Source of Emotions

In NLP, we love to use metaphors to teach important concepts, so that we can leave enough room to allow individual application. Let's use the metaphor of a deep-rooted tree to teach about emotions, and from whence they arise.

Wants and Needs

Everybody has basic wants and needs, of differing magnitudes, and which are satisfied in different degrees at different times. These basic wants and needs are like appetites, which can only be satisfied temporarily, and then in time they require satisfaction again. These basic wants and needs fall in to three general categories:

• Safety or Security
• Approval or Acceptance
• Control or Power

When these invisible wants and needs go unsatisfied, they call on certain emotions to move us in toward sources of satisfaction, or away from sources which would jeopardize that satisfaction.

Emotions

Emotions are "Energy in Motion", and behave like powerful "strange attractors". Each emotion has its own gravity, frequency and energy, and attracts certain recurring thoughts on the same wavelength, and attracts others of the same wavelength, while repelling others on different wavelengths. The gravitational pull of each emotion is so powerful as to attact even circumstances into our lives while we are experiencing these emotions. You might notice how good days have their own momentum, and how bad days have their own inertia. The difference is in the emotion.

Emotions are powerful neurological phenomena, which we inherited from our biology. The bad news is that we cannot escape our emotions. The good news is that we can harness their energy and use emotions to our benefit.

Emotional Circuit

Unfulfilled Wants and Needs > Invoke Emotions > Conjure Thoughts, Images and Words > Result in Outward Expression of Words and Emotions > Impact Environment.

If the wants and needs are satisfied, then the circuit is completed, and the energy has completed its course. If the wants and needs are not satisfied, then the energy is blocked, and the wants and needs are intensified.

Fortified with an understanding of this circuit, we can now begin to interact with our emotions in a more resourceful way than ever before.

Ineffective ways to deal with emotions include:

• Ignoring or denying them, which leads to frustration, and eventual emotional eruptions.
• Allowing our emotions to gush upon unwilling audiences, which stresses and damages relationships.

Effective ways of dealing with emotions are:

• Acknowledging them, and giving them a voice, so they can convey to you an unfulfilled need. Thank the emotions for making those needs known to you.
• Recontextualize the stimulus that gave rise to the emotion. Assign a new meaning. Let the emotion be a wise teacher.
• Release the emotion by acknowledge it consciously by welcoming it, diving into it, and then letting it run its course, without causing damage to oneself or others.

Exercises:

Pay attention to your own emotions, and the underlying want or need behind the emotion, which gives it energy.

Is the want or need a strong one, or weak one?

Can you observe that before the emotion arose, the need or want could be detected? How quickly did the need or want make itself known to the emotional center? How quickly did the emotion manifest itself in thoughts or words? How quickly did the emotion manifest itself outwardly, or was it supressed?

How has applying a new meaning to the stimulus of the emotion been effective in completing the circult?

How has fully acknowledging the emotion, its underlying need or want, and then simply releasing the emotion completed the circuit?