Have you seen “Inside Out”? It’s an animated movie I recently watched with my boys about our emotions. The characters are based on the universal emotions of Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Joy, which are personified and shown to be sitting in a young girl’s brain, working hard to steer her actions and to protect her – without her having much say over them! While that’s a cute and palpable explanation for children, it’s actually far from the truth.

Emotions don’t happen us. (Can I have a dime for every time I’ve heard someone say, and in the past have said it myself: “… but I can’t help the way I feel!”) Actually: yes, you absolutely can and in this article I’ll explain

– how our emotions are created and constructed
– how we become “addicted” to our emotions
– how we can break the addictive cycle
– how culture plays a role in the way we perceive and react to feelings

Emotions are triggered by thoughts – not the other way around

Understanding this has been such a game changer for me. Many different theories about why we experience emotions have appeared and disappeared throughout history, but over the last century it has been thoroughly examined and demonstrated that thoughts alone can produce emotions. (Psychiatrist Aaron Beck was one of the pioneers to draw this conclusion in the 1960s and Neuroscientists have carried out numerous studies and scans to prove this theory).

If this surprises you, it might be due to the fact that our common definition of “thought” is quite narrow: it’s not just the thoughts we actively think but also includes deeply engrained beliefs, stories and interpretations that run on autopilot, far beyond our conscious awareness. This can make it hard for us to pinpoint the thought that preceded an emotion. Remember, it is estimated that about 95% of our brain’s activity is unconscious!

Emotions as Indicators

That’s precisely the reason why emotions are such great indicators of what state we’re currently in. We might not be able to deconstruct the thought process behind it, but we usually are well aware of our feelings: firstly, because the Limbic System of our brain (sometimes referred to as the “emotional brain”) has more neural connections than other parts of the brain. Secondly, because our emotions often manifest on the physical plane as well – your hands may start sweating as you’re stressing out over an upcoming deadline, or a betrayal may quite literally feel like a punch in the stomach.

The Complexity of Emotional Constructs

In essence, each of us constructs their emotional responses and creates certain patterns, “go-to reactions”. These are deeply engrained in us and often stem from childhood, from the relationship dynamic with our parents, from mirroring others around us:

Experiences & Limiting Beliefs: When we were children, we couldn’t make sense of many things (for instance: “Why is mommy sad?”), either because we didn’t understand grown-up issues or because we simply weren’t told. We therefore drew infantile conclusions – oftentimes egocentric ones (“Daddy doesn’t listen to me because I’m not smart enough”), which led us to create underlying, limiting beliefs and pain points that accompany us into adult life.

Neuroscience: Furthermore, by emotionally reacting a certain way repeatedly, we create strong neural pathways in our brain that make it easier to continue to do so. At these same time, once a strong neural connection is established, it becomes more difficult to react in a different way (which would mean: thinking new thoughts, looking at a situation from a different angle, thus leading to a a new emotional response).

Conditioning: Society has trained us well to put labels onto everything. This is good. This is bad. Oftentimes, your emotional reaction seems to be predetermined by the mainstream, by what we “should feel” or the way “others would react to this”. If we don’t question it, we’ll blindly adopt this generic and unconscious approach to life.

Addicted to Emotions

The truth is, we become “addicted” to the emotions we regularly experience, even the negative ones. Not because we necessarily like them, but because they’re familiar to us. This can also be scientifically explained:

When we are triggered to feel very angry, anxious or sad by an unpleasant outside event (a perceived threat), we go into “fight or flight mode”, our brain’s response to acute stress. Our adrenal glands are stimulated to release stress hormones, we become highly alert, laser-focused, tensed. In this so-called “survival mode”, we’re unable to be creative or to come up with new solutions.

When such an experience becomes frequent or chronic, and it often does (just think of living in constant tension due to a difficult relationship with a family member), neural pathways are created accordingly and your mind-body memory is activated: your unconscious autopilot takes over. The unpleasant event you experienced will run on replay in your mind. As you’re fixating on the negative situation, you start noticing more things that confirm your theory. The next time you encounter a similar trigger, your brain will scan its memory bank within a split second and “propose” a similar reaction. We have therefore contributed to wiring our brain to access certain emotional patterns in response to certain triggers. Luckily, we know now that our brains can be re-wired (Neuroplasticity).

