjective feeling experience) with the bathwater by studying primarily the expression of emotion.
Much of philosophy and early psychology were of the logical, “common-sense” conviction regarding the sequence by which an emotion was generated. Today, like the early philosophers, we resort to similar explanations. For example, when something provocative happened to René Descartes (perhaps someone raised his fist and called him a jerk or alternatively patted him and told him, “You’re a great guy”), he might have believed that his brain recognized this provocation as being worthy of an emotional response—anger, fear, sadness or elation. Had the physiology of his times been more advanced, he would have interpreted the next step as his brain telling his body what to do: increase your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing; tense your muscles, secrete sweat and/or make goose bumps. These are responses controlled by the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system, preparing the organism for various actions related to fight or flight. For Descartes, and for most of us, this sequence makes perfectly logical sense and seems to describe how we experience emotion.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, William James, who had studied with the experimental psychologists of his time, took an experiential, rather than philosophical and speculative, approach to the study of emotions. James would set up imagined situations, such as being chased by a bear, and then through experiential introspection would attempt to infer the chain of events by which an emotion, such as fear, was generated. In these subjective experiments he would sense into the interior of his body, as well as noting his thoughts and internal images. Ultimately, he arrived at a rather unexpected conclusion. Common sense dictates that when we see a bear, we are frightened, and then motivated by fear, we flee. However, in his careful, reflective observations, James concluded that rather than running because we are afraid, we are afraid because we are running (from the bear). In James’s words,
My theory … is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. “Common sense” says we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations may first be interposed between, and the more rational (accurate) statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.145
This counterintuitive (bottom-up) view challenged the Cartesian/cognitive (top-down) paradigm where the conscious mind first recognizes the source of threat and then commands the body to respond: to flee, to fight or to fold. James’s bottom-up perception—that we feel fear because we are running away from the threat—while only partially correct, does make a crucial point about the illusory nature of perception. We commonly believe, for example, that when we touch a hot object, we draw our hand away because of the pain. However, the reality is that if we were to wait until we experienced pain in order to withdraw our hand, we might damage it beyond repair. Every student of elementary physiology learns that there is first a reflex withdrawal of the hand, which is only then followed by the sensation of pain. The pain might well serve the function of reminding us not to pick up a potentially hot stone from the fire pit a second time, but it has little to do with our hand withdrawing when it is first burned. Similarly, every student of basic chemistry learns, hopefully after the first encounter, that hot test tubes look just like cold ones. However, what we falsely perceive, and believe as fact, is that the pain causes us to withdraw our hand. James was able to perceive that fear was not a primarily cognitive affair, that there was a muscular and visceral reaction in his body first, and that it was the perception of this body reaction that then generated the emotion of fear. What James observed was that, yes, when the brain calculates that there is danger, it makes this assessment so quickly that there isn’t enough time for the person to become consciously aware of it. What happens instead, according to James, is that the brain canvases the body to see how it is reacting in the moment. In what was a revelatory revision, James relocated the consciousness of feeling from mind to body. In doing this he demonstrated a rare prescience about what neuroscience was only to begin to discover a hundred years later.
Ben Libet,146 neurosurgeon and neurophysiologist at the University of California–San Francisco’s Medical School, conducted a revealing, but little known, series of studies over thirty years ago. He essentially confirmed James’s observational chain. Here’s a little experiment that you can do right now. Hold one of your arms out in front of you with your hand facing upward. Then, whenever you feel like it (of your own “free will”), flex your wrist. Do this several times and watch what happens in your mind. You probably felt as though you first consciously decided to move and then, following your intention, you moved it. It feels to you as though the conscious decision caused the action.
Libet asked experimental subjects to do just this while he systematically measured the timing of three things: (1) The subjects “conscious” decision to move was marked on a special clock. (2) The beginning of (what is called) the readiness potential in the motor cortex was measured using EEG electrodes on the scalp. (3) The start of the actual action was measured using electrodes on the wrist. So which do you think (based on your experience in the preceding experiment) came first? Was it the decision to move, activity in the motor cortex, or the actual movement? The answer, defying credulity, dramatically contradicted common sense. The brain’s activity began about 500 milliseconds (half a second!) before the person was aware of deciding to act. The conscious decision came far too late to be the cause of the action. It was as though consciousness was a mere afterthought—a way of “explaining to ourselves,” an action not evoked by consciousness. As peculiar as this might seem, it fits in with previous experiments that Libet did on exposed brains as part of a neurosurgical procedure. Here, Libet had demonstrated that about half a second of continuous activity of stimulation in the sensory cortex is needed for a person to become aware of a sensory stimulus.147 I had the opportunity to watch one of these procedures, and it was jaw-dropping to see it on the oscilloscope.
In summary, Libet found that the “conscious” decision to perform a simple action (such as pushing a button) preceded the action. This conscious decision, however, occurred only after the “premotor” area in the brain first fired with a burst of electrical activity. In other words, people decide to act only after their brain unconsciously prepares them to do so.
Daniel Wegner, at Harvard University, recently advanced and refined this proposition.148 In one of his studies, an illusion was created by a series of mirrors. Subjects, thinking that they were looking at their own arms, were actually seeing (in the mirror) the movements of an experimenter’s arm. When the experimenter’s arms moved (according to the instructions of another researcher), the subjects reported that they had made and therefore willed the movements (when, in fact, they had not even moved their arms)!
Wilhelm Wundt (considered one of the founders of experimental psychology) expands on our attachment to the notion of free will: “Nothing seems to us to belong so closely to our personality, to be so completely our property as our will.” Yet, the results of Libet and Wegner, taken together, seriously challenge (if not put to rest) our common-sense understanding of consciousness and our love affair with free will. The annihilation of free will, suggested in Wegner’s book,149 goes against what we believe is the very core of our existence as autonomous human beings. It challenges such cherished beliefs as the capacity for planning, foresight and responsible action. Who or what are we without the power of free will? This dispute of free will, which has been revered in Western thought for three thousand years, is not just another philosopher’s opinion, but rather stems from a variety of dispassionate laboratory research. Einstein, in paraphrasing the philosopher Schopenhauer, restated the conundrum of free will with his characteristic understated wisdom: “A human can very well do what he wants but cannot will what he wants.”
William James, a century ago, had argued that a person’s passing states of consciousness create a false sense that an ‘I’ or ego runs the show. Neuroscientist Wegner took this further, adding that the average people’s belief that they even have a self that consciously controls their actions is simply an illusion. Is this a farewell to Freud’s ego and Descartes’ cogito ergo sum? Although this new credo, “I think; therefore I am,” was an important start in freeing people from the rigidity of church doctrine, it’s in great need of revision.150 Today’s credo should be more like, “I prepare to move, I act, I sense, I feel, I perceive, I reflect, I think and therefore I am.” So what might actually be going on in consciousness? And can the idea of free will be somehow reformulated?
