Basic Principles of Working with Emotions

Basic Principles of Working with Emotions



Peter B. Williams

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As we work in this series on difficult emotions, there are some basic principles that are helpful to keep in mind. These apply to all troublesome emotions, from fear to sadness to jealousy. Keep this email as a reference and guide for the remaining weeks.



Neither suppressing nor indulging



We avoid our emotions in two modes: by suppressing them or by acting them out. The first mode is easy to see as avoidance, but we may not think of acting out an emotion as a form of avoiding it. We might think this is being spontaneous and “getting into” the emotion. In fact, if you investigate, you may find that you act out your anger and yell at someone because you want to get the emotion out of your body, or that you act on a desire to get rid of the tension in your body. See if this is true for you.



Mindfulness allows us to walk a middle path between denying and indulging. Before we can let go of emotions, we must welcome them and be curious about them. Rumi advises that we become a guest house for whatever arises, that we “Treat each guest honorably.” Emotions are like pesky guests that lurk on your stoop and are willing to stay there forever. It is only once you invite them in and get a good look at them as they poke around the house that they decide to leave you alone, sidling out the back door. When we watch fear or anger with kind attention, staying grounded in the body sensations of the feeling, its energy dissipates by its own accord. We don’t need to “let go” of an emotion like jealousy when it arises, we just need to “let it go” on its merry way by watching it. Its nature is to arise and pass away when it is not fed by our resistance to it. What you resist persists; what you allow takes a bow.



Meeting negativity with negativity



We tend to greet our negative emotions with more negativity, says vipassana teacher Guy Armstrong. We tend to fear our fear, be mad that we are angry and judge ourselves for being so hard on ourselves. Mindfulness helps us do a graceful pirouette that short-circuits this cycle. When we simply turn our attention towards our difficult emotions, we replace reacting to them with interest in them. What is it actually like to be angry? Where is it in the body? Are the sensations pleasant or unpleasant? Just how damning are the thoughts about the person we are so self-righteously accusing? Is this the best time to “speak our truth?”



Accept them more, believe them less



We often are troubled by our emotions because we believe them to be the honest truth, the ultimate reality. In fact, they are just conditioned responses to specific circumstances. When Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was asked what gets reborn in a future life, he said, “Your bad habits.” According to Buddhist theory, our habitual tendencies to react with fear, anger, and greed carry such psychic momentum that they not only muck up this life, the propel us forward into the next one. Such habits are the reflexive way we respond to circumstances not going our way. The arising of fear is often not so much a reflection of the presence of real danger, but of how strong the habit of fear is. In a sense, the fear habit is looking for a place to land, and the perpetual uncertainty of life gives it plenty of opportunity. After twenty years of teaching in various capacities, I can still get nervous when speaking in front of people. It is obvious to me that believing this fear is folly. I usually just feel the fear and do it anyway, as the saying goes.



Because we believe our emotions to be the G-d honest truth when they arise, we have a lot of trouble accepting them. We can’t let ourselves feel afraid in a tense negotiation because to admit it will be the same thing as abdicating our power. In fact, if we could accept fear in such a situation (without acting from it), we might actually represent our needs better. Acceptance of our mind states allows us to stay in touch with our tenderness, which in turn might foster empathy for and responsiveness to another person’s humanity. Such openness tends to bring about dialog and mutuality rather than hostility and defensiveness.



Mindfulness allows us to accept difficult emotions because we don’t have to be run by them. When we stay in genuine and open witness to them, they eventually lose their energy and dissipate, much like a hurricane dies out when reaching land, leaving behind the wind-fueling power of the warm ocean. It is amazingly freeing when we see dread disappear on its own accord, simply because we became the steady shore of attention it lashed its fury against.



Better to see it than to be it



Of course, sometimes our emotions are informative and have something to teach us. Mindful listening assuredly catches such messages. And it also helps us see how much chaff is in most of our strong reactions. Mindfulness gives us a choice in how to act. As the saying goes, “Better to see it than to be it.” When we are blind to our emotions, they drive us. When we see them, we gain choice over how we want to act, on what motivations we want driving us. It can be quite humbling to see how often fear, irritation, greed and anger can arise. However, says Joseph Goldstein, rather than seeing the arising of an afflictive emotion as bad news, we can celebrate that we have seen it, which gives us choice in whether to act from it or not. Becoming aware of a troublesome emotion is a step towards freedom.



