Something I know to be true:
Emotion exists separately to action.
Something I know is very common:
Emotion and a specific action (or set of actions) are often experienced together.
Let’s break this down some more.
One of the liberations of learning and teaching the work that I do now is that it helped me untangle my perception of when I was in sympathetic or fight flight from the reality of when I was in fight flight.
For example, something you hear in conversation all the time is “I was so fight flight!” or “I was really activated” (with the inference that this level of energy means that you are in the fight flight system). Mostly, this is based on subjective interpretation—in other words “I feel a certain way and I’m interpreting that feeling to mean that I am in sympathetic”.
(Some code here for those who need it: the sympathetic response is the term used your fight flight or survival nervous system response)
Where this sends us astray is in two main ways:
👉🏻 It leads us to believe that certain emotions are part of the fight flight response and some aren’t. For example, it’s common to assume that being angry or feeling high energy in the body is fight flight. Conversely, if I feel calm or relaxed, I might assume I’m parasympathetic.
🧐 We start to assume that emotions are actions exist together. For instance anger = outbursts or losing my temper.
The truth as I understand it
✨ You can experience the full range of emotion within the parasympathetic system. Emotion is an indication of a physiological change that registers in the body as sensation. There are no “groups” of emotions that are exclusively fight flight (or the opposite)
⭐️ No emotion is inherently coupled together with an action—but they can be. When they are coupled together, this is when we have created a sympathetic reflex response.
What that means in practice is that a specific emotional experience or sensation = a set of physical responses or actions that are predictable and repetitive.
So what do we do about it?
💁♀️ Understand that emotion and action do not live together.
🎉 Let go of certain emotions being good or bad, right or wrong. There is no such thing. Vitality means having access to the full spectrum of emotions. Adaptability means a brain and body that are responding with the emotion that best meets the moment.
👉🏻 Realise that if you are struggling with an emotion and action living together, you have identified a sympathetic reflex pattern. Explaining how to decouple that is a little more extensive than the scope of a few words in this context allows, but know that parsing them apart is completely possible and something I can help with (this is a big part of the work I do in JoyRide)
🪶 Learn to ask yourself a more beautiful question in the midst of energising emotion. Find that space between the physical experience and your response, then ask, what is the next best step from this place?
Again, sometimes this is possible and we can help ourselves, and sometimes, it can seem as though emotion and what follows are hard wired together—and that’s when you might need some help to pull them both apart.
Consider 💡
Do you allow for the full range of emotions? Do you have a story around emotions being right or wrong, good or bad?
Have a wonderful rest of your week,
xx Jane