Together, the studies of James, Libet and Wegner suggest that before a “voluntary” movement is made, there is an unconscious premovement. Because we are generally not conscious of this premovement impulse (analogous to our withdrawing of our hand from a hot object before we feel the pain), we falsely believe that we (our egos) are directly willing the movement. So where does movement originate from?
Let us consider the following experiment provided by a capricious Mother Nature that will allow us to explore the blurred border between conscious and unconscious stimulus and response. It is now known that there are multiple visual (and other sensory) systems that register nerve impulses in areas of the brain that are primarily nonconscious. These brain stem areas are in addition to the conscious one in the back (occipital region) of our cerebral cortex—known dispassionately as area 17. There is a revealing condition called blindsight.151 This strange affliction is due to damage to a part of the visual cortex on one side of the brain. This causes a blind region on the opposite side of the visual field. If an object is presented in this part of the visual field, patients are unaware of seeing anything at all. Lights can be flashed, objects moved or even writing displayed, and these patients will insist, unequivocally, that they see absolutely nothing. Yet detailed experiments show that while denying all visual experience, they can nevertheless point to the location of a flashed light, or discriminate between upward and downward movement, between vertical or horizontal stripes and between various different objects. Oliver Sacks, from his many moving and wise vignettes about the tragic, yet compelling, consequences of neurological disorders, describes the case of Virgil.152 Virgil’s entire visual cortex was knocked out by oxygen deprivation, rendering him completely blind, yet Sacks describes Virgil’s wife’s inexplicable observations: “Virgil had told her that he was completely blind, yet she observed that he would reach for objects, avoid obstacles and behave as though he were seeing.” Such is the enigma of this type of “implicit” information processing.
The explanation that is generally accepted for this phenomenon is that destruction of the visual cortex still leaves several other (primitive, subcortical) visual pathways intact. Sensory information to these somehow registers basic information that normally has the function of directing eye movements to garner more data. These data, however, also render a flimsy sketch of which we are largely unconscious. It is this unconscious information that evokes the readiness for movement (i.e., premovement). It is also this primitive circuitry that makes possible the reasonably accurate “guesses” that are observed in people with blindsight disorder. Hence, we are once again appreciative of the prompting to respond to events before we become overtly aware of them. Consider your response to the fleeting shadow, the subtle gesture of another person or a distant sound. Each of these events can evoke in us survival-bound responses without our ever being aware that something in our environment has triggered them. Notably, when we have been traumatized, we are particularly sensitized to (and hyperaroused by) these fleeting stimuli. Our senses of seeing, hearing and smell provide countless stimuli that cause us to overreact, even though we may be unaware of the presence of those subliminal stimuli and our premotor responses to them. As a result we may, and often do, attribute our actions to irrelevant or manufactured causes. This attribution of causation is like the subjects in Wegner’s experiments who falsely believed that they had willed the movement of the experimenter’s arms.
It is specifically because we are unaware of our environmentally triggered premovement that we falsely believe we are consciously initiating and constructing the movement. Furthermore, when the (unacknowledged) premovement drive is strong, we may feel compelled to fully enact the entire movement sequence. Two confusions of causality occur for traumatized individuals. The first one is the unawareness of the premovement trigger. The second is the extent of the response. Imagine the consternation of an individual trapped in the full-blown, ferocious reenactment of a survival-bound response. Take for instance the Vietnam vet who wakes up to find himself strangling his terrified wife, unaware that it was the backfiring of a distant car, or even the light footsteps of their young child in the hallway, that provoked his freakish behavior and grossly exaggerated reaction. However, years earlier, when sleeping in a bamboo thicket, under fire from the Vietcong, his immediate kill-response was an essential, life-preserving action. It may only take a very mild stimulus to abruptly trigger the tightly coiled spring (the kill-or-be-killed survival reaction) into an intense, out-of-control, emotional eruption.
I know of only one way to break compulsive cycles like this, and in the process expand consciousness toward greater freedom. It is to become aware of the premovement before it graduates into a full-blown movement sequence. It is to extinguish the spark before it ignites the tinder, as emphasized by Buddhist teachings.
Many times in the past, I walked with my dog in the Colorado Mountains.
Pouncer, a dingo mix, was imbued with a strong instinctual urge to chase deer and other swift creatures of the upland forests. Try as I might, it was not possible to neutralize this “habit” by reprimanding him. If I tried to call him back or foolishly admonished his behavior when he returned, breathless and panting from the chase, it was of no avail. However, if when we encountered deer up ahead, at the very moment his posture changed (just hinting at his readiness to leap forward), I would firmly but gently say, “No, Pouncer. Heel.” He would then calmly continue on our walk, striding enthusiastically by my side. Then there is the following story of a brash young samurai sword fighter and a venerated Zen master.
The vital balancing act between expression and restraint requires that when we experience a strong emotional feeling, we need not necessarily act upon it, as this teaching story demonstrates.
A young, brash samurai swordsman confronted a venerated Zen master with the following demand: “I want you to tell me the truth about the existence of heaven and hell.”
The master replied gently and with delicate curiosity, “How is it that such an ugly and untalented man as you can become a samurai?”
Immediately, the wrathful young samurai pulled out his sword and raised it above his head, ready to strike the old man and cut him in half. Without fear, and in complete calm, the Zen master gazed upward and spoke softly: “This is hell.” The samurai paused, sword held above his head. His arms fell like leaves to his side, while his face softened from its angry glare. He quietly reflected. Placing his sword back into its sheath, he bowed to the teacher in reverence. “And this,” the master replied again with equal calm, “is heaven.”
Here the samurai, his sword held high at the peak of feeling full of rage (and at the moment before executing the prepared-for action), learned to hold back and restrain his rage instead of mindlessly expressing it. In refraining (with the master’s quick guidance) from making his habitual emotional expression of attack, he transformed his “hell” of rage to a “heaven” of peace.
One could also speculate on what unconscious thoughts (and images) were stirred when the master provoked the swordsman’s ire. Perhaps the samurai was startled and at first even agreed with the characterization that he was ugly and untalented. This strong reaction to this insult (we might hypothesize) derived from his parents, teachers and others who humiliated him as a child. Perhaps he had a mental picture of being shamed in front of his school classmates. And then the other micro-fleeting “counter thought”—that no one would dare to call him that again and make him feel small and worthless. This thought and associated (internal) picture, coupled with a momentary physical sensation of startle, triggered the rage that led him down the compulsive, driven road to perdition. That was, at least, until his “Zen therapist,” precisely at the peak of rage, kept him from habitually expressing this “protective” emotion (really a defense against his feelings of smallness and helplessness) and forced him to the ownership of his real power and peaceful surrender.