Look for the hook



As we work with each emotion in this class, we will learn the basic storylines in each of them that seduce us. In my experience, the basic hook of fear is “Something terrible is about to happen.” When such a thought arises in something as innocuous as playful banter among friends, drastic action might be called for. We might bite someone’s head off just because they teased us a little. The basic hook in anger, for me, is “I am so right and they are so wrong.” And boy does it feel good to be so right, to obliterate a person in our minds because they are so clueless. The basic hook in desire is, “If I can have that so and so, I will be complete.” That third doughnut sure seemed to glisten with the glaze of permanent nirvana before I ate it. Why could I not remember that in four seconds it would turn into a brick in my belly? As you explore each emotion, be on the lookout for the basic storyline that hooks you.



Color your world



The world is not a pregiven objective reality, but more of a canvas we paint with the emotions we are feeling. The Rolling Stones capture this point well in Paint it Black, a song about grief over the death of a loved one: “I see a line of cars and they’re all into black / No colors anymore I want them to turn black.” Grief drains the world of color. It looks grimly out and sees nothing but suffering, hardship, and despair. The brightest beds of ruby red tulips can’t hide the dog crap that is the true nature of all parks. When we are afraid, we tend to be able to think only thoughts that confirm our fear. In the grip of fear before a competitive soccer game, I will probably only review my past errors, rather than my successes.



In a spectacular feat, neuroscientists have mapped the pathways of strong emotions in the nervous system. In the grips of intense emotion, neuronal signals, rather than flowing through the brain’s thought center in the cerebral cortex, get deflected by the amygdala. This almond-sized organ in the reptilian mid-brain shunts signals away from the forebrain and back into the body in order to accomplish immediate action, bypassing all but the most black and white thoughts. In the grip of a strong negative emotion, the world gets boiled down to the simple law of eat or be eaten. Maybe this helped us survive the African savannah 4 million years ago, but in dealing with such modern dilemmas as not being invited to a friend’s pot luck, there may be some options other than fight or flight. Mindfulness can help us avoid acting out of the stark view that grips us in an afflictive emotion. If we can stay with the emotion with kind attention and refrain from acting on it, sooner or later it will lose its charge. At this point, more options become available.



One moment at a time



Vipassana teacher Sharon Salzberg likes to remind her students that in the grip of a strong emotion one often projects the feeling out into the future and imagines that one will always feel this way. This makes the emotion that much more scary. Be on the lookout for this distortion as you work with a challenging mind state. In fact, all you really have to do to get through a difficult mind state is to be with one moment at a time of it. A great question to ask yourself in the grip of a difficulty is, “Is this moment something I can handle? Can I be with this moment of fear (anger) (desire)?” Ground your attention in the body and recognize that the thoughts are what keep pulling you away into some kind of life catastrophe. The thoughts think they know so much about the future, but really they are often so wrong! “We’ll see,” is a very wise response to such catastrophic thinking. “Let’s just be with what’s happening right now, and see if it is workable.” In the space of such mental composure and attention, it usually is.



Separating emotions and actions



Mindfulness gives us a powerful new tool in dealing with our troublesome emotions: rather than deny them or act them out, we can simply bear witness to them. When the storm clouds of difficulty pass and clear skies in the heart allow us to see a wider range of options, we are much more likely to take appropriate action, action that takes care of our true needs and fosters connection with others at the same time. Seeing that emotions are not commandments for action allows us to “feel the fear and do it anyway.” It might also allow us to feel the desire and not do it anyway, or feel the anger and zip the lips for a few sacred counts. It might allow us to feel generosity and do it anyway, taking the risk of exposing our care for someone.



Mindfulness gives us impulse control. It gives us the ability to choose what kind of actions we want to put into the world. We don’t have to act on every fleeting emotion to feel alive and spontaneous. Awareness itself provides a sense of freshness and novelty. When you fully connect with a breath or a body sensation, life brims with possibility. Larry Rosenberg said on one of my first retreats, “You can’t be bored and be mindful at the same time.” Mindfulness has interest built into it.



May mindfulness bring all its blessings to you. Good luck with your practice!