When Do Emotions Injure or Heal?

Montage by Victor D. Bloomberg, March 3, 2023

Brains and the Wandering Nerve

The Five F’s -> Fight-Flight-Freeze-Feed-F**k

Lizards live in my backyard. I watch them and all they do is The Five F’s. The lizards are totally instinctual and reactive. Inside our human head is a “reptilian brain."

Wrapped around the “lizard” are brain parts that retain basic emotional experience. These parts are like a small mammal’s brain, so I’ll call it our “mouse brain.” The mouse is reactive like the lizard, but it remembers what gave it pain or pleasure.

Surrounding the “lizard and mouse brains” is the “Gray Matter.” This is where thoughts are formed using symbols such as language, mathematics, etc. Everything under the skull is inter-connected by “White Matter” and the whole thing touches the rest of our body through the Vagus (Wandering) Nerve.

The Vagus Nerve carries messages (molecular and electrical) back-and-forth among our organs and our brains. Our thoughts can agitate or calm the Mouse’n’Lizard and the messaging reaches our organs. Mouse’n’Lizard can rile-up or soothe our thoughts. Our organs can message everything via the Vagus Nerve and affect the going-ons inside our head. Mouse’n’Lizard send and receive signals. We create symbols (with Gray Matter) which are infused with signals such as emotions.

Emotions

There’s a lot of especially human emotions like envy and jealousy, shame and guilt, and so on. There are some primary emotions that we share with other mammals. These are the Primary Colors of Emotions:

• Happy

• Sad

• Mad

• Scared

• Bored

Emotions are physiological events. Signals flow through the Vagus Nerve outside of conscious awareness. Thoughts emerge and our body’s organs do their thing. This isn’t mechanical, it’s biological. Bodily sensations flow into thoughts and the other way around.

Emotions are physiological events, but that’s not all. It goes without saying that emotions are social events. Let’s look a bit closer at that.

Think of a time that someone said something that, if we just look at the words, seemed nice. But there was something in the tone or face that signaled an intent to induce fear, shame, etc. As the saying goes, “It’s complicated.”

A Little Science about Emotions

Neuroscience describes the influence of the limbic system.

[The] amygdala (part of the limbic system of the brain) plays a large role in emotion and is activated before any direct involvement of the cerebral cortex where memory, awareness, and conscious ‘thinking’ take place. [1]

In other words, thoughts are influenced by the nonverbal limbic system and vice versa.

Emotions are signal waves that signify something is important. [2] And similar signals can flow from different reflexes. We all know that there are tears-of-sorrow and tears-of-joy. The release of tears is not inherently healing. Acceptance (of the experience, the emotions, and their significance (to one’s sense of self) is crucial to healing through released emotions.

Sharing Emotions: Injuring or Healing

from Intro to Psychology

I and Thou: Do I see You or are you a Thing to me?

In his book, I and Thou [3] Martin Buber wrote something that is very important:

For the real boundary, albeit one that floats and fluctuates, runs not between experience and not-experience, not between the given and the not-given, nor between the world of being and the world of value, but across all of the regions between You and It, between presence and object.

How does this help us understand emotional injury and healing?

Martin Buber writes that the “boundary” is not fixed like a physical border, rather it “floats and fluctuates”. I refer to Buber’s “floats and fluctuates” as the Thing-Person Swing.

Is the other seen as an object (a Thing, I-It ) or a human being (a Person, I-You ). Injury happens when we turn a person into a Thing. Healing occurs when we see our self and another as a person.

Think of a time when you cried and the person with you was supportive and safe. Afterward, you felt better; you might have been better able to talk about it, gaining a new perspective.

Healing flows from safety, trust and respect (between Persons, I-You.)

A psychotherapist described to me a client’s experience:

The healing happens… because we develop, ideally, a safe [connection]… That challenges a lot of what they believe about themselves. So there I am somebody who sees something other than what they see in themselves, ideally something more positive, strength-based and resilient. This relationship is trustworthy, it’s consistent and it's transparent. And I, client, feel valuable in it, I feel valued, I feel seen, I feel important. And when I have one of those experiences in my life, duplicating something is easier than creating from scratch. Now that I know what that feels like, I shift just a little bit in my belief about myself… And then they begin interacting in the world differently. 

The clinician’s description rings all of the bells in the tower: Healing flows from a reliable experience of safety, trust and respect.

When healing occurs there are emotions released, emotions that originated in an earlier injury. It’s like this: feelings rise until there is a release - a climax. Then the individual relaxes and thinks anew, freed from some of the toxicity of the past injury. I call this “Emotional Surfing,” because we’re riding a wave until we feel calm. Emotional Surfing flows from safety, trust and respect.

Now think of a time when you cried and a person responded aggressively, punitively or dismissively. Once the tears stopped there was not a feeling of well-being and talking was not helpful.

The release of emotions can result in a spasm which flows from an experience insecurity, doubt and disregard. After the spasm we are clenched, uptight. The biochemical changes related to Fight-Flight-Freeze were released into the body such as adrenaline, cortisols and histamines. The build up in the body became a form of injury. We might feel it as a headache, a stomach ache, angry thoughts, anxiety, etc.

Injury flows from insecurity, doubt and disregard (of The Other, a Thing, I-It). When a person is turned into a Thing, their humanity is denied and the emotions produce spasms that injure.

I-You is essential to Emotional Surfing. When a person's dignity is respected, the emotions can be accepted and healing happens.

Healing occurs when we encounter our shared humanity such that emotions flow without Flight-Flight-Freeze. The healing experience is one of powerful connection through safety, trust, respect - love.

References

[1] Ruud, M. (2019, March 5, para. 1). "The four theories of emotion: What, why and how?" Retrieved December 1, 2020 from https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Emotion

[2] Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

[3] I and Thou, Martin Buber, 1970, W. A. Kaufmann, Translator, 2nd Edition, originally published in 1923, p. 63