In the examples of Pouncer and the Zen master, choice occurred at the critical moment before executing attack. With the Zen master’s critical intervention, the samurai held back and felt the preparation to strike with his sword. In this highly charged state he paused and was able to restrain and transmute his violent rage into intense energy and a state of clarity, gratefulness, presence and grace. It is the ability to hold back, restrain and contain a powerful emotion that allows a person to creatively channel that energy. Containment (a somatic rooting of Freud’s “sublimation”) buys us time and, with self-awareness, enables us to separate out what we are imagining and thinking from our physical sensations. And this fraction of a second of restraint, as we just saw, is the difference between heaven and hell. When we can maintain this “creative neutrality,” we begin to dissolve the emotional compulsion to react as though our life depends on responses that are largely inappropriate. The uncoupling of sensation from image and thought is what diffuses the highly charged emotions and allows them to transform fluidly into sensation-based gradations of feelings. This is not at all the same as suppressing or repressing them. For all of us, and particularly for the traumatized individual, the capacity to transform the “negative” emotions of fear and rage is the difference between heaven and hell.
The power and tenacity of emotional compulsions (the acting out of rage, fear, shame and sorrow) are not to be underestimated. Fortunately, there are practical antidotes to this cascade of misery. With body awareness, it is possible to “deconstruct” these emotional fixations. As an aside, let’s take a peak at the inner working of our brains and minds as we free ourselves from the tyranny of driven emotions such as fear and rage. The thin sliver of brain tissue that makes us conscious is found in the prefrontal cortex, the forward part of our frontal lobes. In particular there are two loci. The one toward the side is called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This part makes conscious our relationship to the outside world. The second part, located toward the middle, is called the medial prefrontal cortex. This is the only part of the cerebral cortex that apparently can modify the response of the limbic or emotional brain—particularly the amygdala, which is responsible for intense survival emotions. The medial prefrontal cortex (particularly the insular cingulate cortex) receives direct input from muscles, joints and visceral organs and registers them into consciousness.153 Through awareness of these interoceptive sensations (i.e., through the process of tracking bodily sensations), we are able to access and modify our emotional responses and attain our core sense of self.
A first step in this ongoing process is refusing to be seduced into (the content of) our negative thoughts or swept away by the potent or galvanized drive of an emotion, and instead returning to the underlying physical sensations. At first this can seem unsettling, even frightening. This is mostly because it is unfamiliar—we have become accustomed to the (secondary) habitual emotions of distress and to our (negative) repetitive thoughts. We have also become used to searching for the source of our discomfort outside of ourselves. We simply are unfamiliar with experiencing something as it is, without the encumbrance of analysis and judgment. As the sensation-thought-emotion complex is uncoupled, experiencing moves forward toward subtler, freer contours of feeling. Eugene Gendlin, the originator of the term felt sense,154 conveys this with simplicity when he says, “Nothing that feels bad is ever the last step.” This experiential process involves the capacity to hold the emotion in abeyance, without allowing it to execute in its habitual way. This holding back is not an act of suppression but is rather one of forming a bigger container, a larger experiential vessel, to hold and differentiate the sensations and feelings. “Going into” the emotional expression is frequently a way of trying to “release” the tension we are feeling, while avoiding deeper feelings. It is akin to a whistling teakettle letting off steam but really making no lasting change in its capacity to hold charge (as steam). If, on the other hand, one imagines a strong rubber balloon or bladder being filled with steam, you would see the size of the bladder expanding to contain this increasing “charge.” With containment, emotion shifts into a different sensation-based “contour” with softer feelings that morph into deepening, sensate awareness of “OK-ness.” This is the essence of emotional self-regulation, self-acceptance, goodness and change.
Let’s take the example of anger. The feeling of anger is derived from the (postural) attitude of wanting to strike out and hit. However, if one begins to attack—hitting, kicking, tearing, biting—the feeling of anger then shifts rapidly to that of hitting, kicking, and so on. In other words, and contrary to common belief, as you execute the preparation for action, the underlying feelings are diminished if not lost.155 When we cry, for example, our sadness often “magically disappears.” However, this may be more like the teakettle just letting off steam, without changing the underlying sadness. Some of the fundamental “expressive” therapies may fall into the trap of trying to drain the emotional swamp through undue emphasis on habitual venting. Yet, what may be visible when the very deepest wells of sadness are touched is a single, trickling tear. As for anger, recall a time when you shook your fist in anger at another person or were the recipient of such behavior. Was this a time when you really needed to defend yourself, or was it rather a way to let off steam and to bully the other person? This kind of intimidation is commonly seen in domestic violence. What was the effect of your action on their behaviors and theirs on yours? In any case, when we allow ourselves to be swept away into uncontained emotional expression, we may actually split off from what we are feeling. We are held hostage by these habitual emotions, unaware that they can only be transformed if we consciously restrain and resist being triggered into the expressive phase. The samurai lost his false self and found salvation by such a momentary interruption.
Containment promotes choice between a number of possible responses where previously there were only those of fear, rage, defensiveness and helplessness. In primitive life we needed to rapidly assess whether an individual we met in the forest was friend or foe, safe or dangerous. Would he attack? Should we attack first to protect ourselves, or would it be better to move quietly away? However, in modern times we are more apt to need our social skills to differentiate: do we like this person or dislike them, and what do they mean to us? Rather than coming to fisticuffs, we might first try to socially engage by conversing with the person; we might try to “disarm” him with an authentic smile. We are not acting out of emotion but rather are guided by sensate feelings—like or dislike? And most importantly we need to do this before we actually act—before we strike out with angry words. This way we enhance the capacity to prioritize possible motoric (and moment-to-moment) actions; we are able to choose which would be the most appropriate action.156
Biologically, the expression of emotion serves primarily as a vital signaling function. For example, when we are frightened, both our face and our entire posture let everyone around us know directly that we sense danger lurking out there in the forest or bushes. When the bomb went off at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the “deer in the headlights,” “get me out of here” look on swimmer Janet Evans’s face signaled to everyone (there and on TV) that we’re all in danger. Had she run from the scene, it is likely that many would have followed her nonverbal command. The look of fear is unmistakable. The eyes are wide open with raised eyebrows. The mouth is partially opened with the corners strongly retracted, and the ears drawn back.157
A herd of grazing elk being surveyed by an encroaching wolf pack employs their own method. Even knowing of their presence, the elk continue grazing—that is until one of its members first senses that the wolf has penetrated the “strike-ready” perimeter. Then in grunting and stiffening, all the others are signaled to follow its lead, dashing together toward safety.
