Emotions are the expression of a deep psychobiological wisdom embedded in our body, brain, and mind. More than feelings, emotions shape our experience of reality and fuel our desires, needs, and motivations. The wisdom of emotions emerges from their integration with all aspects of our being, providing us nonverbal information that helps us adapt to our world and balancing our natural rhythms for growth and healing. Through enhancing our understanding of emotions, we can harness the deep wisdom of our emotions.
Topics below:
The Body Emotion
Emotional Mindfulness
Emotions Have a Mind of Their Own
Being Emotions
Emotional Reality
Changing Emotional Patterns
The Body Emotion: The somatic experience of emotions
Experiencing an emotion in our body is commonplace. Feeling butterflies of excitement in our stomach or the tension of fear in our chest are familiar to us all. Many of the ancients, from the Greeks to the Hopi Indians, thought that emotions emanated exclusively from the heart. Given that the emotions can be felt so strongly in the body, America’s first psychologist, William James, postulated in the nineteenth century that emotions arise in the body. He asserted that our emotional experience was the result of the brain interpreting certain sensations in the body, just as the brain would interpret specific sensations as hot or cold. This somatic theory of emotions postulated that a stimulus in the world triggers a visceral reaction that results in the brain generating a particular emotion.
Somatic theory arose in a scientific climate that viewed human nature as embedded in an evolutionary past. Darwin had described the adaptive nature of emotions as aiding survival and in facilitating communication between individuals. This naturalistic perspective led to the belief that emotions are linked to our evolutionary history, and that emotions were genetically-determined, hard-wired, programmed responses, such as our fight or flight response.
The problem with somatic theory is that there does not appear to be much specificity in the relationship between events in the body and the emotions that are experienced. Whereas there are distinct, neuronal receptors for sensations such as heat, cold, pain, and touch, there are no such emotional receptors. Additionally, there is no direct link between our visceral reactions and our emotional experience. For instance, we shed tears for many reasons. There are tears of fear and tears of joy. Similarly ambiguous is a racing heart, which can arise out of fear, love, or excitement. Notwithstanding these limitations to somatic theory, the body does play a significant role in the experience of having an emotion.
Although the body may not determine our emotional experience, the body is intimately involved in our emotional experience. Indeed, the body seems to add intensity and immediacy to our emotional experiences. This connection between our body and our emotions is validated by individuals who report that subsequent to becoming paralyzed there is a change in the quality and intensity of their emotional experience. Paralyzed individuals consistently report a very real difference in the felt sense of their emotions.
The force and power that our physical sensations have on our emotional experience can be manifested in psychotherapy. Wilhelm Reich used body posture and breathing to help clients evoke emotions associated with birth and early infancy. Fritz Pearls’ method of Gestalt Therapy focused on the client’s body sensations, posture, and breathing in order to evoke strong, often latent emotions. Pearls felt that individuals held their emotions in check as a defense against fully experiencing the challenges of life. Through focusing a client’s attention on their body, or through encouraging the client to exaggerate a subtle movement or expression, Pearls was able to help clients evoke strong, dramatic, and cathartic, emotional events. Some of Pearls’ innovations, if not his meta-psychology, have been utilized by contemporary somatic therapists. Somatic therapy is a systematic, clinical process aimed at evoking emotions in clients through focusing attention on their physical sensations.
Although it has not been possible to identify specific bodily triggers to all of our emotional experiences, there continues to be interest in identifying the basic emotions that are aroused and manifested in our bodies. One area of specific interest has focused on how we seem to innately express emotions in our facial expressions. The apparent universality of emotional facial expression has helped to maintain the belief that people have innate emotions. Individuals from widely diverse cultures show consistent agreement in naming a feeling associated with an expressive face. These cross-cultural observations have led to the belief that there are several basic, genetically-determined, emotions; namely: surprise, interest, joy, rage, fear, disgust, shame, and anguish. The diversity of our emotional life is held to be the result of these basic emotions, blending like the primary colors, according to Robert Plutchik.
