I've written nearly half a million words in newsletters throughout the years. I'm currently reviewing and revising each piece before publishing them here as free posts.
Nature is cool, but it can also be brutal. Our ancestors lived in a nightmare world where survival was the driving force behind everything they did, and they adapted ways to keep themselves alive. They developed an early warning system to help them in the form of emotions and feelings about the world.
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I'm not saying this is the only reason emotions exist, but anxiety was super useful when the world was populated with short-faced bears. Even our most unpleasant emotions are trying to help us. They just don't realize just how safe our world is now.
Our emotions are calibrated for a world where everything was trying to kill us. I know the last few years have been hard, but we still live in a world of relative luxury and safety, especially compared to the past.
Our ancestors dealt with constant and immediate threats to their lives, whereas most of our threats are future-oriented and existential. Our threat-detecting software hasn't updated quickly enough.
Because of this, our emotions are not reliable indicators of reality.
Hold up on the pitchforks and comments, though: I'm not saying your emotions are not real or that your experience of them is invalid. I am saying that they are rooted in ancient survival-oriented adaptations and rarely present an accurate picture of reality.
Here are a few useful statements about our emotions:
Anxiety does not necessarily mean there is something dangerous nearby.
Fear does not necessarily mean you are about to be harmed.
Anger does not necessarily mean you need to retaliate or save face with someone.
Guilt does not necessarily mean you've done something wrong.
Happiness doesn't necessarily mean you are doing everything right.
There is a very important word in every one of those sentences: necessarily.
Our emotions are not bad. They are not useless. They are not a burden. But they are often blinded by a very old operating system. Many of the emotions we experience are left over from hunter-gatherer times when things were much more dangerous.
Mindfulness can help us learn to observe our emotions as they arise and fall without responding or reacting to what they tell us. Our instinct is to interpret harmless physiological sensations- a pounding heart, sweaty palms, throbbing headache, a watery stomach – as negative or harmful and, therefore, true. When we can learn how to simply let them be as they are while cultivating a compassionate awareness, they cease to be a problem.
My friend Meredith has written about how anxiety and excitement are the same. This is one of my favorite blog posts by one of my favorite people. It's worth a click.
To sum up, our emotions are an important and vital part of being human, but they are not always a reliable indicator of what is going on. Don't let them run the show.
Journal Prompts
What emotion(s) am I experiencing right now?
What is this emotion trying to tell me?
Does this message line up with a rational assessment of the situation?
What bodily sensations am I interpreting as negative right now?
Are these sensations dangerous or just unpleasant?
How often do my emotions drive my behavior?
How well does this turn out?
Thanks for reading. I will keep updating these old newsletters and posting them as I am able.