However, fear can also stimulate panic. People are frequently hurt or die because of “deer in the headlights” freezing. Emotion here could certainly not be said to be adaptive. If we freeze walking across the street or while driving our car, catastrophe is surely at hand. Similarly, nausea and the accompanying disgust appropriately signal, both to oneself and to others, that an ingested substance should not be eaten. However, this response is counterproductive (even detrimental) when it is someone’s persistent pattern of engaging with food that is not tainted. This maladaptive response can be triggered by people also. Disgust, as a habitual reaction to an appropriate sexual touch or warm embrace, can destroy a relationship and ruin a person’s life.
A further example of emotional signaling is that of a baby crying in distress. This call for a mother’s attention is a life-or-death wail because if the baby cannot compel her ministrations, he will surely die. The baby is clearly signaling a life-preserving need, and the sound is such that the mother cannot readily ignore it. Yet, when as adults, we cry at our abandonment, this plaintive wail does little to bring back the lover who has fallen in love with someone else. In fact, habitual grief can rob us of our energy and prevent us from moving on with our lives and creating connections with someone new. In all three of these cases, life is supported by the signal function of emotion but is negated by its unabated, malapropos continuance.
We seem to be caught in an intractable contradiction here. In the case of loss, it may be that only by moving through (by feeling) grief can we transition toward a tolerance and courage that allow us to love again, while holding the haunting awareness that, inevitably, time may yet again claim our newly beloved for its own. Similarly, a certain amount of anger can help us remove obstacles in our lives, while habitual and explosive anger is almost always corrosive to relationships and the pursuit of what we truly want and need in life. It even frequently puts the pugilist or soldier in a compromised position. To help resolve this apparent paradox, we must first of all understand that emotions (which are reactive) and feelings (which are rooted in fluid internal sensations) are quite different. They are different in their respective functions and in the way they color our lives.
From a functional point of view, bodily/sensate feelings are the compass that we use to navigate through life. They permit us to estimate the value of the things to which we must incorporate or adapt. Our attraction to that which sustains us and our avoidance of that which is harmful are the essence of the feeling function. All feelings derive from the ancient precursors of approach and avoidance; they are in differing degrees positive or negative.
Sensation-based feelings guide the adaptive response to (e)valuations. Emotions, on the other hand, occur precisely when behavioral adaptations (based on these valuations) have failed! Contrary to what both Darwin and James thought, fear is not what directs escape; nor do we feel fear because we are running from a source of threat. The person who can freely run away from threat does not feel fear. He only feels danger (avoidance) and then experiences the action of running. It is solely when escape is prevented that we experience fear. Likewise, we experience anger when we are unable to strike our enemy or otherwise successfully resolve a conflict. I don’t expect you to accept this proposition as true but only ask you to keep an open inquiring mind. What has happened, you might ask, to our instinctual emotions, as described by Darwin? The answer is simply that they are still there. However, the critical intermediary steps that Darwin failed to recognize were later discovered by the carriers of his legacy, the ethologists.
A scene from an upland meadow helps to illustrate the differentiation of feelings and emotions. While you are strolling leisurely in an open meadow, a shadow suddenly moves in the periphery of your vision. Instinctively, all of your movement is arrested (with the feeling of a startle); reflexively you crouch in a somewhat flexed posture. After this momentary “arrest response,” your head automatically turns in the direction of the shadow or sound. You attempt to localize and identify the source. Your neck, back, legs and feet muscles all coordinate so that your whole body turns and then extends. Your eyes narrow, while your pelvis and head shift horizontally, giving you an optimal view of the surroundings and an ability to focus panoramically. This initial two-phase action pattern is an instinctive orientation preparing you to respond flexibly to many possible contingencies; it generates the feeling tone of “expectant curiosity.” The initial arrest-crouch flexion response minimizes detection by possible predators and possibly offers some protection from falling objects. Primarily, though, it provides a convulsive jerk that interrupts any motor patterns already in motion. Then, through scanning, it flexibly prepares you for the fine-tuned behaviors of exploration (for sources of food, shelter and mating) or for defense against predation (experienced as danger and not fear).
If it had been an eagle taking flight that cast the shadow, a further orientation of tracking-pursuit would likely occur. Adjustments of postural and facial muscles coordinate unconsciously. The new “attitude of interest,” when integrated with the contour of the rising eagle image, is perceived as the feeling of excitement. This aesthetically pleasing sense, recognized as the feeling of enjoyment, is affected by past experience. It may also, however, be one of the many powerful archetypal predispositions or undercurrents that each species has developed over millennia of evolutionary time. Most Native Americans, for example, have a very special, spiritual, mythic relationship with the eagle. Is this a coincidence, or is there something imprinted deeply within the structures of the brain, body and soul of the human species that responds intrinsically to the image of eagle with a correlative excitement and awe? Most organisms possess dispositions, if not specific approach/avoidance responses, to large moving contours.*
If the initial shadow had been from a raging grizzly bear (rather than from a rising eagle), a very different reaction would have been evoked: the preparation to flee. This is not, as James discovered, because we think “bear,” evaluate it as dangerous and then run. It is because the contours and features of the large, looming, approaching animal cast a particular light pattern upon the retina of the eye. This stimulates a configuration of neural firing that is registered in the phylogenetically primitive brain regions. This “pattern recognition” triggers, in turn, the preparation for defensive responding before it is registered in consciousness.† These unconscious responses derive from genetic predispositions (as well as from the outcomes of previous personal experiences with similar large animals). Primitive, nonconscious circuits are activated, triggering preset constellations or tendencies of defensive posturing. Muscles, viscera and autonomic nervous system activity cooperate in preparing for escape. This preparation is sensed kinesthetically and is internally joined, as a gestalt, to the image of the bear. Preparation for defensive movement and image are fused and registered together as the feeling of danger. Motivated by this feeling and not by fear, we continue to scan for more information (a grove of trees, some rocks) while at the same time drawing on our ancestral and personal memory banks. Probabilities are nonconsciously computed, based on such encounters over millions of years of species evolution, as well as on what we have learned individually does or does not work. We prepare for the next phase in this unfolding drama. Without thinking, we orient toward a large tree with low branches. An urge is experienced to flee and climb. If we run, freely oriented toward the tree, we have the feeling of directed running. The urge to run (experienced as the feeling of danger) is followed by successful running (experienced as escape rather than fear or anxiety).
On the other hand, let us consider a situation where escape is impossible—where you are trapped. This time you chance upon a starved or wounded bear standing in the path and blocking your escape (as in walking out of a steep box canyon). In this case, the defensive preparedness for flight, concomitant with the feeling of danger, is thwarted. The feeling of danger will then abruptly change into the emotional state of fear. Response is now restricted to non-directed, desperate flight, to rage-counterattack or to freeze-collapse. The latter affords the possibility of diminishing the bear’s urge to attack. If it is not cornered or hurt, and is able to clearly identify the human being as helpless and of no threat, the bear usually will not attack the intruder, going on its own way.
