You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett

Can you look at someone's face and know what they're feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way? What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are. She shares the results of her exhaustive research -- and explains how we may have more control over our emotions than we think.

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[TheMcKenzieHaus]

I totally understand what she means. Sometimes it’s not you, it’s your body talking to you. Sometimes that anxiety is because you had too much coffee at once and my body doesn’t understand why there is so much caffeine that day. Your lack of patience is because your body doesn’t want to focus on anything else until you provide it energy to do so. Some thoughts are not “yours”, it’s your body communicating with you. Telling the difference between the two voices can bring a lot of relief.

[BooksWithBrandywine]

In one of my classes they taught us that nervousness and excitement feel the same and that you can flip the switch and turn nervousness into excitement because of that. Ever since then when I'm nervous about an appointment or meeting someone I tell myself over and over that I'm excoted and it works!

[eaumartineau]

In general she's telling us to RE-THINK our perceptions.

[murdermittensnyc]

As someone functionally deaf, she is spot on about predictions. The vast majority of my conversations depend on predictions. Until ive learned someone’s speaking pattern and vocabulary i can only “hear” them when i see their full face. Once i have your vocab and inflection down, my brain is always listening for you. It’s really an incredible instrument.

Exhausting when i meet a bunch of new ppl all at once, but really cool.

[ella]

Teaching this approach in primary and middle school years and as part of mental health programs would be so beneficial.

[BLTspace]

As someone who's dealt with depression and anxiety my whole life I knew there would be comments about these very things and shutting down the point of this video. I will agree that NO not everyone can just "think" their way out of depression... but just the act alone of typing that comment is building future feelings about your depression. That is literally the point of this talk. It's not about telling yourself how tough your depression is over and over and over and over, constantly building future bad feelings about depression. It's about changing your thinking to embrace the challenges, turn them into positives, and start building good future feelings. I'm not trying to sound perfect here cause i'm not, but I feel if your response to the video is "This definitely won't help me, i'm way to depressed for this."... then you've completely missed the message and just built more future bad feelings for yourself. As I said not every case is the same and not everyone can pull themselves out... but with all due respect i'd bet the majority of you could. For some it actually becomes their comfort zone... you become so used to being miserable that you really don't want to change. I say this from experience. Bottom line is it really is all on you. This talk hit home and strangely right at a time I needed to hear it. Thank you.

[zephyrwayfarer]

I've had to, over the past several years, restructure my schema so that my brain makes completely different predictions in order to overcome a great deal of trauma from when I was barely old enough to form memories. This has been done through repetition and focusing on new experiences. My point is I'm living proof that this is true.



I've dealt with fear and anger and loneliness my entire life, and every time I have those predictions made by my emotions not come true, the easier it is to thrive and find the place to belong that I've been searching for.

[nanette]

I'm autistic and this makes so much sense to me. I've told my therapist so often that I have no idea what I'm feeling cause it could be so many things, and I always feel like I have to guess what I feel. And to guess how others feel.

And now, while watching this I wonder why I was even evaluated on how much I was able to read others. What if I'm not supposed to? Maybe autistic folks like me were just aware all along that we know nothing and we just shouldn't assume things like feelings.
Why were we the weird one for not wanting to guess?

[itsmuimui]

"If you are not at the mercy of mythical emotional circuits which are buried deep inside your brain somewhere and which trigger automatically, then who's responsible? Who's responsible when you behave badly? You are."
"Sometimes we are responsible for something not because we are to blame but because we're the only ones who can change it."
Great talk demonstrating individual responsibility over emotional experience without invalidating the experiences themselves, or the individual; but in pointing out the relationship between sensation and emotion, Dr. Barrett shows how we can LEARN to be conscious navigators of our emotional lives and not just helpless passengers awaiting emotional determinism.

[marikotambini]

This talk helped me. As a lifelong sufferer of depression, this talk changed things for me. I'm using this information now, and these are the best answers I've ever heard.

[clapahr]

This way of looking at your emotions is spot on. I like using the example of coming from a break up. If you see it as a loss and like you’ll never find someone else, then you’ll feel sad and depressed. But if you look at it as an opportunity to learn and maybe find someone better( after all there are billions of people in the world) then you’ll feel much better emotions. Not saying that a break up isn’t heartbreaking, but the way you look at it and the emotions you start to create with in yourself, affect your healing process.

[BBRR]

"Change yourself don't blame yourself"
-responsibility

[kritanjaytripathi]

person like me who goes helpless in the hands of his emotions...needed it.. indian ancient philosophy says it more philosophically : you are the creater, not victim of situations. loved it on scientific note...

[HugoCoolDude]

Loving how bluntly the scientist proclaims her findings.
A jury can never and has never accurately detected regret or any emotion, neither can I, neither can you.
Very matter of factly, no bullshit.
If only all experts would be so bold..

[wolfsbane]

Very interesting talk; i was taught this mindset by my psychiatrist as well (I have borderline and depression due to childhood trauma). It never cured my depression, but it absolutely made it more easy to live with. Suddenly, there were some situations were I was able to pull myself out of the mental black hole. I am still on medication, but am able to have a job now which makes me very pleased.

[alana]

I just started practicing this the other day. I’ve started training my brain to be more calm, to change the anxiety stomach feeling into a feeling of hunger. Over time, I’ll build new neuro pathways which will make it easier to deal with difficult situations.

[zhubajie]

The Stoics were correct then. It is not the sense input but the judgment of that input.

[BitaAsakura]

More control on your emotions means more responsibility. Beautiful.
You are the only one who can change you.
You’re in charge.

[racmorr]

It's all about mindset. Change your mindset, Change your emotions.
Say you just went through a breakup. Painful yes, but why did you break up?
Were you unappreciated?
Was the person emotionally unavailable?
Was the other person abusive?
Were you emotionally unavailable?
Were you the problem?
Did you just grow apart?
Analyzing the facts and rationally reasoning it out instead of falling into a blubbering heap, can actually help you not only heal, but have a healthier relationship in future.
Same thing for decision making.
Recognize where the decision is coming from, is it a place of rational thought or fear? What are you afraid of? Then ask and answer the question, what is the worst that can happen, and deal with it starting from a best case scenario.
Powerful thing, the mind.

[lizgichora]

Emotions are a barometer we can tap into and depending on how we manoeuvre, we can overcome difficult circumstances. Thank you Lisa Feldman.