Emotions: How They’re Made & How to Master Them Through Stoic Practice
At the beginning of World War I, Germany demanded that Belgium let them pass through to get to France. Belgium refused, Germany invaded, and more than a million Belgians fled for their lives, many of them arriving where I live now in England.
More than 100,000 Belgian refugees sailed into Folkestone’s harbor. Many kept moving, thousands stayed throughout the war or settled permanently here.
This week, another refugee arrived. A giant puppet of a 9-year-old Syrian refugee named Amal, which means hope. More than 11-feet-tall, she was created by the company that crafted the animals for War Horse.
Little Amal is making her way from the Syrian-Turkish border to England, traveling through eight countries in search of her mother and a safer life. She’s meant to represent all displaced children around the world.
This is part of a traveling art festival called The Walk. Cities and towns along Little Amal’s journey, including Folkestone, welcomed Amal with songs and dance and other performances. And I was there at the harbor with tears in my eyes as I saw this larger than life girl coming down the old rail station by the harbor.
Because I’m not just seeing a giant carbon fiber puppet, I’m thinking about the real children who are walking the world on their own. Who’ve been separated from their parents at borders. Whose families have died in wars. I’m thinking about how it’s hard enough to start over in an unfamiliar place when you have money and resources and a fall back plan.
And I’m thinking of the kindness and spirit of the people standing and singing alongside me, clapping for Amal as she passes by us.
I felt sadness, hope, joy, anger, and compassion. Different waves of emotion, lifting and weighing on my heart.
On the LIVE Without Borders podcast, I’ll discuss what emotions are and where they come from, and how can we cultivate healthy emotions that improve our own wellbeing, and thereby our positive impact on the world.
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Mark Twain. My favorite misattributed author.
How emotions are made
Mark Twain supposedly said, “I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” Meaning, he created a lot of his own suffering because of how he interpreted events in his life.
Mark Twain didn’t actually say that, but it was attributed to him, like all the best quotes. And when I fact checked this quote, I saw that the concept went back to Seneca (and probably before).
“There is nothing more wretched or foolish than premature fear. What madness it is to anticipate one’s troubles!...He suffers more than is necessary, who suffers before it is necessary...For such a soul will never be at rest; in waiting for the future it will lose the present blessings which it might enjoy.”
Most people think emotions run their lives, but, in her popular Ted Talk, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, says that, “Emotions are not what we think they are...They are not hardwired brain reactions that are uncontrollable...emotions are guesses...Your brain is predicting. It's using past experience based on similar situations to try to make meaning.”
When you’re confronted with a situation, your mind and body will try to make sense of it by reading your body’s automatic physical response, and running through past thoughts/feelings. This happens instantly and automatically to give you an initial understanding of the situation.
The Stoics called this initial impression phantasia. They believed that your emotions are a result of value judgements you’re making about what’s happening, and it seems that they were right. As Epictetus said, “It’s not things that upset us but our judgments about things.”
Let’s say someone calls on you during a meeting. You’re not expecting this and start blushing when all eyes are on you. The external event of someone calling on you triggered an automatic reaction.
The Stoics considered involuntary physiological responses like blushing to be pre-emotions (propatheiai), which come before full emotions, or passions, as the Stoics referred to them (negative=pathē, positive=eupatheiai). They show up in your body as internal physical sensations (butterflies in your stomach) or as visible emotional reactions, like crying. And these pre-passions are out of our control, as opposed to full-on passions that we can learn to manage.
So in the conference room, with your cheeks burning as your colleagues stare at you, you might automatically feel panic and embarrassment and think, “Stop blushing. Stop blushing. Stop blushing.” Of course, this resistance makes you blush harder.
A feeling of humiliation might wash over. And if you make the value judgement that you are humiliated, you might spiral into pathos and think, “I hate speaking in meetings,” or “People are judging me.” And you’ve been in this situation before.
“Your brain is using past experience to make meaning out of what is happening in your body in relation to the world,” Lisa says in a talk she gave for Coaches Rising. “Your brain is attempting to make meaning out of sensations to determine what actions need to be taken next.”
Scientists today call this interoception: Your perception of what's happening inside your body regarding physical sensations like hunger and also emotional sensations, like a shiver down your spine.
But are you accurately interpreting what’s going on? Or do you need to increase your emotional vocabulary?
Lisa, who wrote, How Emotions Are Made, says that, “The words we know for emotion are like tools our brains...The more words you know, the more emotions you can make and perceive in others: A racing heart doesn’t have to be anger, it can be curiosity. Sweaty palms can be determination rather than anxiety.”
If you want to expand your emotional vocab, you can download Yale’s free Mood Meter app.
Where your automatic thoughts and feelings come from
We are born with a certain temperament, which we can see in the Enneagram archetypes. But then our environment and our experiences start shaping our history, and this starts at birth.
“When babies are hungry they feel anxious and agitated,” says Dr. Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford. “They cry. They are responding to what’s going on internally. Then, external forces like adults come and respond. The babies start to look into the outside world and make predictions. They know crying will relieve anxiety because people respond. This continues into adulthood. We look to the outside world to make us feel better.”
In the Neuroscience of Change course I’m taking, Mandy Blake said, “Learning happens from the inside out and from the outside in, and it’s an interactive process of sensing and taking action in the world, that’s a physical thing that we do with our bodies and it involves our whole neurobiology.”
Earlier I mentioned interoception, your sense of what's happening viscerally inside your body. Your body also makes sense of the world through exteroception, which is your way of perceiving the external world through your five senses (taste, touch, hear, smell, see); and proprioception, which is the sense of knowing where your body parts are in space. For example, people can walk, clap their hands, and touch their nose because of this body awareness.
