Wading through the swamp of our hearts

In most of my articles I tend to allow the title to make itself evident in the course of my writing or, failing that, I explain it at a relatively late point. Today, however, I am going to deviate from that patter to make a very important precision. This post is going to deal with feelings and, in spite of the common knowledge, they do not come from the heart: it is true that our pulse and blood pressure are frequently affected by our emotions and, at the same time, they are very present to us. As a counterexample, pupil dilation, which is equally affected by our level of arousal, is impossible for us to stop unless we are in front of a mirror. But the pumping in our temples or a racing heart just the result of our emotions and not their cause. And the same applies to the gut feelings: being part of the bodily response to our feelings they are correlated with them, but not causing them.

In the end the source of our emotions lies undisputably in the brain. Some emotions, like fear or aggression are older from the evolutionary point of view, shared even with our old reptilian ancestors, and originate in the innermost depths of our heads, while others like love and affection are almost exclusive of mammals and rely on the action of more evolved parts of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex.

Photo: Joshua Mayer

On a human level, emotions have contributed to our survival in two very distinct ways. On a first level, they constitute an integration mechanism for all the immediate perceptions, helping us to forge reaction patterns in agreement with the situation: when you find yourself in a dark house, smelling of mold, slightly drafty and with the only sounds of the creaking of the beams and the wind in the leaves outside our brain computes all these stimuli together and give us fear so that we are ready to react quickly and intensely at the very first sign of impending danger.

On a second level, our feeling are essential to inform our responses in the future. Having gone through the scary situation of walking through a derelict house once, you will think twice before you do it again and will certainly need a very strong reason to submit yourself to another experience of fear. However, these believe rely on the a very important (and not so solid) assumption: that our past feelings are good predictors or our future ones. But there are so many things that can modify our feelings that this is, by far, not universally true.

The tricky part of dealing with our emotions is that external elements have now way of changing how we feel about something and even ourselves only have limited agency. Contrary to other problems in the material world, such as procuring groceries or fixing a washing machine, there are no actions that can be undertaken to change our feelings. In fact, the most effective way to change our feelings relies on the fact that they are integrated views of a situation: various factors contribute in different measure to the creation of the feeling, some are completely ignored, while others play a very central role. Under these conditions it is possible to change our feeling by focusing our attention on some aspect that we had previously overseen and disregarding (or giving just an oblique glance) to some impressions that used to have a disproportionate weight. For instance, if we have felt awkward in a social situation we could fall down the rabbit hole of the social anxiety or we could instead focus on the fact that the situation was brief. In one case we will complete refuse to take part in future gatherings, while the other framing would allow us to join events which are not expected to last very long.

In terms of everyday life, the problem is that helping someone to change their feelings (remember, only they can change them) is can be a complicated task. It requires gathering information about all the impressions gathered at the time, both the ones that helped constructing the feeling and those which were ignored, and then finding a new frame that would be acceptable for the person we are trying to help. If our friend has in very high regard their parents' opinion, it is just not helpful to invite them to just ignore what they say, because it would be impossible. On the other hand, focusing on how natural is to have different opinions and how empowering it is to make our own decisions could tip the scales.

This kind of assistance is, as I have just mentioned, rather work intensive on top of requiring a set of introspection tools that not everybody has at their disposal. That is why, in many cases, we are left to fend for ourselves while our friends insist on us "cheering up". But their own sense of helplessness when it comes to our distress is so strong that they are very likely to simply avoid us while we are "unwell". This does not mean that they are "bad" friends, only that some friends are better suited to help us in a low moment than others. Crossing the swamp of our feelings with murky water up to your chest is not an endeavor for the faint of heart. Anyone who dares to try is already worth some recognition, but those who actually manage to help are true jewels that should be kept by all means possible including, if necessary, assisting them even if it takes a lot of time and effort, because those are really good friends. Have a nice evening.