How Your Emotions Are Made | Lisa Feldman Barrett
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology, discusses the scientific understanding of emotions versus feelings, how the brain constructs our experiences, and methods for skillfully managing emotions. She introduces 'deconstruction' as a way to reframe sensations and cultivate resilience, drawing parallels with Buddhist philosophy.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Introduction to Emotions and Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
Dr. Feldman Barrett's Journey into Emotion Research
Paradoxes and Myths in Emotion Science
The Myth of Universal Emotion Signatures
Evolutionary Story of Feelings (Affect)
The Brain's Role in Body Budgeting
Distinguishing Simple Feelings (Affect) from Complex Emotions
Deconstructing Emotions and Re-framing Sensations
Developing the Skill of Emotional Deconstruction
The Practice of Cultivating Awe for Resilience
Potential Dangers of Emotional Deconstruction
Overlap Between Emotion Science and Buddhist Philosophy
The Construction of Social Reality and its Influence
5 Key Concepts
Affect
Affect refers to basic, simple feelings of pleasantness/unpleasantness and arousal (worked up/calm). These feelings are always present because the brain is constantly regulating the body's internal systems, and the body sends continuous sensory data back to the brain about its state.
Body Budget
The brain runs a 'body budget' for the body, managing resources like salt, glucose, water, and oxygen to keep a person alive and well. Every action, like sleeping, eating, or exercising, is either a deposit or a withdrawal from this budget, influencing one's affective state.
Emotion Construction
Emotions are not pre-wired reactions but are actively constructed by the brain. The brain uses past experiences to make sense of internal sensations (affect) in relation to the external world, predicting what will happen next and planning actions. This entire narrative and action plan is what constitutes an emotion.
Deconstruction of Emotion
This is the skill of breaking down emotional experiences into their more basic components, such as simple feelings (affect) and physical sensations, rather than immediately labeling them as specific emotions. It involves experiencing sensations in their most basic form, similar to how a painter deconstructs light to render an object.
Social Reality
Social reality refers to meanings and functions that humans collectively impose on things, which then become real within that shared understanding. While constrained by physical reality, social reality can also influence it, as seen in the construction of emotions, money, or political power.
6 Questions Answered
Feelings (or affect) are basic sensations of pleasantness/unpleasantness and arousal, stemming from the brain's continuous regulation of the body's internal systems. Emotions are more complex experiences constructed by the brain when it uses past experiences to make sense of these basic feelings in context, guiding future actions and perceptions.
The brain evolved to regulate the body's internal systems, running a 'body budget' to keep us alive and well. Emotions are a way the brain makes sense of internal sensations in relation to the world, helping to predict what's next and plan actions to ensure survival and gene propagation.
No, the idea that each emotion has a unique, universal fingerprint in the body (e.g., a specific facial expression or heart rate pattern for anger) is a myth. Research shows significant variability in how emotions are expressed and experienced, even within a single person, depending on the context and goal.
Yes, while immediate control is difficult, with practice, one can learn to deconstruct sensations and assign different meanings to them. By cultivating new ways of interpreting internal states, the brain can develop more flexible and advantageous emotional responses, changing the trajectory of one's life.
The brain constantly uses past experience to predict what sense data mean and what will happen next, guiding actions and shaping perception. When these predictions involve past experiences of emotion, the brain constitutes an emotion in that moment, which may or may not be advantageous.
Yes, there is a danger of 'somatization,' where one only experiences psychological distress as physical symptoms without acknowledging the underlying affective or psychological meaning. This can be unhealthy if it prevents solving the root problem or making a fuller psychological meaning of the experience.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Avoid Emotional Denial
Do not choose the path of denial or compartmentalization for your emotions, because neglecting them will inevitably lead to those emotions owning you.
2. Deconstruct Your Emotions
Learn to deconstruct your own emotions by breaking down complex emotional experiences into their more basic components, allowing for different interpretations.
