Transcript

Brian
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast, Farmer’s Edition.

Ani
Hey, why are you wearing flannel? I’m wearing flannel.

Brian
Why are you wearing flannel, Ani? I’ve wore a flannel.

Ani
I’ve decided I’m a flannel-wearing person.

Brian
Okay, well, I guess I am, too, then.

Ani
Look at us. It’s very comfortable. It is.

Brian
Yeah. It’s nice. Anyway, so if you’re watching us on YouTube, you can see why I might have said Farmer’s or Lumber Jack Edition, because Ani and I both find ourselves wearing flannel today for some reason.

Ani
We really should talk before we dress.

Brian
We should figure that out. Anywthe way, but this is the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. You have landed in the right place. If you’re looking to follow us for today’s topic?

Ani
What’s today’s topic, Brian?

Brian
Today’s topic is a good one. Ani, you said something to me about a month ago. You marched into the kitchen and you made a declaration. I said, We need to talk about that on a podcast. Ani walked into the kitchen and she said, I am giving up my emotions.

Ani
Oh, yeah, I did. I have.

Brian
And I was like, Do tell. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.

Ani
To tell. No, no, no, no, no, no. Dear listeners, I believe what he said was, Thank goodness.

Brian
Here we are. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today? We’re going inside Ani’s mind today, and we’re talking about why, Ani, are you giving up your emotions? What came about? What transpired? We need to know.

Ani
Inquiring minds. Want to know? It was a usual day, Brian. It was just a usual day. I woke up, I helped our youngest get out for school, and I went for a run. I do a lot of thinking on my longer runs because they’re getting very long now.

Brian
Longer runs, yeah.

Ani
Here’s what I was thinking about. I was thinking about sensation-based motivation coaching, which we teach and do. I was thinking about how free I feel in my life because I have helped myself to free myself from many different constructs and conditioning and things like that. You know what I thought? The whole concept of emotions, the whole idea around them is societally conditioned, and I don’t want any part of it. So I decided I’m not going to have them anymore. You’re opting out?

Brian
Yeah. You’re opting out of the societal conditioning of emotions?

Ani
I am. I have. I did.

Brian
Okay, cool. Thanks for listening today. Thanks for following us. We need to go deeper into this, Ani. We need to talk about emotions as constructs We need to talk about what emotions are. We need to talk a little bit more about what you’re- Hop on in here, and then you can tell me I’m not following the notes.

Ani
If you’ve got notes on this, I see your notes. You’ve got a very complicated image. I can’t wait to see what that’s about. Here’s the thing. Our brain works on a filing cabinet. When things happen in our lives, we take things in with our senses, and it goes to the filing cabinet, and the brain figures out what drawer in the filing cabinet and what file in the filing cabinet to file the experience so that we can make sense of our world. It’s actually A nominal because we have to be efficient. We’re a part of so much information that goes on. In a day, there’s no way we could be consciously aware of it all. So this whole filing cabinet idea is fantastic. Until you don’t like the files anymore. So emotions are like a file. When I say I’m angry, you at least think that you know what I mean because you have a file for angry. I have a file for angry. And you have a file for sad, and I have a file for sad. But here’s the thing. With the new science of emotion, what it tells us is your file for angry and my file for angry might not be the same, and probably aren’t.

Ani
And so when I have an I come to you and I express, for example, I’m angry, whatever it says in your file might not match my file anyway. And let me just tell you all of you that are listening, it definitely doesn’t. Because we experience the world in different ways. This whole idea around having emotions and then wanting to connect with people and stuff around them and express myself has been keeping myself locked in these files, in these filing cabinets. I I decided I wanted to go in and clean out the files.

Brian
It’s interesting, the file cabinet analogy, I love it. When I think about that analogy and the idea of we build our filing cabinets when we’re pretty young, initially, especially emotions. Emotions, we get those constructed when we are definitely under the age of seven, and then to some degree, two between seven and 14, typically before we’re leaving home. But usually before that 14, seven age, we’ve got a pretty good idea about… Well, I don’t want to say idea because it’s not conscious. It’s we have a pretty good programming already around the emotions. That file cabinet is built. We have a file cabinet for angry, or a file. We have a file for sad, a file for angry, a file for happy, a file for whatever it is. Think about this. If you have a file cabinet at home, let’s say in your file cabinet, maybe you still have a actual file cabinet rather than on your computer. But if you ever had an actual file cabinet, and let’s say your file cabinet was pretty full, and you’ve got all the files marked off, and maybe even think about this in terms of, you might have a file cabinet that has your insurance policies, maybe your water bill, maybe your car payments, maybe different parts of your life.