And so if I’m walking down a really dark sidewalk by myself, I might feel on guard. My immediate impression is based on my internal sensations, my personal history, my external senses, my sense of where I am. If I think about what’s in my control in this situation, I might choose to walk in the road where it’s lighter and where I can see what’s around me. I assent to the feeling of caution — I should be alert in this situation, but I don’t need to panic that I’m in grave danger.
Reflect, don’t react
Chris Fisher, author of the Traditional Stoicism blog, says, “How we deal with impressions is entirely up to us. We cannot control the impressions that press upon us; however, we are in complete control of our reactions to those impressions. What we assent to, what we agree with, creates our moral character and determines our psychological wellbeing.”
What’s your character? Do you want to be the type of person who feels humiliated and vows to never speak in a meeting again? Or do you want to challenge your immediate reactions?
The Stoics would say we absolutely need to challenge our impressions, because we’re often wrong.
In that meeting room, when your heart jumps at being called on, the Stoics would encourage you to calm down and question your thoughts, to get curious, and to consider what’s going on in factual language without any drama. Your cheeks are red. So what? Is this really a big deal? Is it in your control, or not? Instead of fighting it, accept that this is what’s happening right now (Stoic indifference). Ground yourself in your seat. Slow, deep belly breaths.
In the last episode, I talked about using thought records to manage your mind.
Mindfulness meditation will also help you regulate your emotions, but you need to make it a regular practice. Don’t wait until you’re in crisis to begin these different techniques. Prepare yourself now.
I mentioned pre-passions (propatheiai) before. When someone really ticks us off, that immediate flash of anger can be felt in our body. Maybe blood rushes to your face, or fury starts churning in your stomach and rises up to your chest. Stoics said these involuntary sensations are totally natural — no use in trying to fight them.
Then reflect, don’t react.
There’s a quote attributed to the Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl that modern Stoics quote all the time, “Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”
“The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh—gentle and violent ones alike...When they make their way into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link between mind and body, don’t try to resist the sensation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments, calling it ‘good’ or ‘bad.’”
It’s unclear who actually wrote that, but the quote became popular after author Stephen Covey said it sounded like something Viktor Frankl would say.
Regardless, this is a very Stoic idea and one that helped Frankl survive life in a Nazi concentration camp.
We don’t have to accept the thoughts that pop into our mind — we don’t have to ‘assent’ (sunkatatheseis) to them, as the Stoics would say. We can question our thoughts. We SHOULD question them.
And that is the space. Something happens and we pause and give ourselves space before responding.
Is this true?
If we don’t allow some space for our initial impressions, then emotions like anger, revenge, and anxiety can take off. You might have the impulse to tell off your boss or partner, or to completely withdraw from them.
Instead of repressing or acting out your emotions, get curious about them. Try observing your thoughts neutrally, as if they’re words you’re listening to on a podcast.
We’re acting like scientists here. Observing. Experiencing. Experimenting.
“As you become more aware of your sensations, you introduce the possibility of choosing your response,” Mandy says in her book Your Body is Your Brain. “Training to increase your embodied self-awareness can help you align with a sense of purpose and meaning, make a bigger contribution, experience more satisfying connections with others, find the courage and composure to face down challenges, and step into more powerful and authentic leadership.”
A very Stoic idea, indeed.
Positive Stoic emotions
Not all of our emotions are negative impressions that need to be challenged of course. Stoic author John Sellars says that the Stoics also acknowledged positive emotions like affinity.
“We're naturally predisposed to care for our close family relations as well as ourselves,” he says. “And if we develop into well-rounded rational adults, we'll extend those circles of care or concern to include our neighbors and ideally to include all of humankind (oikeiôsis).”
Little Amal, the 11-foot puppet, is traveling nearly 5,000 miles, embodying the message of ‘don’t forget about us.’
I’m thinking about all the emotions I felt when I saw her pass by, looking into the crowd, staring at the sky, wandering her path with childlike wonder.
When it comes to our emotions, I like to think that there’s something larger going on than just our history and experience: A universal law that says when we are at our best, when we are healthy and living in arete, when we see a child suffering, we help them. We call our elected officials. We don’t change the channel.
And the Stoics agreed! Saying that we are guided by universal reason.
“They believed that the mind is born predisposed to certain ideas which are not yet consciously held. [As we grow up and experience life], these ideas are evoked and developed through the stimulus of sense impressions and the development of reason,” Maryanne Cline Horowitz writes in the Journal of the History of Ideas. She goes on to say that Epictetus says that even though we have these innate concepts in all of us, they get hidden by false opinions.
We get stuck in our personality patterns. Go on autopilot. Get distracted. But we can remove our blind spots by becoming more self aware and challenging our assumptions and judgements.
The director of the traveling festival with puppet Amal this way, Amir Nizar Zuabi, explains the purpose of the event:
“It is because the attention of the world is elsewhere right now that it is more important than ever to reignite the conversation about the refugee crisis and to change the narrative around it. Yes, refugees need food and blankets, but they also need dignity and a voice. The purpose of The Walk is to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances. Little Amal is 3.5 metres tall because we want the world to grow big enough to greet her. We want her to inspire us to think big and to act bigger.”
Yes, we have neuroscience to explain emotions, but we also have spirit and soul to help us feel into becoming better people.
If this day were your last, would you be satisfied with how you’ve lived it?
If you’re looking for more peace, clarity, and positive transformation in your life, I’m here to help.
Hi. I’m Sarah Mikutel and, using tools like the Enneagram and Stoicism, I help my coaching clients reduce their anxiety and overwhelm, strengthen their relationships, and shift from uncomfortable stalemate to confident action.
You will never have this day again. It’s time to make every moment matter.
