Experiencing Emotion

This is the sixth post based on EMOTIONAL AWARENESS an important book by the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman. The following is taken from a section titled Experiencing Emotion.

Emotions can be triggered automatically in under a quarter of a second—very fast—totally opaque to consciousness.

Dalai Lama: (Translated.) In Buddhist psychology we make distinctions between the sensory level of conscious experience and what is referred to as the mental level—the level of thought, emotions, and so on. Emotions like fear are the emotions that are much more immediate and spontaneous, when they are operating at the sensory level or whether there is a role for the mental level of consciousness involved.

Ekman: The characteristics of an emotion are: There is a signal; an automatic, very quick appraisal of what is happening that gives rise to the impulse to become emotional; you have to develop a skill to get consciousness involved.

Still another characteristic is that emotions have a set of sensations. We are not always aware of those sensations. I have developed exercises for developing conscious awareness that you are becoming or are emotional. These are to be used not in place of, but in addition to meditation. One of them is an exercise to increase your sensitivity to the sensations in your body so that those sensations will ring a little bell, so that you will be aware of “getting”— you know the phrase?—“hot under the collar.” The most dramatic difference in the sensations is anger verses fear. In anger, blood goes to your hands. It is preparing you to hit. In fear, it goes to the large muscles in your legs.

Dalai Lama: So preparing to run.

Ekman: Yes, right. That does not mean you will run, or that you will hit. But evolution has prepared you in this way. And you can learn to be sensitive to the difference in how your body feels when you are afraid as compared to angry.

This section is especially relevant to HM. He has an anger problem. If he is going to be in a situation where he knows that he will likely become angry, he calls on his defenses to protect him from expressing this anger. But if, unexpectedly, he encounters a situation he becomes angry without being able to put up his defenses. This is embarrassing and can do serious harm to important relationships. The central problem here is that the anger explodes below the level of consciousness. He might not even be aware that he is making a fool of himself until somebody tells him he is becoming emotional. If he manages to become self aware, he can apologize and say that he lost his head.

Now he is looking into the exercises Ekman has developed for developing conscious awareness that you are becoming, or are, emotional. These would be used in addition to meditation. One of them is an exercise to increase sensitivity to the sensations in the body so that those sensations will ring a little bell, so one is aware of “getting” “hot under the collar.”

It occurs to HM that technology could also assist here. If sensors could be attached to the body to assist in becoming aware that anger is occurring, that would be quite helpful.