Learning from your emotions
Personal reflection from a clinician-in-training, Vol 4
The movie, Inside Out, by Pixar x Disney, once made me cry. If you’re not familiar with it, it is an animated movie about a teen girl working through the emotions of disgust, sadness, anger, fear and joy.
I’ve seen it a handful of times, but on this particular instance many years ago, I was going through an emotional period of feeling down and I watched the main character struggle with feeling sad, and not understanding why. I think that scene captured quite literally how it feels to be stuck sometimes.
I share this because recently I was telling someone that their emotion is trying to teach them something they have not learned yet. At first, they looked at me and were like huh? I chuckled and explained that if an emotion is lingering after you’ve reflected and done your coping skills, then I think that may mean there’s still something there to teach you. It could be about the emotion itself, or it could be about the situation you are emotional about. Either way, it’s not resolved yet and requires some more attention.
Interestingly, our brain processes emotions in various pathways and parts; one of those parts is usually in the amygdala. However there is also a learning and memory component of emotions that take place in the hippocampus. This could mean that a registered emotion shows up in the hippocampus where the brain decides if it is something that has already occurred, in this case you would react in a way you have in the past (i.e memory). However, if it is registered as new, then your brain wants to learn, and the response may be different. It should be noted that “old emotions or reactions” can certainly be changed into a new response, that would require additional insight to pause the memory factor and instead start the learning factor.
Emotions are complicated, and that’s because humans are complicated. Complicated and beautifully unique patterns. Respect and listen to your emotions, they are teaching you something :)
