What happens when we are faced with the more extreme emotional experiences of life, whether good or bad? Do we differentiate among these, or does the possibility of simply experiencing extreme emotions itself challenge us in ways that require courage and conscious choice, regardless of the quality of those emotions?
I’ll give you a couple of examples. One of my good friends is experiencing the elated, tumbling rush of falling head-over-heels for someone she recently met, and is simultaneously thrilled and terrified by opening herself up to be potentially hurt or abandoned. Another of my good friends is currently overwhelmed by a suffocating dread of middle age and accompanying sense of his own mortality, even as he describes himself as having reached a pinnacle of happiness in his daily life, surrounded by love and prosperity.
What got me curious is the fascinating (to me) fact that both of them are tempted to take a very similar stance toward these experiences, and that is to shut down on some level and go into self-protection mode. While they may or may not ultimately go there – or may go there only partially or at certain times – the struggle and temptation are very real and immediate as they choose what experience(s) they will (or won’t) allow themselves to have.
What makes us want to protect ourselves from the risk of extreme emotions?
Why do both of these experiences – which could be viewed as taking up positions on opposite extremes of the emotional spectrum – elicit such a similar, seemingly instinctive, self-protective response?
Let’s look at this for a moment.
- In both cases, the feelings are immense: love and death.
- Both experiences are largely out of our control – after all, we can’t make someone else love us back no matter how important it feels to us; and death, well…
- The exquisite feelings of love and life are direct counterpoints to the immense feelings of loss associated with the possibility of their ending.
Like the cosmic analogy of night and day, darkness and light, when one state is being experienced, the other is right beside it in our awareness, a big part of what makes each one so poignant, so exquisite, so concentrated in our emotional psyche.
In other words, just as we are tumbling into joyful abandon, we are also acutely aware that this could hurt. And just as we are reaching a point of fully appreciating all that life has to offer, we become acutely aware that this will end. Does anyone else hear internal alarm bells going off?
What’s happening in your brain when big emotions occur?
While our conscious mind may be reassuring us that all is well and that rejection and death are not imminent, our hippocampus and amygdala are putting us on high alert. According to Dr. Tian Dayton in her article Scared Stiff: The Biology of Fear, “The body doesn’t discern between physical danger and emotional distress. Fearful thoughts can produce the same physiological changes as evidenced in an actual fear situation.”
Our brains are fascinating, strongly wired to be social. It is perhaps not surprising then that when it comes to how we experience physical and emotional pain, researchers have found that intense social rejection (such as an unwanted breakup) “elicit[s] a response in two brain areas associated with physical pain: the secondary somatosensory cortex and the dorsal posterior insula.” In other words, we experience both the perception of pain and actual physical pain when we experience intense social rejection.
Similarly, anxiety has been shown to “prompt a response in the brain similar to when a person experiences physical pain, according to new research at the University of Chicago.”
Add to this the fact that, as Dr. Dayton describes of our limbic system, “the hippocampus is particularly sensitive to the encoding of the context associated with an aversive or painful type of experience. This is a small bit of information that has large implications in terms of relationship trauma. It is because of the hippocampus that not only can a stimulus become a source of conditioned fear, but so can all the objects surrounding it and the situation or location in which it occurs. This is how painful memories from old relationships can become generalized or projected into new ones.”
In other words, if you’ve experienced the psychosomatic pain of having been rejected in the past, you’re primed to feel fear around just the thought that it might happen again.
Similarly, any feeling of loss or insufficient time we may have felt over the course of our lifetime may be magnified as we contemplate our own death. Everything we love, gone. Giving this scenario serious consideration can take your breath away, literally, as your sympathetic nervous system kicks you into fight-flight-or-freeze mode in response to your thoughts and emotions.
It’s perfectly natural to feel afraid of our big emotions, the ones that shove us right up to the precipice of this thing called “life” for a dizzying look into its depths. This is profoundly moving stuff.
What can you do to help center yourself?
Studies in the area of chronic pain (remember, we’re talking about the same areas of the brain being activated) have shown that simply having a competing, motivational goal to counteract the effects of the thing that is causing pain (in this case, emotional) can reduce what’s termed “avoidance behavior” (actions intended to avoid the pain) and self-reported fear of pain. For example, a strong desire to be in a deeply caring relationship can help to overcome the fear of its potential loss. Or wanting to play and connect with your family can help you to remember what matters to you most about being alive.
Allowing yourself to feel and acknowledge the fear, anxiety, and pain, in all its complexity, can help. Putting it into words allows you to examine it more clearly and to share it with friends, family, and your support network. This also allows you to seek out social validation, which has not only been shown to calm our nervous systems, it also helps you to remember the meaning and fulfillment that exist in your relationships with loved ones and within your community. Studies have shown that “simple acts of social kindness, such as holding hands, can blunt the brain’s response to threats of physical pain and thus lessen the experience of pain.”
There is also research that shows that social connection and deep breaths with long exhales both have a positive impact on our vagus nerve, which is the command center for our parasympathetic nervous system – the one that helps to create a sense of calm and well-being. (Read this great article in Psychology Today for eight strategies for cultivating “grace under pressure.”)
Knowing that feelings are temporary is helpful, as well. Mindfulness exercises such as focusing on your breathing, allowing your thoughts and emotions to come and go, and reminding yourself that you are whole and okay, competent and strong, can help to center you in the face of the gravitational pull of big emotions.
Why does this matter?
The choices we make in the face of life’s most existential challenges inform – and in fact determine – our greater experience. Recognizing that we are in the midst of being hijacked by our limbic system when faced with life’s more extreme emotions – whether “good” or “bad” – may just allow us the space necessary to come back to center and consciously choose how we proceed.
Falling in love is a risk – a risk of loss. The same holds true for being fully alive. The more wholeheartedly you embrace the experience, the more you have to lose.
But consider this for a moment: What do you lose by not opening yourself to the experience in the first place? If nothing lasts forever, how long is enough to make the experience in and of itself worthwhile? Only you can decide that for yourself, but making sure to pause for a moment of self-awareness can help you to make sure it’s you who’s deciding, and not your limbic system.
