Part of being self-responsible for how we show up for ourselves, for others, and for our horses involves accepting and embracing just how subjective our experience of the world is.
When I first started learning about the nervous system and emotions on a much deeper level, I couldn’t believe how our stories and attachments to things “being a certain way” screwed things up for us.
How we defended them.
How we went to bat for them, even if they were the cause of our actual suffering.
And, what’s more, that our experience of emotion, psychologically speaking, is for the most part learned.
Look at it this way:
The scientific definition of emotion is a physiological change in the body.
That’s it.
The psychological definition is a physiological change, followed by a subjective experience.
The last two words are important. Life-altering, in fact, if you let them be.
This means that:
Something in the environment triggers a change in my physiology (a change in my body). This fulfills the scientific definition.
If I label it (I am happy / I am anxious / I am scared) this takes me into psychological definition territory and my experience at this point is, in fact, subjective. Meaning that in essence, how I define it is all on me.
At this point, you might be saying, well great Jane, but my experience is my experience. What does it matter what I label it?
To which I would say, it matters because it determines how things roll out from that point forward. We are going to dive into that tomorrow.
But for now, as you move through the day, consider that every time you “diagnose” how or what you are feeling, the label itself, is a subjective one.
Onwards.
❤️ Jane
