Transient thoughts, emotions and sensations.

I was sitting in class (a class on psychological therapy) earlier this week learning about ‘emotional dysregulation’ and I was reminded how maladaptive our responses to emotions can be. I was also alerted to how our society - from a western psychological perspective - is kind of scared of emotions. We often refer to emotions with terms such as emotional containment, regulation, overcoming it, etc. This I found fascinating. We are so scared of emotions, and they often result in unhelpful, avoidant behaviours, yet they are so temporary! When you really pay attention to the physical sensation of them, they last seconds! Moods last longer but within moods emotions are still changing constantly.

In an “On Being” podcast Alain de Botton notes that we consider ourselves above certain emotions. For example, we think we are better than getting angry at someone stacking the dishwasher wrongly- but often we’re not. And therefore we dismiss the emotion and don’t acknowledge the emotions’ fleeting feeling and the influence it has on us. Perhaps our responses to emotions, thoughts and sensations are more helpful when they are explicit and considered, rather than insidious or avoidant. 

I also liked a line in this video “I’ve had a happy life yes. But not a single happy week.”. Again it highlights the changing nature of our emotional state. That 7 days straight of ‘happiness’ is unrealistic when happiness (or joy as i prefer to use) is a fleeting sensation. 

I think our language doesn’t reflect this transient, changing nature of emotions well either. The fact that happy, sad, angry are all used as fixed states e.g., “I am happy”, rather than a changing state “I am experiencing a moment of joy”. Or the fact that I can say I am a happy person. It is not true. In that same vein to truly reflect that temporary, malleable, changing, relational being that I am my name would make more sense as a verb rather than a noun. For example I am Annie-ing. I am not Annie. I am not one consistent thing I am a changing process (that idea came up in a podcast but I can’t remember which one!). 

Can we practice in our mind in our body and in our breath, riding with, moving with, changing with, these fleeting, transient thoughts, emotions and sensations?