The Greek root for angst is descriptive, meaning to “press tight” or to strangle. As conveyed in Edward Munch’s iconic painting, The Scream, our entire physiology and psyche become precipitously constricted in anxious terror. While it may afford a last-ditch survival function, fear is the killer of life. Pi (in the book The Life of Pi) tells us about this Achilles heal:
It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease … Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons of technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. [They are constantly on the prowl for more objects of fear.]
Recall the case story of Sharon (in Chapter 8). She was the woman who had the horrific experience of working on the eightieth floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. During her session I guided her to the experience of being led down the staircase by a Port Authority employee and encountering a locked door on the seventieth floor. Suddenly trapped and unable to complete the escape, her body became paralyzed with fear. In working through this experience, which reestablished her running reflexes, she opened her eyes (toward the end of our session), looked at me and said, “I thought it was fear that gets you through … but it’s not … It’s something more powerful, something much bigger than fear … It’s something that transcends fear.” And what a deep biological truth she reveals here.
Finally, the feeling of danger is the awareness of a defensive attitude. It prepares us to defend ourselves through escape or camouflage. Similarly, when our aggression is not thwarted, but is clearly directed, we don’t feel anger but instead experience the offensive attitude of protection, combativeness and assertiveness. Anger is thwarted aggression, while (uninhibited) aggression embodies self-protection. Healthy aggression is about getting what you need and protecting what you have. One sees this in the behaviors of neighborhood dogs. Dog 1 is at home in his yard, and then dog 2 comes along. Both dogs lift their legs and inscribe with their pee a territorial border. If they each stay on their own side, there will be no further problems. However, if the interloper (dog 2) breaches this boundary, the dog 1 will probably kick up dirt with its hind legs as a warning salvo. If dog 2 heeds this display, then again the situation calms. However, if dog 2 does not comply, then dog 1 will likely begin to growl and snarl. Finally, if dog 2 does not move on, there will be a vicious biting attack.
To summarize: it is only when the normal orientation and defensive resources have failed to resolve a situation that non-directed flight, paralysis or collapse come into play. Rage and terror-panic are the secondary emotional anxiety states that are evoked when the orientation processes, and the preparedness to flee or attack (felt originally as danger), are not successful. This only occurs when primary aggression does not resolve the situation, is blocked or is inhibited.
One dreary rainy January afternoon, in the warm, musty stacks of the Berkeley graduate library, I was sorting through the innumerable books on theories of emotion. This was well before the advent of computers and Google, and my search strategy was to find a relevant area in stacks, the literary catacombs, and spend the day browsing for related material. It seemed to me that there were nearly as many theories of emotion as there were authors. With my heuristic “search engine,” I came across a treasure trove—the visionary work of a woman named Nina Bull. This book, called The Attitude Theory of Emotion,158 clarified what I was observing with my early clients. It gave me a clear conceptual understanding for the process of emotional change.
Working at Columbia University in the 1940s and 1950s, Bull conducted remarkable research in the experiential tradition of William James. In her studies subjects were induced into a light hypnotic trance, and various emotions were suggested in this state. These included disgust, fear, anger, depression, joy and triumph. Self-reports from the subjects were noted. In addition, a standardized procedure was devised whereby the subjects were observed by other experimenters. These observers were trained to accurately view and record changes in the subject’s postures. The postural patterns, both self-reported and observed by experimenters, were remarkably consistent across multiple subjects. The pattern of disgust, for example, involved the internal sensations of nausea—as if in preparation to vomit along with the observed behavior of turning away. The pattern as a whole was labeled “revulsion” and could vary in intensity from the milder form of dislike to an almost violent urge to turn away and vomit. This latter response could be recognized as an effort to eject something toxic, or as a means of preventing being fed something that one doesn’t like. This type of reaction is seen when children are abused or forced to do something against their will—something that they cannot “stomach.” This could be anything from forced bottle feeding to forced fellatio or, often, something they cannot stomach metaphorically.‡
Bull analyzed the fear response and found it consisted of a similar compulsion to avoid or escape and was associated with a generalized tensing up or freezing of the whole body. It was also noted that subjects frequently reported the desire to get away, which was opposed by an inability to move. This opposition led to paralysis of the entire body (though somewhat less in the head and neck). However, the turning away in fear was different from that of disgust. Associated with fear was the additional component of turning toward potential resources of security and safety.
Bull discovered that the emotion of anger involves a fundamental split. There was, on the one hand, a primary compulsion to attack, as observed in a tensing of the back, arms and fists (as if preparing to hit). However, there was also a strong secondary component of tensing the jaw, forearm and hand. This was self-reported by the subjects, and observed by the experimenters, as a way of controlling and inhibiting the primary impulse to strike.
In addition, these experiments explored the bodily aspects of sadness and depression. Depression was characterized, in the subject’s consciousness, as a chronically interrupted drive. It was as though there was something they wanted but were unable to attain. These states of depression were frequently associated with a sense of “tired heaviness,” dizziness, headache and an inability to think clearly. The researchers observed a weakened impulse to cry (as though it were stifled), along with a collapsed posture, conveying defeat and apparent lethargy.
We all recognize that there is a fundamental difference between negative and positive emotions. When Bull studied the patterns of elation, triumph and joy, she observed that these positive affects (in contrast to the negative ones of depression, anger and disgust) did not have an inhibitory component; they were experienced as pure action. Subjects feeling joy reported an expanded sensation in their chests, which they experienced as buoyant, and which was associated with free deep breathing. The observation of postural changes included a lifting of the head and an extension of the spine. These closely meshed behaviors and sensations facilitated the freer breathing. Most subjects feeling joy reported feeling “ready for action.” This readiness was accompanied with energy and the abundant sense of purpose and optimism that they would be able to achieve their goals.
Understanding the contradictory basis of the negative emotions, and their structural contrast to the positive ones, is revealing in the quest for wholeness. All of the negative emotions studied were comprised of two conflicting impulses, one propelling action and the other inhibiting (i.e., thwarting) that action. In addition, when a subject was “locked” into joy by hypnotic suggestion, a contrasting mood (e.g., depression, anger or sadness) could not be produced unless the (joy) posture was first released. The opposite was also true; when sadness or depression was suggested, it was not possible to feel joy unless that postural set was first changed.
The facial, respiratory and postural responses that supported positive affects are opposite to those seen in depression. There is a poignancy to this truth that was revealed years ago in a simple exchange between Charlie Brown and Lucy (from Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts). While walking together, Charlie, slumped and shuffling, is bemoaning his depression. Lucy suggests that he might try standing up straight, to which Charlie replies, “But then I wouldn’t have a depression to complain about” as he continues on his way resigned, slouched and downtrodden. And what are we to do if we don’t have an ever-vigilant Lucy to elucidate the ever-perplexing obvious? However, as correct as Lucy was in a metaphoric sense, mood changing is not a matter of simply willing postural change (like a proud military stance). Indeed, altering one’s psychological disposition is a much more complex and subtle process that fundamentally involves, instead, the spontaneous and subconscious changing of postural states through body awareness.