Brian
You might notice this, that if you get something in the mail that makes sense to be easily filed in one of those areas, if you have a file for your utilities, water bill comes, it goes in that file. If you have a file for insurance, car insurance comes, it goes right in that file. But what if you get something in the mail that doesn’t clearly or cleanly fit in any one of those files. How likely are you to go create a new file just for that one thing versus just sticking it in one of the files where it seems like it matches the close list?

Ani
Exactly. Yeah. I think there are definitely times that I’ve done that in my life because I’m trying to make sense of my life. By the way, it’s very inefficient physiologically to not be able to make sense of things. It’s more efficient to make sense of things. If I can say, I feel angry, file it there.

Brian
It’s way more efficient. It’s more efficient just to stick it in a file that already exists. Yeah, exactly. Rather than make a new file for it.

Ani
Have you ever heard somebody say, Oh, they have a different emotion in Germany. It’s called this thing. I I think like, Wow, that’s a great emotion. I wish we had that here. But I don’t go create a new file.

Brian
I could. You could. But I think what you were saying on the run that you did and noticing how free you’re feeling, you actually did take the time to build new files, which is part of the reason why you’re feeling more free, more liberated, and why you’ve come to this idea of letting go, opting out of the way that we talk about emotions here. Because you’ve actually created a new file cabinet at this point. But that took some time and some practice from you to do. It takes energy to do it. Let’s just put a word on it. It takes energy to do it.

Ani
One of the reasons I’ve been able to do that is because I have files in my subconscious around sensation-based work. I’ve got a hardy file around that, and I can file all kinds of things in that now so that I can make meaning and sense out of my life in a way that is way more empowering based on that. I remember actually where I had this initial thought. It was maybe two or three weeks before I had my epiphany. I was doing a accountability challenge with a client, and we were going to report to each other every single day where we experienced joy. I found the most interesting thing I could not have predicted. I don’t really care for feeling joy all that much. That’s what I figured out over the course this challenge that we were doing. I just didn’t really care for it all that much. I really like feeling my soul’s agenda.

Brian
When you say you don’t care about feeling joy, do you not care about feeling the sensations that you associate or create joy? That’s what I’m question about. Or the story about joy?

Ani
The whole thing. That experience helped me to see that I don’t really have a… I don’t know how to say it. Whether I don’t have a construct around it or I didn’t want a construct around it. It was like looking through the filing cabinet and going, none of this makes sense. Now what? It was really a moment for me to go, It was like a filing cabinet moment. It was like, Where’s the file? Is there a file? I didn’t have undesired sensations. I had more maybe non-sensations. I had some numbness around it. I didn’t really have… It wasn’t like, Yay, I I feel happy, joy. There wasn’t really much sensation going on. Then I was trying to make it work in my head. It was like that. It was just this really bizarre moment to be like, I’m looking through the filing cabin and I can’t find it.

Brian
Yeah, it was very interesting. Actually, several months ago, I have a monthly men’s group, a very small group of guys that I meet with. We’ve met every month for 13 years now, and it’s been really a great and important part of my life. A couple of months ago, we were talking and I mentioned something that had happened in my life experience. One of them said, Are you happy with that? I said, Let me think about that. I don’t know because I don’t really do happy. Happy for me, it’s not an experience or emotion that resonates with me. We had a whole conversation around, Well, what does happy feel like for you? What does it feel like for you? I don’t know. I don’t I was like, I don’t really feel something that I would actually label or create a being happy thing. Now, if you ask me a different thing, are you satisfied with that? Or even a more global question, does that feel good for you? I could probably answer that question. But I thought it was really interesting that just posing the question that way with that specific emotion that, by the way, each of us experiences differently is an interesting question.