The existence of basic primary emotions is supported by research examining facial responses to an emotional stimulus. Research in this arena by Paul Ekman has led to an enormous amount of speculation that there are ingrained patterns of facial expression that correspond to innate emotions. This view of the nature of emotions holds that there exist autonomic, nervous-system programs that are activated in response to selective environmental and internal stimuli. Caroll Izard asserts that our facial expression of emotion is a two-stage process. This research indicates that socially-learned facial responses emerge after an initial innate, facial expression of emotions. Upon presentation of a visual stimulus that has an emotional charge, the viewer’s face will display an emotional reaction concurrent with the stimulus. This initial facial response may only last a few milliseconds, after which time the face will express emotions that have been conditioned or socially learned. The specific muscles involved in this autonomic response are the orbicular muscle at the edge of the eye and the zygomatic muscle at the edge of a smile. These muscles are uniquely involved in these automatic, instantaneous, emotional, facial displays and cannot be voluntarily engaged. This research into the facial response to emotional stimulus may not prove that there are basic genetically-determined emotions, but there remains little doubt that the face plays a crucial role in how we experience and communicate emotions.
Although thinking that the body is the seat of our emotions may be an exaggeration, the body remains a critical element in understanding the nature of emotions, as described by Antonio Damasi, in The Feeling of What Happens.
Emotional Mindfulness: Cognition and emotions
The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome created a cultural tidal wave, lasting millennium, with the proposition that all our emotions arise from how we look at things. Contemporary cognitive psychologists refine this ancient philosophy and assert that emotions exist in our mind, being the result of our cognitive processing. Cognitive perspective holds that without the participation of our mind there are no emotions, just physiological sensations.
The involvement of our mind through cognition involves more than identifying and naming a feeling. Cognition is a complex process of mind extending well beyond simple learning and conditioning. It includes arousal and orienting to stimulation, as well as integrating learning and memory with perception, in order to create an understanding or meaning about a situation. Cognition requires awareness, and awareness is based on arousal, orientation, and attention. Something happens to arouse us; we orient to it, and then lock onto it with attention. This awareness is the start of assessing a situation and determining what it means and how to respond. The most basic level of appraisal is determining if the event is pleasant or unpleasant. Over time, through learning, memory, and categorization, hierarchies are constructed that discriminate between a wide range of emotional events.
Cognition is not passively processing perceptual information when determining the emotional value of an event. Prior emotional experiences shape future ones through the recursive influence of memory, perception, and cognition. The extent to which a cognitive appraisal can determine our emotional response is well illustrated by experiments conducted as far back as the 1960s by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer. In one example of this research, subjects were given adrenaline while waiting for an event that some believed would be beneficial and others believed would be deleterious. Invariably, the subjects reported either excitement or fear based on this expectation. The adrenaline resulted in a racing heart and increased arousal. Where this occurred in an environment with negative connotations such as a dentist’s office, subjects would feel distress. Where this arousal occurred in an environment with positive connotations such as waiting to receive a prize, the subjects reported pleasant excitement. For both groups of subjects, the cognitive expectation determined the emotional experience—their expectation determined whether they felt distress or excitement.
Another example illustrates the degree to which expectations can determine complex, interpersonal, emotional behavior and identity. A research psychoanalyst, Beatrice Beebe, videotaped sessions in order to analyze interpersonal exchanges occurring in therapy. One subject was a female patient who had been in therapy for some time for depression and low self-esteem. In the videotaped session, the patient did not make eye contact and reported feelings of despair and hopelessness; this was typical, session behavior for this woman. However, after the session when reviewing the tape with the therapist, the patient was energetic and engaging, making frequent eye contact. This pattern continued for the entire research project. During the therapy sessions the patient would show emotions of helpless dejection and during the video-review periods the patient would be engaged in social participation, interest, and curiosity. These shifts in global mood and behavior were not conscious contrivances, but rather the result of the context of the interpersonal engagement. In the therapy hour, the examination was on the problems the patient was having, whereas in the debriefing the focus was on a curious exploration of her behavior.
Wide shifts in mood and self-image are not limited to psychotherapy and actually occur for all of us, in many situations. Simply shifting our viewpoint can result in widely-different moods. For example, when researchers ask individuals about their overall life satisfaction, they report lower levels of satisfaction than when they are asked how they are feeling at any particular moment. As detailed in Happiness by Design: Change What You Do, Not How You Think, by Paul Dolan, a moment-by-moment report will have positive results, whereas the same individual asked about how they feel about their life, overall, will be much more negative. If we look at our moment-to-moment self-report, contentment is likely, whereas lifetime appraisals often are much dimmer. There are many ways to interpret this case; our emphasis here is to illustrate the effect that our point of view has on our mood.
The cognitive construction of our emotional experience is a combination of our temperament and our learning and conditioning. Learning and conditioning organizes our emotional experiences into thematic clusters. These themes can then function heuristically in order to expedite cognitive appraisals. Through conditioning, an emotion can become linked with a certain meaning and action. Subsequently, whenever the same emotion arises it will evoke the previously-linked meaning and behavior. Through this process, an emotion, and its linked meaning, can become quickly associated to life events, according to cognitive psychologist, Richard Lazarus.
