Emotional Lenses
From the moment we’re born, we have experiences: joy, disappointment, boredom, thrill, fear. These moments and the resulting emotions then begin to influence the way we see the world.
Let’s say you had a wonderfully positive experience on your birthday. At that time, an association is then built between your birthday and a wonderful time - an example of a lens - so when your birthday comes around again, you feel excited about it. On the flipside, if you’ve had a negative experience on your birthday, then a negative association is built - a different lens - so when your birthday comes around again this time, you feel worried or anxious.
At some point in my life, I recognized that my emotional reactions to life happening around me didn’t always fit the circumstances. More often, my reaction was over the top (internally, and sometimes externally), and occasionally, I had no emotional reaction at all to something that, for most people, would be highly emotional.
My curiosity about this disproportionate reaction prompted me to look deeper into where my emotions came from.
In that research I discovered what I like to call my Emotional Lenses.
As I began examining my internal world - which included some deep trauma - I realized that my emotions were being ruled by this fragmented collection of past experiences - or really, my perceptions of those experiences - my lenses - which colored everything I was seeing, hearing, and feeling.
I didn’t like the idea that my emotions seemed to just be happening to me. I wanted to have a conscious choice in how I respond to life. I realized that if I wanted to live more authentically and intentionally, then this was where the personal work would begin.
Because these emotional lenses aren't Truth; they are the memory of a past emotion.
The power was in realizing that if I became better aware of what was happening with me internally, I could choose whether to let these past moments - these lenses - influence the way I responded to life, or not.
I decided that I wanted to evolve from being reactive to being responsive.
So I began a process of examining my emotional lenses to evaluate which ones reflected the person I wanted to be and which ones distorted that image. This is where my journey of identity began…
In my work, people will often tell me that they can’t control their emotional responses, but this is not my lived experience. We know from the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves that, as humans, our thoughts are filtered first through our limbic system, which means every thought is led by emotion first… this causes a chemical release in the brain, which then looks for a corresponding neurochemical response to balance or resolve itself.
The emotion is then filtered through our personal lenses.
This is where our Internal Storyteller comes from - the attempt of our psyche to justify or resolve the stirred up nervous system response. And like Brene Brown talks about, it doesn’t matter whether that story is positive or negative. Either way, creating this story induces a reward to the brain in the form of a chemical payoff. The process is so fast that it feels instantaneous to us.
I believe this is why people believe they have no control over their feelings. The primal parts of our brain have become so efficient at trying to “protect us” from pain that it happens almost outside of our awareness.
It’s important to know that the brain can actually get addicted to this chemical cycle, which is how people often get stuck in their own internal (story) loops - telling themselves the same negative story over and over again. The nervous system gets stirred up... then the (usually negative) story induces a payoff. Rinse and repeat. It becomes a seductive neurochemical cocktail...
The trick to taking control of this is in interrupting this process.
[As an aside, replacing the negative story with a positive one still gives you the chemical payoff, which is another path for approaching change from the inside out].
As you move through your day, how many of your reactions are you actually choosing consciously? How many just seem to happen to you? How does it feel to not be in control of those moments?
What lenses do you recognize in your life that are influencing how you respond to the world? Which ones are worth keeping? Are there any that you might let go of?
If you ever want to dive deeper into this, or are looking for a community of support, keep your eyes open for the launch of the Ignite Community.
In wholeness,
Sharon Marie Scott
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