Brian
Because someone else might be like, Well, I would be really happy with that because that’s an emotion that they actually trend towards because it’s a sensory experience and a story that links together for them.

Ani
Well, exactly. This is part of the unraveling that started to take place. At the end of the week challenge with my client, I revealed, which felt vulnerable, I don’t really resonate with joy. I thought it was being a good role model to really say what was going on, and I was being totally truthful, and we finished the challenge and all of that stuff. But when I decided on that run, I wasn’t going to have emotions anymore. I felt amazing for about, I don’t know, 15 seconds or so. Yeah. And then about 15 seconds later, I was like, Oh, no. If I don’t have emotions anymore, I’m not going to be able to relate to anybody. No one’s going to be able to understand me. I won’t be understood. And basically, I’m going to shrivel up and die. It was really interesting to see that primal fear come up around being abandoned. Interesting.

Brian
I actually want to just pause for a second while still recognizing and creating space for what you’re sharing on. It’s just really important. But if this is the first time you’ve been listening to the podcast, you might not actually understand how we conceptualize emotions here. This is very good point. I’m going to listen to it. Let me just pause for a second here. We conceptualize emotions here as sensations plus thoughts, or you can also think about it like sensations plus the stories we’re telling ourselves about those sensations. When we talk about emotions being as a construct, emotions are something we learn very early on in life. We learn emotions through observing how people around us express themselves emotionally. We You also learn as a toddler, let’s say. A toddler, they tend to throw little tantrums or big tantrums when they can’t get what they want. That’s a normal developmental part of being a toddler, right? But then how a parent responds to that toddler is what the toddler will learn about the experience that they’re having. Because the tantrum is a reflexive experience for the child. The doesn’t have a name for it. No. They can’t categorize it before they just said, The conscious mind isn’t even working yet.

Brian
If the parent says to them, Hey, that, don’t be so angry. Don’t be angry, then the child says, Oh, this is what angry feels like. If the parent says something else, then the child will learn something else about that experience that they’re having. That’s how we learn the constructs of emotions.

Ani
I’m just having a moment here because in our generation, I I think that parenting was more like, Stop it. Stop it. But then it progressed where we were like, We need to be more intellectually aware with our children to say, You’re angry, you’re sad, and label the emotions and whatever. Like you said, that’s teaching the construct right there. It’s really fascinating.

Brian
That’s how we learn the construct. That’s why your filing cabinet for angry is different than my. The file for angry is different than my file for angry. Because we grew up in different households, and our parents, they experience anger differently. When they saw us behaving in a way that they thought was akin to the way that they felt, then they project that onto us, me, you. That’s how then you learn that construct of being angry.

Ani
Then as a partner, I look at your face. To me, that should be one thing. It’s something else. I think that you’re experiencing something else than you’re experiencing, and it makes it very challenging.

Brian
Exactly. That’s what we talk about when we say emotions are constructs. We learn those things. We talk about that. Now, let’s talk about the components of the emotions. The emotion is every emotion has a sensory experience that goes along with it. It’s probably different for you or for me, like anger. We can make some global generalizations about where people typically feel these kinds of things.

Ani
Different imaging has shown that there’s some typical blood flow areas. Blood flow and energetic pattern around that.

Brian
But that could have to do more with the commonalities in cultural conditioning than it does Actually with an innate physiological state, by the way. I don’t know how we harsh those things apart unless you’re doing these things on toddlers before their condition, what they have going on. That would be fun. What we could be tracking actually are cultural or common states of conditioning and blood flow changes. That might be why you’re seeing these common patterns. But an emotional experience is a physiological process, and that physiological process has a sensory experience associated with it. What we were taught is the story that goes with that sensory state. That’s essentially what an emotion is. We do a lot of emotional deconstruction work here.

Ani
Yeah, that’s been some of the most powerful personal work that I’ve It’s been done over the years. Just to be able to emote or cry or laugh or get red in the face or whatever and not have to attach it to meaning. It can be a real mind bendder for clients when they’re working with our team and it’s like this or that is happening in my physiology, don’t I have to make meaning of it? We’re meaning making machines as humans. Really being able to look at consciously, what am I making meaning of? How am I making meaning of this? But the emotion comes in this package deal with the sensations we feel and the thoughts that we think or the narratives. It just comes in this package, which, again, is really efficient from a physiology standpoint and how the brain works and how the body works that we’re able to package up. But the way that we think we use it out in the world to have the life experience we want doesn’t always work. That’s the realization I was having that day because I had done so much deconditioning on myself with different patterns and things.