This creation of meaning by combining our experiences with our emotions is a fundamental principle of the way our mind organizes information. The content of this organization system will vary from person to person; but associating emotions with our experiences is invariant, according to psychoanalyst, Robert Stolorow. This organizing principle of emotional meaning-making comports well with psychoanalytic observations that people will invariably create an emotional meaning in order to organize their experience. Although the way we organize our emotional life may invariably follow this linkage between meaning and emotion, the specific content of that organization results from our unique circumstances. Through self-reflective awareness of our emotional patterns, we can shape our conditioning. Most often, the original conditioning occurred outside of awareness; however, when we bring our attention to these patterns we begin to alter our conditioning. Attending to our emotional associations changes what was created outside of awareness.
Emotions Have a Mind of Their Own: Emotional experience and central nervous system activation
Our emotional experiences are readily shaped by learning and conditioning because of the role played by our subcortex. The subcortex, including parts of the limbic system, is involved in motivation and memory as well as the emotional responses of fear and anger. This direct interaction between memory, motivation, and basic emotions, results in rapid association and conditioning. For example, after being bitten by a dog you are likely to feel fear the next time you see that dog. This type of emotional association can be deconditioned through mindfulness and deliberate reflection on the traumatizing event. However, it is much more difficult to alter most emotional conditioning because it is more subtle and generally occurs outside of awareness. For the most part, we are more likely to experience this type of emotional conditioning as reflecting our emotional reality.
The power of this emotional conditioning originally led researchers to marginalize the cognitive influence on our emotional experiences. Since emotions appeared to arise from subcortical brain-centers, the role of cognition was seen as minor. This nearly-exclusive focus on the limbic system led to the postulation of the existence of an emotional brain that generates most all of our emotional life. Evidence gathered by mid-nineteenth century theorists pointed to the region of the brain known as the limbic system as the source of emotional life. For example, in the 1950s, Jose Delgado found that electrical stimulation of subcortical regions in the brain resulted in emotional experiences. Specifically, electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus appeared to create the experience of pleasure, in fact, so much pleasure that animals would forgo eating or sex. The excitement of this discovery outran the scientific facts and, when combined with the scientific positivism of the time, resulted in quick pronouncement that the source of emotions had been found.
As it turns out, the original pleasure-seeking experiments generated exaggerated and unsupportable conclusions. The original research had not stimulated the pleasure centers; they had stimulated motivation. They inferred pleasure, but the stimulation was triggering goal-driven action, in and of itself, not pleasure seeking. Subsequent research does show that the limbic system plays a profound role in basic, emotional responses, just not as precisely localized as originally thought. The limbic system is thoroughly interconnected with all parts of our body and brain, making it highly unlikely that any specific location is the sole source of complex behaviors or emotions. However, the search for the localization of emotions has continued, even though the hypothalamus and the limbic system, in general, are no longer seen as the exclusive seat of the emotions.
The limbic-system model of emotions held that designated, subcortical areas of the brain are the source of emotional life. Emotions were seen as tied to basic needs and instincts, emerging during mammalian development. The mammalian brain would respond to events in the world based on instinct, with emotions being the felt sense of those instinctual responses. Over evolutionary time, the neocortex developed the increased memory, perception, and reasoning required to inhibit the instinctual responses arising in the limbic system. This view of emotions comported well with a view of emotions as primitive, instinctual events that the neocortex should properly inhibit and direct.
Advances in neuroscience have validated the importance of the limbic system in emotional life through its reciprocal interaction with the neocortex. The limbic system impacts the neocortex and the physiology of the entire body through the selective release of neurotransmitters and hormones that evoke emotional experiences and enduring, mood states. The activity in the limbic system impacts neocortical activity through its critical role in perception, memory, and learning. There are extensive neural connections that allow the limbic system to activate neocortical activity. This is reflected in how our excitement, fear, and arousal can shape what we pay attention to and how we behave.
The extent of the apparent influence of the limbic system has fueled continued belief that the limbic system is the seat of emotional life. As popular and appealing as this limbic-system view of emotions may be, there has been considerable difficulty in validating assertions that emotions actually arise wholly and independently in subcortical areas of the limbic system. Research has failed to prove that certain centers of the brain are singularly responsible for generating our emotional experiences. As advances in neurobiology have been made, it has become evident that isolating brain structures and attributing to these centers specific functions is overly simplistic. Most all of the brain centers are interconnected via reciprocal, neuronal networks, suggesting that most all brain functions are diffusely mediated. It would appear that emotional experience is the result of widespread activity throughout the brain.