The extensive work of psychologist Paul Ekman159 supports the role of facial posture in the generation of emotional states. Ekman trained numbers of subjects to contract only the specific muscles that were observed during the expression of a particular emotion. Remarkably, when subjects were able to accomplish this task (without being told what emotion they were simulating), they often experienced those feelings, including appropriate autonomic arousal states.
In a quirky experiment, Fritz Strack of the University of Würzburg, Germany, had two groups of people judge how funny they found some cartoons. In the first group, the subjects were instructed to hold a pencil between their teeth without it touching their lips. This procedure forced them to smile (try it yourself). The second group was asked to hold the pencil with their lips, but this time not using their teeth. This forced a frown.
The results reinforced Ekman’s work, revealing that people experience the emotion associated with their expressions. In Strack’s work those with even a forced smile felt happier and found the cartoons funnier than did those who were forced to frown.
To get even weirder, Richard Wiseman160 posted a series of jokes on a humor website. The basic template of the joke was that there are two cows in a field. One cow says, “Moo,” and the other cow responds, “I was going to say that.” When this joke was modified with different animals, by far the funniest was two ducks sitting in a pond. One of the ducks says, “Quack,” and the other duck responds, “I was going to say that.” It was indeed the “k” sound heard in “quack” and “duck” that was experienced as especially funny. Once again it may have been the facial feedback (as the pencil experiment) that made the people feel particular mirth.
Nikolaas Tinbergen, in his Nobel acceptance speech titled “Ethology and Stress Disease,”161 described and extolled the beneficial effects of a method of postural reeducation called the Alexander method. Both he and his family, in undergoing Alexander’s treatment process, had experienced dramatic improvement in sleep, blood pressure, cheerfulness, alertness and resilience to general stress. Other prominent scientists and educators had also written of the benefit of this treatment. These included John Dewey, Aldous Huxley and scientists like G. E. Coghill, Raymond Dart, and even the great doyen of physiology and earlier Nobel Prize recipient, Sir Charles Sherrington. While admiration from such prominent individuals is provocative, it hardly constitutes rigorous scientific proof. On the other hand, it is unlikely that men of such intellectual rigor had all been duped.
F. M. Alexander and Nina Bull had each recognized the intimate role of bodily tension patterns in behavior. Alexander, an Australian-born Shakespearean actor, had made his discovery quite accidentally. One day, while performing Hamlet, he lost his voice. He sought help from the finest doctors in Australia. Getting no relief, and desperate, he pursued assistance from the most influential physicians in England. Without a cure, and given that acting was his only profession, Alexander returned home in great despair.
As the story goes, his voice returned spontaneously, only to elusively vanish again. Alexander took to observing himself in the mirror, hoping that he might notice something that correlated with his erratic vocal capacity. He did. He observed that the return of his voice was related to his posture. After numerous observations, he made the startling discovery that there were distinctly different postures—one associated with voice and another with no voice. To his surprise, he discovered that the posture associated with the strong and audible voice felt wrong, while the posture of the weak or absent voice felt right. Alexander pursued this observational approach for the good part of nine years. He came to the realization that the mute posture felt good merely because it was familiar, while the postural stance supporting voice felt bad only because it was unfamiliar. Alexander discovered that certain muscular tensions could cause a compression of the head-neck-spine axis, resulting in respiratory problems and consequently the loss of voice. Decreasing these tensions would relieve the pressure and allow the spine to return to its full, natural extension. Attending to this disparity allowed Alexander to cure himself of his affliction. Thus, through better mind-body communication, he was able to recover much of his natural ease of movement, leading to an economy of effort as well as improved performance. Realizing that he had the makings of a new career, Alexander gave up acting and began working with fellow actors and vocalists with similar performance problems. He also began working with musicians whose bodies were twisted and in pain from the strained postures they believed were required for playing their instruments. The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin was one of his students. A number of famous pop stars and actors, including Paul McCartney, Sting and Paul Newman, had received treatments from Alexander method teachers and loudly sung their praises. However, even today, this method remains rather obscure, in part because it requires a demanding and refined focus.§
Alexander’s therapeutic work (described in his book The Use of the Self162) consists of very gentle manipulations, first exploratory and then corrective. It is essentially a reeducation of one’s entire muscular system. Treatment begins with the head and neck and subsequently includes other body areas. There is no such thing as a right position, he discovered, but there is such a thing as a right direction.
Let us now combine Alexander’s observations (of posture’s effect on function) with Lucy’s wise insight into the cause of Charlie Brown’s unnecessary, but self-perpetuating, suffering. What we come to is the profound implication of body-self-awareness in the change process. A direct and effective way of changing one’s functional competency and mood is through altering one’s postural set and thence changing proprioceptive and kinesthetic feedback to the brain.163 Recall that the medial prefrontal cortex (which receives much of its input from the body) is the only area of the neocortex that can alter the limbic system and, in turn, emotionality. Hence, the awareness of bodily sensations is critical in changing functional and emotional states. We are once again reminded that it is primarily through the motivated awareness of internal sensations that the corrosive dragons of negative emotional states can be tamed. Remember how, instead of expressing his habitual rage, the samurai’s personal hell was arrested, exposed and brought into awareness by the impeccable timing of the Zen master. It was only when the brash samurai learned to momentarily hold back, contain and “feel into” himself that he was able to transform his rage into bliss. Such is the alchemy of emotional transformation.
Just how does posture alter one’s mood and effect a lasting change? Recall how Nina Bull demonstrated that intense emotions occur only when emotional action is restrained. Or said in another way, it is the restraint that allows the postural attitude to become conscious for the attitude to become a feeling-awareness. This is in partial agreement with the well-known neurologist Antonio Damasio’s argument that emotion “is the consciousness of the body.” This perspective is also in alignment with William James’s peripheral theory of emotion, in which “we are afraid because we are running away from the bear.” However, what I believe they both have missed, and what Nina Bull has deeply grasped, is the reciprocal relationship between the expression of emotion and the sensate feeling of emotion. When we are “mindlessly” expressing emotion, that is precisely what we are, in fact, doing. Emotional reactivity almost always precludes conscious awareness. On the other hand, restraint and containment of the expressive impulse allows us to become aware of our underlying postural attitude. Therefore, it is the restraint that brings a feeling into conscious awareness. Change only occurs where there is mindfulness, and mindfulness only occurs where there is bodily feeling (i.e., the awareness of the postural attitude).