Ani
I was like, wow, just the idea of having emotions is a construct that actually, I think, is limiting me, and I’m really willing to experiment with that.

Brian
I love that. The evolution here, folks, let’s just talk about meaning making for a second, too. As humans, I agree 100%, we are prone to making meaning about things. That has to do with our frontal cortex and that stuff. A lot of us as humans, we lean pretty hard into the importance of meaning in our lives. I mean, you’ve done research on that and how important that is for humans. Now, we could also, though, just propose something here that meaning is important for human development. But at some point in time, I’m going to propose potentially a radical idea that’s also a limitation for us.

Ani
That meaning-making is?

Brian
Yes, it’s a limitation for us. Because a meaning-making can take us out of the purity of a present moment experience that we’re having. Sure. We know that if we come into the now state, the present moment state, which sages and teachers of enlightenment have talked about for thousands of years, it’s about actually letting go of the attachment to all these other things in our lives, meaning being one of them and coming into the purity of the present moment state. I think that’s an evolutionary step for humans to be able to have that experience with the connection to something larger than ourselves. I think in a lot of ways, meaning is the way that we describe our connection to a higher aspect of ourselves, but it’s not the connection itself. It’s just the way we’re describing it. It’s not the actual experience because the experience of present saying is ineffable. You really can’t describe it with any words. We use the idea of meaning and purpose as a way to connect us to higher states of consciousness or spiritual connection. How are we going to talk about that? But the experience itself transcends how we describe and talk about meaning.

Brian
As we deconstruct emotions, what we’re doing is we’re letting go of that story part, which is the meaning part. What we’re left with then is the purity of the sensory experience that we’re having. When we come into the sensory experience, we’re actually having a experience in the now without having to describe it or talk about it, which I think is what you’re talking about. That’s really what we’re doing. When we deconstruct the emotion and we can start having that experiential, well, experience with the sensory aspect itself, what we’re doing is getting basically the core data of our nervous system. But we also know that sensations are also flags for our energy. Our energy field, our energy experience. If we want to change our energetic experience, which again transcends language, we experience that through sensory states as well. I love the conversation we’re having about the more we can deconstruct emotions, the closer we actually get, I think, the purity of experience.

Ani
I really like where you’re going with this because I think that part of the dissatisfaction that people experience in life is because they actually are in this hamster wheel of meaning making. Actually, when they get off of that hamster wheel, can feel a lot better inside.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. I know you noted the image that I have here.

Ani
Yeah, what’s on your notes?

Brian
This is This is another way to deconstruct emotions. It’s a model by James Russell called the Affective Circumplex. I’ve used this with clients before. I really like it a lot. The idea of the affective circumplex, you can look this up and Google an image of it. But basically, the idea is that what an emotion is, it’s a combination between what’s called valence and affect. If you look at this grid, what happens is that there’s a horizontal line that goes across and then a vertical line, and they meet in the middle, which gives you four grids. Quadrants. Now, above the horizontal line is It’s an intensity level. Above the line is more intense, below the line is less intense. You can think about the line as being a neutral point. You go above the line, it’s ramping up. You go below the line, you’re turning down. Okay, think about that. Does that make sense?

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Okay, now the vertical line has a right and a left. Now, the right side of that line is what we call a pleasant valence. It’s a pleasant sensory experience. Experience in your body. To the left of that vertical line is an unpleasant experience in your body. This gives you four grids. The upper right side of the grid is essentially an intense experience that’s pleasant. The The right, lower half of the grid is a mild or a slowed down experience of pleasant. The upper left side of the grid is intense unpleasantness, and the lower corner of that grid is unpleasant but mild. Something you’d put up in the right upper corner of intense and pleasant is something like excited, astonished, happy, something like that. The lower part of that right side, you put something like serene, calm, because it’s pleasant but quieter. The upper left-hand side of unpleasant but intense would be something like alarmed, annoyed, angry. The lower part corner, which is unpleasant, but more de-energized, be things like depressed, gloomy, lethargic. It’s just another way to think about the idea of emotions can be deconstructed into simply, do I like what I’m experiencing? Do I like the sensation or not like the sensation?