Contemporary neurophysiology indicates that emotions have their own unique interconnected system of cortical and subcortical involvement, according to researchers like Joseph LeDoux. Emotions appear to arise from complex, neuronal networks across various brain regions. This network model of brain activity fits well with the distinctive nature in which we feel our emotions. For example, fear, anxiety, and rage often arise with incredible immediacy and little conscious thought. Other feelings, such as compassion, empathy, and remorse, arise slowly and can involve considerable, conscious deliberation. Neuroimaging appears to confirm that some emotions are more highly determined by subcortical activation and other emotions are more determined by the cerebral cortex.
Specificity in emotional brain systems has been supported by research on our fear response by Joseph LeDoux. This research has identified the amygdala, a subcortical, brain structure in the limbic system, as critical to the emergence of fear. When the amygdala is stimulated by memory or perception, it triggers fear and the fight-or-flight system. Importantly, the amygdala is interconnected with the neocortex, which can downward regulate the amygdala in order to inhibit the fight-or-flight response. When the amygdala is activated, it sends a message to the neocortex, indicating a danger or threat. The neocortex then has a window of a few hundred milliseconds to inhibit the amygdala, in effect overriding the fear response. If the neocortex takes too much time to determine if an event is a threat, then the amygdala will trigger a wide-ranging cascade of fight-or-flight stimulation.
This research has led to the development of an entire cottage industry, based on the notion of emotional intelligence, as promoted by Daniel Goleman. As is often the case, the excitement outruns the science. The amygdala has become the new seat of emotions and the neocortex, the seat of intelligence. The intelligent neocortex must learn to manage the reactive amygdala. Once again the old, limbic-system model returns to the fore. Efforts to reduce emotions to singular brain events have repeatedly failed. For example, in the case of the amygdala, the interconnections of the amygdala and various cortical and subcortical structures indicate that any modulations of the fear system are going to be multi-determined.
Emotions are emergent to complex, neuronal systems interlinking various regions of the brain. Although an emotion may appear to be localized in one particular brain structure, the overall emotional experience is emergent to the interconnectivity of the numerous regions of the brain.
Being Emotions: Emotions are emergent to the body, brain and mind
Emotions are best understood as emerging from a complex interplay between the body, the mind, and the brain. The brain and the body are inextricably linked through endocrine and immune systems in addition to neural interconnectivity. This interconnectivity results in the brain and body interacting with the world, as a unit, giving rise to the experience of mind.
Just as the body and brain act as one unit, the various areas of the brain and the various functions of mind act as one unit. The brain is not comprised of single, specific centers that each determines a specific, mental function. Language, vision, reason, and emotions are not located in a brain center, but are functions emergent to an interconnection of various brain regions. Mental functions are created by an increase or decrease of activity in various regions of the brain, comprising a system of activation and inhibition that results in the various functions of the human mind. Emotions, cognition, and motivation are processes of mind that emerge from the interaction of numerous brain regions. Thinking, feeling, reasoning, and making decisions about how to act in the world are complex functions of mind that stem from the normal interactions between distinct regions of the brain.
Imagery of the brain, using functional-MRI, shows a measurable differential in activity between certain brain centers based on function. However, differential levels in brain activity do not indicate that a particular function is entirely localized. It is tempting and intellectually easy to anthropomorphize in neuroscience; for example, saying that fear is in the amygdala; but when we forget this is a metaphoric heuristic, we run the risk of reducing all aspects of humanity to radical materialism at its most reductionist level.
Emotional Reality: The role of the somatosensory cortex in emotional experience
Emotional experience affects our entire being, shaping our self-image and perception, as well as our hopes and fears. Emotional experiences have such a broad influence because of the integration that occurs in the somatosensory cortex. This region of the brain is involved in the associative learning that occurs between reasoning and perception. Understanding how this process unfolds gives us the knowledge needed to increase our emotional intelligence.
Emotional experience originates from the simultaneity of visceral activity with perception, and cognition. Specifically, emotional reactions in our body are integrated with perception and reasoning in the somatosensory cortex. This visceral input provides clarity or magnification to an emotional event that is paired to the simultaneously-arising perception and thought. Our emotional experience is the result of this complex, conditioned association, according to Antonio Damasio, as described in his book, The Feeling of What Happens. Over time, the somatosensory cortex becomes conditioned to pair certain thoughts with certain visceral, emotional states. These associated pairings lay down patterns of emotional responses to life events.