A person who is deeply feeling is not a person who is habitually venting anger, fear or sorrow. Wise and fortunate individuals feel their emotions in the quiet of their interiors, learn from their feelings and are guided by them. They act intuitively and intelligently on those feelings. In addition, they share their feelings when appropriate and are responsive to the feelings and needs of others. And, of course, because they are human, they blow up from time to time; but also they look for the root of these eruptions, not primarily as being caused by another, but as an imbalance or disquiet within themselves.
While physical feelings are both quantitatively and qualitatively distinguishable from emotions, both derive ultimately from the instincts. The five categorical emotional instincts described by Darwin are fear, anger, sorrow, disgust and joy. However, feelings, as the consciousness of a bodily attitude, come in a virtually infinite range and blend. These include the bittersweet longing for an absent friend or tender mirth at a child’s spontaneity. The Darwinian emotions correspond to distinct instincts, while feelings express a blending of (sensate-based) nuances and permutations. In addition, bodily feelings embody a relationship between an object or situation and our welfare. They are, in that sense, an elaboration of the basic affective valances of approach and avoidance. Feelings are the basic path by which we make our way in the world. In contrast, (fixated) emotional states derive from frustrated drives or engagement of the last-ditch mobilization of emergency (fight/flight/freeze). With the paucity of saber-toothed tigers, this critical reaction of last resort rarely makes sense in modern life. However, we are compelled to deal with a myriad of very different threats, such as speeding cars and overly eager surgeons, for which we lack much in the way of evolutionarily prepared protocols.
Emotions are our constant companions, enhancing our lives and detracting from them. How we navigate the maze of emotions is a central factor in the conduct of our lives, for better or for worse. The question is: under what conditions are emotions adaptive—and conversely, when are they maladaptive? In general, the more that an emotion takes on the quality of shock or eruption, or the more that it is suppressed or repressed, the more prominent is the maladaptation. Indeed, often an emotion begins in a useful form and then, because we suppress it, turns against us in the form of physical symptoms or in a delayed and exaggerated explosion. Anger and resentment, when denied, can build to an explosive level. There is a popular expression that is apt here: “That which we resist, persists.” As damaging as emotions can be, repressing them only compounds the problem. However, let it be duly noted that the difference between repression/suppression and restraint/containment is significant though elusive. Remember once more how the samurai warrior delicately, but definitively, arrested his compulsion to strike, allowing him to feel his (former) murderous rage simply as pure energy—and ultimately as the bliss of feeling alive.
As the successful parent knows, this strategy works well with children. Rather than suppress the child, encouraging a habit of repression, these parents help the child by providing a timely interruption, while guiding the child to feel his anger and source his needs and desires. This is what healthy aggression is about. On the other hand, we have the permissive parent who lets the child go out-of-control with temper tantrums, as the samurai was about to do but with lethal consequences. The effective parent, however, provides and channels the child’s aggression in a useful way. They do this by both allowing the child to feel her anger and then helping the child to understand what she is mad about.
If emotions are not too extreme and are approached with a certain stance, they can serve the function of guiding our behaviors—even moving them toward positive goals. Here’s an example with which most of us can identify. Bob comes home from work and finds his house in chaos. He is furious and wants to yell at Jane and the kids, but he “stuffs” his rage. By bedtime he cannot unwind and has an acute attack of gastric reflux. His wife, after a trying day herself, wishes to make some contact with her husband. She wants him to share something about his day or how he is feeling and asks if anything is wrong. He utters, “Nothing, I’m just tired,” and turns his attention to the raw, sour, burning taste of gastric juices in his throat. Jane smolders, accusing him of being distant and remote. She laments that she cannot get a feel for where he is at; she complains that she “cannot feel him.” He withdraws further.
Alternatively, they might have an attacking/counterattacking fight that culminates in her remembering something he did to upset her two years ago … To this perceived blaming he replies that he doesn’t even remember what she is talking about; and so far as he is concerned it never even happened. “What is wrong with you?” he murmurs under his breath. He is unaware that (1) when a woman becomes (emotionally) activated, she remains stressed for a much longer time than a man. The woman’s pounding heart and racing thoughts remain stuck. And (2) in her racing thoughts, Jane tries to locate an explanation for her runaway heart, believing that if she can find the cause (identifying it as a real external threat—as is biologically intended), then she could settle down. In scanning her memory banks in this activated state, she stumbles across the time when (she perceived) Bob hurt her. Seizing on this “explanation” for her distress, she feels compelled to act upon it, “throwing it in Bob’s face.” In this way, Jane is doing what her physiology compels while he perceives that “she is blaming him for nothing.” This dance of daggers intensifies his defensiveness and seething anger. Locked in mortal combat, they both reach for a Valium. As the Valium (which relaxes their muscles) kicks in, they both feel better—it seems to both of them that the blowup was over nothing. Bob hopes that tomorrow will be a clean slate, and Jane wonders why in the world she dragged up that two-year-old event, no less beating Bob over the head with it. However, when they awake the next morning, they are disconnected physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Furthermore, research shows that this type of unresolved conflict impairs the couple’s immune system, depressing it and reducing the capacity for wound healing over the next several days.‖
Rewind and replay: Bob comes into the house. Faced with the chaos, he feels angry, but neither suppresses nor explodes. This time, supported by his wife’s centered, calm presence, he attends tentatively to his body. He notices his heart racing, while the muscles of his arms, shoulders, back, neck and jaw are tightening. After sharing his awareness with his wife, Bob has the fleeting glimpse of a bomb ready to explode. He feels the impulse to punch with his fists; his anger intensifies momentarily but then subsides. The vise grip in his tensed muscles begins to loosen. (These muscles had been engaged, as Nina Bull demonstrated, to inhibit the original urge to punch.) Bob sighs in relief as his legs begin, gently, to tremble. He “lets in” his wife’s supportive presence and then suddenly recalls, “Oh yeah, that’s what it was. Before I left the office, Alex, the supervisor, and I were discussing a marketing plan for the new widget. Alex and I had strongly differing opinions; we just couldn’t seem to agree. I felt competitive. We were combative, but in a good way. I felt forceful and clear. I suppose we could have hammered it out. Instead we stopped short of a solution when I remembered that Alex was dating the boss’s daughter. I stifled my power and ingenuity, and then, yes, that’s when I felt myself go into a rage. I wanted to throttle Alex but then retreated. I just wanted to leave and go home. The rest of the day I silently fumed. And then, when things were, well, the way they usually are at home, I wanted to explode. I felt the same seething rage I had felt at work. I guess I was triggered to blow when I set foot into the familiar mess at home; I just wanted to blow off steam. I was … well, really afraid that I could hurt you or the kids. So instead, I just went off to read the paper and simmered silently behind my paper fortress. I didn’t want to blow up at you and the kids. Really, what I wanted was the calm contact I am getting from you now.” This state of calm, unlike the temporary relief provided by the Valium in the first scenario, is a real shift in his perception of safety, an enduring one. It is achieved by a process of self-regulation and social engagement, rather than the temporary masking offered by a tranquilizer—though both act to relax the tight muscles. This collaborative experience is what brings Bob and Jane closer together.
