What Do You Feel? (S1E7 Encore)

So, you know, with all the things that we've been talking about, um, over the past few weeks, um, why does that lead us to emotion? How is emotion tied to all of these other things?

Well, you know, uh, Pep, I think, um, one of the things that, uh, has emerged over the course of, you know, probably, uh, at least the last, mm, probably two to 400 years, is that we, we, we've kind of, uh, imagined that the human person is divided into these different, uh, that our mind is divided into these different sections, these different compartments, and that we've got a thinking compartment, and we have, uh, a, a body compartment, and we have an emotional compartment, and that emotion is this separate thing altogether.

And we think of it as this thing that we can either be or not be.

"Oh, he or she, they're being so emotional," as if it's this thing that I can choose to be or not to be.

N- not to...

You know, be all Shakespearean-

That's right.

Yeah

... or whatever.

Right.

Um, [clears throat] but one of the really interesting, uh, developments over the last, uh, 20 years in the field of neuroscience is the emerging awareness and discovery that emotion is not a secondary compartment.

It's not this separated thing that is different from our cognition or that's different from our storytelling or different from what we sense.

Instead, emotion is a feature that permeates every aspect of human experience.

In the field of interpersonal neurobiology, we like to talk about emotion as the energy around which the brain organizes itself.

So all the energy, and quite literally the energy that shows up in our neuro biochemistry, all that electrical, chemical work that's going on in the brain and the central nervous system and throughout our body, that represents and is reflective of what we typically call emotion.

Now, most people might wonder, "Well, gosh, what does biochemistry have to do with feeling angry or feeling sad?" And frankly, what does feeling angry or feeling sad have to do with what I think?

Right.

And, you know, whether or not, um, you know, I, uh, decide to eat Wheaties or cornflakes for breakfast, what does that have to do with anything? We like to talk about emotion, though...

I, I like to talk about emotion as like the gasoline in the tank of a car, in the sense that, uh, there's nothing that we do i- once we get in our automobile, we- if you turn it on and you put it in gear, if you're s- gonna speed up, slow down, make a turn, go forward, go in reverse, there's nothing that we do in the car that is not a function of fuel regulation in some way, shape, or form.

The engine is always wanting to know, what's the next thing that we wanna do to burn gasoline? A lot of it, a little bit of it? It's always permeating everything that's going on in the car.

And so we come to find out that this energy around which the brain organizes itself- Is the feature that is regulating who we are and that we are constantly learning to regulate.

And as we'll talk about in a little while, there are different ways in which we talk about emotion.

There's primary emotion and then there's secondary emotion.

We'll get to those two things and why they're different and why they're important for us to know.

But for right now, one of the most important things that, that it would be im- you know, for our audience to, to hear and to take in is the question is not ever then going to be, well, are you feeling something? As if like there are moments when we are and moments when we're not.