The complex associations between the body, perception, and cognition are laid out in distinct patterns of neuronal networks. Neuronal networks are the way the brain preserves experience and is a fundamental rule of brain development, according to neuroscientist Gerald Edelman. Specifically, neurons that are activated simultaneously become conditioned to activate simultaneously in the future. Through repeated activation, patterns of neuronal conditioning merge, ultimately resulting in established neuronal networks. Upon subsequent triggering events, these networks are activated in their entirety, thereby generating our experiences. Our unique and diverse experiences are preserved in the differential, neuronal activity within, and between, these neuronal networks.
The somatosensory cortex is the key location for neuronal networks that represent complex, body experiences. These somatosensory networks are integrated with the frontal cortex. This interconnectivity allows for the association of planning and reasoning with visceral, body responses. Through these neuronal networks, reasoning and contextual awareness arising in the frontal cortex can be juxtaposed to the body-perceptual representations arising in the somatosensory cortex. This integration of body with mind gives rise to our emotional life.
The importance of this integration is reflected in the profound impairment in function for individuals with damage to the somatosensory cortex. Injury to this region of the brain affects perception, self-image, emotional reasoning, and judgment. For example, injury to the somatosensory cortex in the right hemisphere resulted in a female patient being unable to attend to any perceptual events to the left side of her world. She would ignore food on the left side of her plate at dinner, and place makeup on only the right side of her face, in the morning. There was nothing wrong with her vision, but she had lost the ability to be consciously aware of the left half of her world. Emotionally, she was equally indifferent, showing no concern when her behavioral limits were pointed out to her. Such neuropsychological observations of brain-injured patients have led researchers to conclude that the somatosensory cortex is essential to normal, emotional functioning, according to Antonio Damasio.
An intact somatosensory cortex and associated, neuronal networks shape, sometimes even determine, our experiences. When there have been frequent and similar triggers and responses, we become conditioned to associate certain mental states with certain visceral states forming our emotional patterns. The emotional experience associated with these neuronal networks includes our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. The breadth of this emotional experience is possible because of the interlinking of the neuronal networks, between the frontal and somatosensory cortex. These emotional, activation patterns develop over time and represent repeated, unique, neuronal-network activity recursively occurring between the somatosensory and frontal cortex.
The establishment of emotional-activation patterns allows for rapid responses to emotional and situational triggers that resemble prior events. The shortcut includes bypassing the need to wait for a reaction from the body. Also, the shortcut allows for cognition and perception to swiftly trigger a full, emotional response. This conditioning can be so forceful that a full, emotional response can be evoked even when the triggering event has only a limited similarity to the original, conditioning circumstances. Conditioning can result in activation of an entire complex, emotional-response network by a triggering thought, memory, or perception. This happens because thoughts, environmental situations, and the prior somatosensory responses become established, neuronal networks. These networks are readily activated in their entirety by mental, visceral, or environmental events that have elements representing the original, associative-conditioning parameters. This conditioning of the somatosensory response becomes a shortcut, avoiding the processing delays that would be required, if every thought, memory, or perception required an actual, visceral response before the experience of an emotion. Such cortical representation allows for rapid, emotional responses that bypass the need for analysis of the visceral activity.
The associative conditioning of the somatosensory cortex is an ongoing process throughout life; however, in infancy the lack of prior conditioning will mean that the earliest emotional events will involve the body to a greater degree. The immature development of these emotional-response patterns can be seen in infants when their emotional response is momentarily delayed. For example, a toddler who is startled will require time before being able to respond, perhaps needing processing time to assess if the situation calls for fear or curiosity. The infant needs time to compare memory, perception, and bodily responses without the benefit of prior experience, learning, and conditioning.
During development, the speed of emotional responses increases as the somatosensory cortex comes to represent emotional responses that the body previously conveyed to the cortex. The quickened, emotional response is adaptive, allowing for fast and accurate reactivity to threat or opportunity. Overtime, awareness will no longer be needed to evoke familiar, emotional-response patterns and, consequently, we often come to feel that our responses reflect our intuition, a gut feeling, or a deep wisdom. Where these emotional patterns are predictive and accurate, we may come to trust and rely upon them. In this way, we establish biases for our reasoning, judgment, and decision-making. Where the associative conditioning has been overly biased in any one direction, our emotional activation will be biased in that direction. Excessive bias is deleterious anytime it is incongruent with salient elements actually present. Response-bias error is most apparent in people who have been exposed to extreme or invariant, emotional environments. Such individuals are likely to re-experience life events as though they are in these prior, emotional environments, even though the actual events are only marginally similar to the original events.