Brian
Is the sensation intense or is it activating me or is it quieting my system down more? I just thought it was a really good way to snapshot for folks of like, oh, so emotions. It takes people out of that story, in other words. It’s another way to let go of the story because what you’re really looking at is simply the combination of, is it pleasant and unpleasant? Is it activating or deactivating? That’s essentially when you start. Then you can plot where emotions might land on that for yourself based on using that scale or grid. Interesting. I thought that that’s another interesting way to start deconstructing emotions to get yourself into a more a pure sensory state.

Ani
Interesting.

Brian
Look up the affective circumplex, if you want to, and you can check that out.

Ani
Circumplex. It’s an interesting word.

Brian
You got it. Any words in closure for us, Ani, around you and giving up your emotions?

Ani
When I recognize that one of the reasons I keep my emotions close is because I want to be relatable, Brian. I I thought to myself, Well, what do I want to do about that? Because I still want to be in a relationship with people in my life. The thought that I had was, first of all, I feel really good about not needing to be understood in my life anymore. I feel really comfortable and confident in that. And then if I don’t need to be understood, but I do want to connect, then what do I want to do next? I guess the conclusion I came to was to ask myself, where is the connection point? Because when I’m experiencing high levels of sensation in my body that I might label emotions, sometimes I want to connect, and sometimes I don’t. Really cuing in with what do I need and want, and being able to articulate that to people. So sometimes it’s, I want to be alone right now, and sometimes it’s, Will you give me a hug? Or something like that. And being able to communicate what I need and I want, and being okay, not having to explain myself or get into story around it or need to say something to make the other person feel better.

Ani
Because there’s also that when a person is having some emotional experience and the other person needs to be taken care of around it. They need to understand what’s going on with you so they’re okay. Being able to let that go as well. Anyway, I think the conclusion I came to was getting clear about when I communicate what it is that I need and I want and being able to speak that.

Brian
Interesting. As you’re talking, as I’m listening to you, Ani, it brought to mind an experiment experiment that I would like to propose for us to do, and we can maybe report back to the group.

Ani
I love big reveals on this podcast.

Brian
What if for the next month, when we’re communicating to one another about what we need What if we communicate it strictly in terms of sensations rather than emotions? Sure.

Ani
Yeah, no, I think that’s totally fine. Yeah.

Brian
Right now, I feel heavy in my stomach because oftentimesw, we use emotions as shorthand.

Ani
That’s what I’m saying.

Brian
But that shorthand comes along with a whole bunch of other meaning that gets in the way of what we’re talking about.

Ani
But I also realized I don’t always have to tell you what’s going on, but maybe you would want to ask. Sure. When you ask, instead of me saying I feel angry or sad or whatever, I would use sensation words.

Brian
For instance, if I come into the kitchen and I look like something that you’re like, Oh, Brian’s having an emotional experience right now, I don’t know how you would see that.

Ani
I was going to say, Have you met you?

Brian
How about we go the other way? How about you come in and I go, It looks like you have an emotional experience. Instead of saying something like you look upset, I could say, Hey, where do you- Because I love when that happens. Where do you feel something? What does it feel like right now? Would be a different level of engagement, I think, with the conversation.

Ani
Yeah, it sounds like a really fun experiment.

Brian
I may come back next week with a black eye. I don’t know, but make sure you stay tuned to find out.

Ani
I’ll be nice.

Brian
Hey, so if this episode really rung your bell, too, and it really felt just spot on for you, we always love to get emails, info@somaticcoachingacademy.com. Please share this with a friend. If you feel like a friend can benefit from this as well, leave us a podcast review. We love to see those reviews as well to know that we are meeting you where you’re at and helping you explore the topics that are really important to you.

Ani
Other than that, If you just want to tell us that you like our flannels.

Brian
Yeah, if you just like flannels, too.

Ani
Thanks for joining us this week, everybody. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye.