Emotions Miniseries #9
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Was I wrong?
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If you’ve read the Emotions Miniseries so far, you know that I’ve been drilling the basic concept that message that Emotions are indicators of how well aligned the thoughts of our Minds and the actions of our Bodies are with the desires/intention of our Spirit.
And rather than focus on our emotions and change our emotions, we should change our thoughts and actions which will lead to a change in emotion.
You may have thought about that and said, “But Kane, sometimes my emotions don’t seem to be stemming from a thought or action.”
Sometimes they just are; we inexplicably find ourselves in a certain mood.
Sometimes they happen because of other people. We react to our situations and to the things that people around us say or do and suddenly have a burst of emotion.
How does that fit with what we’ve been talking about?
These sudden bursts of emotion come from our emotional memories.
When we experience strong emotion, the memory gets imprinted particularly strongly in our memories. The emotions we experience at the time get locked in with those memories.
These are what my good friend, Dr. Ted Morter IV, calls SET points. I first introduced you to him when we talked about the importance of controlling your inputs and who you listen to.
One of the many things our subconscious minds and our limbic brains do is constantly compare what is happening right NOW with experiences that we’ve had in the past.
Because SET points are created during periods of high emotion, many of them are related to when we were scared and in danger.
So as part of our survival and protective mechanisms, if our current situation matches a SET point, the emotions that were stored with the memories come flooding back to us, overriding our conscious experience in the present and throwing us into our experience of our memories.
Here’s an example I’m sure all of us I can relate to.
Probably the earliest memory I have is from when I was 3 years old. This is the only memory I have from that age; the next one is from a year later. But this memory is clear and vivid because I have a SET point there.
My mom was in the kitchen making Chinese steamed buns. She put a pot full of water on the stove and threw a marble in it. She always threw a marble in because it would rattle around when the water boiled and she would know when to put the buns over the steam.
Seeing me in the kitchen, she looked down at me and said “Don’t touch the pot. It’s hot and it will burn you.”
A few minutes later, attracted by the clinking in the now-boiling pot of water, I walked back to the stove. And I did what every little boy and girl does when their parents tell them not to do something.
I reached up on my tiptoes, stuck my index finger out… and touched the pot.
Well, we all know what happened next...
But here’s the point. When I reached towards that pot that first time, I had zero fear. I was full of curiosity and wanted to know what was going on in that clinking pot.
But NOW, when I see a pot of boiling water and my hand is very close to it, I become hyper-aware of it. If I move my hand closer, I get nervous. Still closer, and I get scared. The closer I get, the more frightened I get…
Where is that fear coming from?
It is coming from my first memory. It’s the fear, shock, and confusion I experienced the after the first time I touched a hot pot and burned my finger.
So, the emotions we experience from SET points in our emotional memory are not from a thought we are having or action we are taking right now, but from a triggered memory.
It stems from a thought or action we had in the past.
To move ourselves out of the emotion from the past, we can adopt the same strategy: Start to think and do things that are very different and unrelated to what triggered us.
It may mean simply taking a few deep breaths, or it could take something bigger like leaving your location and going to some place completely different.
That can help us when we get triggered. But what about the next time we encounter a similar situation?
How do we stop getting triggered? Or remove the trigger so we can stop reacting to the past and start living and responding in the moment?
That’s exactly what we’ll talk about tomorrow.
Until then, stay away from pots of boiling water!
Kane
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