Adaptive bias in our emotional-activation patterns requires a diverse and rich early-developmental, emotional life. Such a healthy environment will expose a child to a wide range of emotional situations, leading to a rich network of associative learning. In such a case, there will be numerous emotional-response patterns reflecting a greater degree of discrimination between event triggers. This discrimination in response is a hallmark of healthy, emotional functioning, where we have the ability to respond with a wide range of emotions, including the complex emotions such as compassion, remorse, and beneficence.
Changing Emotional Patterns
New, emotional experiences can alter our existing, emotional patterns. However, these new events must include altering both our feeling and cognition. For us to change our established, emotional-response patterns, we must create new, associative learning. Changing emotional patterns requires amplification of our emotions, through visceral experience while being re-contextualized cognitively. This simultaneity facilitates the development of new, associative learning. With repetition, these new, emotional associations can replace or modify prior, somatosensory-cortex, neuronal networks.
The first step in altering these emotional patterns is using mindfulness to become aware of the patterns. Awareness of our emotional patterns increases the activity in our frontal cortex. This increased activity begins to create new, emotional associations that have, in turn, increased self-reflection. In addition to increased involvement from the frontal cortex, new networks can be facilitated by increasing our visceral experience of our emotions. The novelty or intensity of our felt emotions will fuel the development of new, neuronal networks. This will allow for an integration of emotions that may have long been avoided or dormant. This process includes deeply experiencing our feelings while remaining mindful of our current circumstances. That is, we must feel our feelings and think about our experience simultaneously, in order to facilitate change in our emotional-response patterns. With repeated activation, these new associations will develop into complex, neuronal networks that provide new, response repertoires.
The combination of an increased, bodily experience of our emotions with our expanded, cognitive awareness will result in the development of new, enduring, neuronal networks. However, the degree of malleability in our emotional patterns depends upon the degree of the neuronal plasticity of a given emotion. Not all emotions are equally malleable. Our emotional responses reflect our early conditioning as well as our temperamental sensitivities to basic emotions. Emotions range from basic, visceral emotions such as fear and anger, to sublime, esthetic rapture or feelings of compassion and empathy. Such disparity in quality, intensity, and symbolic representation reflects fundamental differences in the malleability of each emotion. The basic emotions such as anger and fear are primarily evoked in the limbic system, whereas emotions of compassion and empathy are heavily reliant upon neocortical involvement. For example, our ability to experience fear and anger may be relatively unchanged throughout our life, whereas our capacity for empathy and compassion may be more inconsistent and variable. Another manifestation of the lack of plasticity in the basic emotions is how quickly we might revert to feelings such as fear and anger. Even the most empathic or compassionate state of mind can suddenly give way to anger. Such reversion is related to the fact that the underlying, basic emotions are not readily alterable. The basic emotions are relatively hard-wired.
Understanding that different emotions manifest different degrees of plasticity can offer up strategies to increase adaptive utilization of our emotions. For example, cognitive reframing would have a larger effect on the emotions that are most reliant on cognition. Associative learning and behavioral conditioning would have a greater impact in altering those emotional patterns that are primarily meditated subcortically.
Additionally, the more cognitively-mediated emotions require continual, effortful engagement whereas the basic emotions of rage, anger, fear, guilt, and shame seem to endure all on their own. The ease with which guilt, shame, and retribution are evoked can make it challenging to develop forgiveness, compassion, and beneficence. This understanding can assist us as we work to learn how to maintain the critical balance between all of our moral emotions. For example, we may believe that once we develop some compassion that we ought not to feel angry retribution; however, our basic emotions are always present. The expansion and development of the more subtle emotions of compassion and beneficence must be ongoing.
The neocortically-mediated emotions are able to shape or inhibit the subcortically-mediated emotions, but not fundamentally alter them. Specifically, neocortical influence must remain continually present and actively imposed upon the basic emotions. Without the neocortical activity, the basic emotions will become immediately manifest. This conceptualization helps explain how hard-won gains in changing emotionally can be lost, over time, or undermined suddenly through a shock or surprise. It is as if all the emotional growth of a lifetime enhancing our secondary emotions does not ever take the basic emotions offline. However, by increasing the force of our cortically-mediated emotions, we increase our ability to inhibit the less malleable, subcortical, emotions. Unfortunately, this requires effort.