Breaking our Emotional Patterns

A lot of literature suggests that we attract our circumstances or the people in our lives and they will in turn trigger an emotion. Actually, we attract our EMOTIONS. And our circumstances or the people in our lives will merely trigger these familiar feelings in us. That’s why focusing on how we want to feel is so powerful – and yet, this will require us to do some deep, inner work on our limiting beliefs and stories in order to truly evoke different emotions in an intentional and sustainable way. A good coach can help you with this tremendously.

So, in order to break our emotional patterns we must:

A) Become aware of them. Take some time to truly introspect (keeping an open mind and a sense of curiosity as you do), to reflect, journal or meditate on the typical ways you respond to outside events emotionally. Also, analyze how others do. You’ll see that there is no one “normal” reaction to triggers, only highly individual ones.

B) Don’t resist what is. The emotions you’re experiencing in this present moment are what they are. Don’t reject them, don’t feel guilty or ashamed for feeling them. What we resist persists. But know, that these emotions will pass and that you can change your patterns in the future if you…

C) Take determined action. It takes about 21 one days to break a habit, neuroscientists estimate. This is also what it takes to weaken neural connections in your brain. By repeatedly doing something differently, the neural pathways you’ve previously established become less connected, and new pathways can be created. This is not a matter of genes or pre-disposition, it’s a fact that holds true for everyone. We are all capable of changing the way our brain is wired (Neuroplasticity) which is what will ultimately occur when we decide to adopt:

>>> New ways of thinking (questioning or replacing old stories, limiting beliefs) You can read my recent blog post about the power of thoughts and words Change Your Words, Change Your Life for more inspiration.

>>> New ways of interpreting outside stimuli (when A happens, it does not necessarily mean B. When I notice myself falling into this thinking trap, I ask myself out loud: “Says Who!?” To upgrade your habitual thinking and to become more resourceful and creative in your reactions and interpretations, please read and apply this mind hack: Camilla’s Counter-Thought

>>> New ways of feeling. You are not meant to be in a negative emotional state for pro-longed periods of time. And you don’t have to. You have a lot of power and tools in your hands to create better responses and produce more pleasant emotions (remember: become aware – accept the status quo – take determined action to change).

Emotions in a crossborder context

The emotions my clients experience as a result of their relocation to a different country vary, just like their motives and circumstances. In our sessions we spend much time deciphering them, getting to the root of them and becoming more intentional about the stories we tell ourselves and the emotions we want to feel as a consequence.

You might want to ask yourself:
Q: What emotions are being triggered by my experience abroad?
Q: When have I encountered these emotions before?
Q: In what ways are these emotions a part of me, more than they are a part of the “general experience”?

Multilingualism as a Gateway to a Richer Emotional Experience

Have you noticed how certain words to describe a feeling cannot be properly translated into another language? Or how the “standard response” of your host culture to a potential trigger varies to your own? By learning new ways of expressing ourselves through more nuanced terms and by observing and mirroring different reactions, we can open ourselves up to new emotional experiences.

On the other hand, studies have shown that in cultures where a certain feeling can’t be described, its people won’t experience it either. Anthropologist Robert Levy coined the term “Hypocognition” to describe a society’s inability to exactly express a certain feeling or experience. 

In German, for instance, there’s the common and sought after concept of “Gemütlichkeit” (a cozy feeling, state of being/doing or experience) – which, as I was made aware of my community, is similar to the Dutch word “gezellig” – both difficult to translate into other languages.

Then there’s “Schadenfreude” (the feeling of delighting over someone else’s misfortune) that can’t be properly translated either. Or think of “Wanderlust” – literally the desire to hike/walk, now internationally used to describe the desire to travel.

The Portuguese concept of “Saudade” (longing for something or someone who’s absent) cannot be properly translated either, as it’s something more than “missing something/someone” or “nostalgia”.

“Ya’aburnee” in Arabic describes one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how unbearable it would be to live without them.

“Toska” is Russian for “longing for something that’s missing but not knowing what it is”.

A fascinating discovery for me was, that in Tahitian culture there is no real expression for “sadness”. Instead, it’s described as a “flu-like fatigue” – can you imagine how that must impact the emotional experience they’ll have when something “sad” occurs!?

Emotions and the Mind-Body Connection

Finally, let’s not forget that our mind-body connection is undeniably strong. Prolonged, negative emotional states, such as chronic stress, depression, anxiety or resentment are linked to disease, as backed up by Science. Taking care of our emotional wellbeing, by doing inner work and making self-care (which is not to be confused with selfishness) a priority, will positively affect your psychological and physical health.

Emotions are also contagious, so by fostering positive ones whenever possible, we are not only serving ourselves but also our loved ones and society as a whole!