In my previous post, where I asked you to tell me what you’d like to learn in this year’s online Language of Emotions course, we got a wonderful set of responses. Thanks! I’m already creating a group of learning modules based on your feedback. Thanks everybody!
As I pondered your responses and requests, I kept being reminded of things I had just read in Antonio Damasio’s book, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. It’s a good, though quite involved read, in which Damasio is laying out some theories of consciousness, based on his work as a neuroscientist. How does a brain create a mind? How does the mind create a self? What are the connections between wakefulness, consciousness, mind, and self? Can you be awake but not conscious? (Yes, for instance, in epileptic “absence” seizures.)
Interestingly, Damasio puts forth the hypothesis that true self-aware and other-aware consciousness cannot occur without emotions. Wow, I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up in the New Age, emotions were seen as a hindrance to consciousness — because emotions were allegedly “lower” than intellectual or spiritual ideas. I fell for that idea as a pre-teen, but I quickly saw that the idea was deeply flawed. It’s wonderful, after a lifetime of identifying the positive purposes of emotions on my own, to read all of the new research about emotions and their importance to memory, learning, thinking, decision making, and now consciousness and selfhood (and, of course, intellectual and spiritual ideas) … wow.
I saw clearly throughout my time in the New Age that denying emotions (or treating them as problematic) meant that people didn’t learn much about them (except that they were bad). People around me tried to live above, in spite of, and without emotions so that they could be more spiritual or more clear, but their efforts didn’t bear fruit. In theory, living without emotions might seem at first glance to be an interesting idea, but in reality (where emotions are integral to thinking, learning, socialization, memory, and consciousness) trying to live without emotions is just silly talk. However, I’m grateful for that silly talk, because it provided me a wonderful living laboratory for my early research into emotions.
As a “
Mindfulness practices can give us options when we head downhill toward suffering. The emotional mindfulness practice in The Language of Emotions helps you turn toward your emotions, identify them, and then take the actions that best complete those emotions (emotions are action-requiring neurological programs) so that your emotions will abate and you can alleviate your suffering. The discomfort will still be there, but you’ll be in a better position to deal with that discomfort — and most importantly, you’ll be better able to support others who are in pain. Mindfulness can help you avoid the paralyzing emotional badlands of suffering.
Right now, I’m re-reading an amazing book by the historian, philosopher, poet, and funny kook Jennifer Michael Hecht. 
When I go out to speak about The Language of Emotions, I often have the audience call out the things they’ve learned about emotions. I start off by saying “Big girls don’t cry, There’s nothing to be afraid of, You should be ashamed of yourself …” and then the audience adds their own versions of the messages we all get as other people attempt to manage our emotions for us (or shame us about them). We ingest a huge number of messages about the inherent wrongness of emotions, which is one of the major reasons we grow up and learn about everything but emotions. I say in the book that humans are “intellectually brilliant, physically resourceful, spiritually imaginative, but emotionally underdeveloped.”