The feeling of combativeness that Bob experienced at the office was powerful, focused and motivating. Had he not stopped himself, he might have entered into a productive negotiation with Alex. However, when he thwarted this process (out of a perceived threat that may or may not have even really existed), his directed feeling of healthy aggression (for getting what he needed and protecting what he had), erupted into (impotent) rage. This abrupt transition—from a fluid, organizing feeling process into a disorganizing, nonproductive, reactive emotional state—is what was so brilliantly studied by Nina Bull.
So why do we get stuck with our negative emotional states, habitually wearing them like our only set of shirt and trousers? Many people (like the young samurai) use their rage to intimidate. Others indulge habitual sadness and remain helpless victims. For Bob and Jane (in the initial scenario), their emotions served to separate them.
In 1978, after completing my doctoral work, I took a paid vacation as a teacher in residence at the Esalen Institute, nestled above the roiling sea of the breathtakingly serrated Big Sur coast. As part of my duties, I conducted what was called the open-seat forum. In this group setting, members of the Esalen community could come in and receive free therapy. My duties were executed on Monday and Thursday afternoons. After several weeks I became perplexed by an intriguing phenomenon. Thursdays were quite calm, and the impromptu clients were generally working productively. However, Mondays were quite a different story. It was as if there were firecrackers going off on the Fourth of July. One person after another would come to see me and, without prompting, would either break down in jagged sobs or pummel pillows with undirected (and impotent) rage.
A possible explanation for this weekly divergence came to me unexpectedly. One day as I walked past the bulletin board outside the office, I noticed a note announcing that a particular group, which encouraged hyperventilation and strong emotional catharsis, had been canceled for that Wednesday evening. It was set to resume the following week. Hmm, I wondered, would this ordinarily calm Thursday be like the chaotic Mondays? And it was.
Earlier that same year, my brother Jon had published a landmark study in the medical journal Lancet.164 In this research, he had given a group of patients recovering from jaw surgery either an IV drip of morphine or a placebo that consisted of physiological saline. Both groups were told that they were being given a powerful painkiller. Fully two-thirds of the patients who received the saline placebo had as profound an effect of pain relief as did the group of patients who received a solid dose of morphine, pain abatement’s gold standard.a
Jon’s findings, amazing in their own right, were surpassed by the next phase of the research. When patients were given the placebo plus Naloxone, the placebo response was completely negated. Naloxone is a drug that has absolutely no effect whatsoever when administered to a sober individual (not unlike the effect of Viagra on an individual whose dosage is followed by a leisurely walk with the dog). However, when administered in the emergency room to addicts who have overdosed on heroin, it makes them stone sober in seconds. The mode of action of Naloxone is as an opiate antagonist. This means that Naloxone attaches to opioid receptors throughout the brain, thereby blocking the attachment and action of both the exogenous opiate drugs, including morphine and heroin, as well as the body’s own endogenous (internally self-generated) opiates, called endorphins. What Jon and his colleagues had demonstrated with these experiments was that the brain possesses its own pain mediating system. The analgesic effect of these endogenous endorphins can be just as powerful as the strongest known opioid drugs like morphine!
What occurred to me at Esalen was the possibility that I had witnessed the effects of opiate withdrawal during our Monday sessions. This was in stark contrast to Thursdays, when the previous night’s opiate orgy, stimulated by the hyperventilating catharsis, produced a “stoned,” spaced-out group of participants. These Thursday groups were populated by community members who had recently gotten their drug fix on Wednesday and did not crave another one. In particular, I wondered if the intense emotional abreactions I observed on Mondays were a method by which participants released their own internal opiates (endorphins), essentially giving themselves a fix, not unlike a shot of morphine.
Excited about my hypothesis, I telephoned my brother. Since it was not yet known that the brain regions and neural pathways responsible for physical and emotional pain were nearly identical, Jon’s response was not encouraging. “Peter,” he said, pitying my naïveté, “don’t be silly,” while managing to get in a well-deserved jab at his older sibling—a rivalry reasserted. However, a few years later, Bessel van der Kolk replicated Jon’s experiment.165 This time the focus was on Naloxone’s blocking the endorphins released by emotional, rather than physical, pain. He studied a common treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) administered, at that time, to Vietnam vets in the nation’s VA hospitals. These unfortunate soldiers were repeatedly provoked into “reliving” their horrific battlefield experiences. In this “therapy,” they were forced, for example, to watch gory war movies like Platoon with their arms tied to a chair. These exposures frequently catapulted the veterans into intense emotional abreactions. However, when Naloxone was administered before these cathartic sessions (depriving them of their self-induced endorphin rush) they soon lost interest in taking part in further “therapeutic” sessions.
As I observed many workshop attendees over the years (returning time and time again), I couldn’t help but wonder if they were also inducing their own chemical highs. Their repeated and cathartic dramatizations, screaming at their parents or pounding pillows in endless anger, seemed to be rewarding, bringing them back for further fixes. In my own life, I also wondered whether there was an addictive quality to some of my earlier painful and turbulent relationships that I appeared to be creating and re-creating.
While cathartic expressions of emotion in therapy sessions can be of value, reliance on emotional release stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the very nature of feelings and emotions. The work of Nina Bull provides us with insight, both into the nature of habitual emotions and into why feelings accessed through body awareness, rather than emotional release, bring us the kind of lasting change that we so desire.
* A chick or small mammal would respond by scurrying to hide or escape.
† This is analogous to the blind sight phenomenon.
‡ See episode 74 of A&E’s Intervention (season 6, episode 2), in which a girl named Nicole had been forced to perform fellatio by her next-door neighbor (and father’s best friend) for several years. Once her family found out, they tried to cover it up, and Nicole was forced to live next door to the man for years after. Later, Nicole developed an overactive gag reflex, leaving her unable to swallow anything, including her own saliva. She was placed on a feeding tube.
§ Many of Alexander’s principles inspired the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf.
‖ In a study of 150 couples, mostly in their sixties, researchers found that women who behaved in a hostile manner during marital disputes were more likely to have atherosclerosis, especially if their husbands were also hostile. In men, hostility—their own or their wives—was not related to atherosclerosis. However, men who behaved in a dominating or controlling manner—or whose wives behaved in that way—were more likely to have clogged coronary arteries. “The only group of men that had very little atherosclerosis were those where both they and their wives were able to talk about a disagreement without being controlling at all,” Smith said. “So the absence of a power play in the conversation seemed to be heart protective for men,” he concluded (Dr. Timothy Smith, University of Utah, Reuters, March 3, 2006).
a In the cases where the placebo did not work, the patients were quickly given the real morphine so that their unnecessary suffering was short-lived.