3. Build Flexible Meaning-Making Skills
Actively build the skill of flexibly making meaning from your sensations, providing your brain with more options to choose from, which enhances resilience and automaticity.
4. Practice Emotional Flexibility Regularly
To gain more control over your brain’s emotional narratives, practice reframing and deconstruction consistently when not in stressful moments, allowing the skill to become automatic and less metabolically costly.
5. Reframe Arousal as Determination
When experiencing increased arousal or jittery feelings, practice reframing these sensations as determination instead of anxiety to improve performance and change your life’s trajectory.
6. Deconstruct Sensations with Mindfulness
Practice mindfulness meditation to experience sensations in their most basic form (affect), rather than immediately grasping at perceptions and constructing full-blown emotions, which helps in not being yanked around by sensations.
7. Reframe Morning “Crap” as Body Budget Deficit
If you wake up feeling bad, reframe it as your “body budget running a deficit” due to factors like sleep or dehydration, instead of immediately attributing it to psychological issues, and then address the physical needs.
8. Practice Awe for Five Minutes Daily
Dedicate five minutes each day to practice feeling awe, which helps you feel like a “speck” and consequently reduces the perceived size of your problems, lowering the burden on your body budget.
9. Find Awe in Mundane Moments
Actively seek out moments of awe in your daily life, even in seemingly mundane or frustrating situations like a weed in a sidewalk crack or internet glitches, to shift your perspective and appreciate the miraculous.
10. Cultivate Curiosity Over Anger
When experiencing anger or fury, use it as an opportunity to practice deconstruction by attempting to genuinely cultivate curiosity about the situation or your sensations instead.
11. Consider Alternative Explanations
When encountering frustrating or negative actions from others, consciously consider alternative, more compassionate explanations for their behavior, which can provide you with options to feel differently.
12. Perform Small Acts of Kindness
When you feel determined to change things but are limited in what you can do, engage in small acts of kindness, as even one small act can make the world a little bit better.
13. Avoid Somatization of Problems
Do not solely experience psychological difficulties as physical symptoms (somatization) without acknowledging their deeper affective significance, as this is unhealthy and doesn’t help solve the underlying problem.
14. Deliberately Practice Difficult Skills
Deliberately practice challenging skills in a controlled environment, like driving on icy roads, to remind your brain how to perform them automatically when necessary.
15. Cultivate Past for Future Self
Consciously cultivate your past experiences, as your brain uses this accumulated knowledge to predict and shape who you will be in the future.
16. Practice Hope as a Skill
Engage with hope as a skill by utilizing bespoke meditations, which can help you navigate difficult moments without setting yourself up for massive disappointment.
6 Key Quotes
If you choose the path of denial or compartmentalization, you will inevitably be owned by those neglected and overlooked emotions.
Dan Harris
Variability is the norm. And that's just in Western cultures. That's actually just within a single person. So the idea that there are these universal signatures is not the evolutionary story of emotion.
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
Get your butterflies flying in formation.
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
If you learn not to reduce the arousal, because you don't want to do that. You have something hard you have to do. You have to do a test. But if you learn to make sense of it differently, instead of conjuring anxiety, you conjure determination, you can master those tests, and you can pass those courses, and you can change the trajectory of your entire life.
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
You are always cultivating your past as a means of predicting who you will be in the future.
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
It's not that you're not real, you're just not really real.
Buddhist Master (quoted by Dan Harris)
1 Protocols
Practicing Awe
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett- Deliberately practice feeling awe for a set duration (e.g., five minutes) daily.
- Identify easy sources of awe, such as images or natural beauty, and anticipate them to extend the feeling.
- Look for unexpected moments of awe in everyday life, like a weed growing through a sidewalk crack, and reframe them as powerful natural phenomena.
- When faced with frustration (e.g., internet failure), consciously shift perspective to appreciate the miraculous aspects of the situation (e.g., connecting across distances).