How to Master Your Emotional Life—Lisa Feldman Barrett

Lisa Feldman Barrett discuss the differences between the classical psychological view of emotions versus her work on the subject. Also discussed is how the brain uses past experiences in order to predict rather than react, and finally we discuss what it means to be experientially blind.

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Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett is in the top one percent of the most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, and also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior.

In addition to the books Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and How Emotions are Made, Dr. Barrett has published over 260 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes. She has also given a popular TED talk with over 6.5 million views.

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Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a psychologist, neuroscientist, professor, bestselling author, and one of the most cited scientists in the world. She received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multimillion-dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the APS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology in 2021.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Barrett has testified before Congress, presented her research to the FBI, consulted with the National Cancer Institute, appeared on Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and The Today Show with Maria Shriver, and been a featured guest on public television and podcast and radio programs worldwide. She is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.

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Interview Links:

3 Books Dr Barrett Recommends Every Therapist Should Read:

[BloomwithAna-rsll]

“Emotional Alchemy allows us to turn pain into wisdom, fear into courage, and sadness into compassion.’’- Andrew Kenneth Fretwell. From his book Emotional Alchemy the Love and Freedom Hidden within Painful Feelings.

[oneworldonehome]

"You are greater than your emotions, and you need not repress them to realize this. To become objective with your own internal states, you must operate from a position where you can observe them and where you are not dominated by them. This will allow you to become present to yourself and will give you true compassion and understanding. Then you will not be a tyrant with yourself, and tyranny in your life will come to an end."
*_Steps to Knowledge, The Book of Inner Knowing_*

[ianreclusado]

The concept of mindfulness comes from the Sanskrit word “sati” which it has been argued is better translated as “memory of the present”, so that’s super interesting.

I too immediately saw the connection with Dr McGilchrist’s work, and I also think Jules Taylor Shore’s work with memory reconsolidation is really relevant here!

And wonderful talk, thank you for sharing, so many new connections in my head.

[yazanasad]

Body + world + remembered present (brains past)

Everything you see/hear is what you see/hear and what's in your head

Husserl also wrote about imagining as things constituted from past images. So this is extended emotions

[CreativeEmotionalIntelligence]

This is what Creative Emotional Intelligence is all about!

[estarbiencadadia]

So when I tried to explain a deep concept to somebody who has no previous experience of it (knowledge) then he is experientially blind?
It happens with lots of people I have talked with 😥

[DCornwell-dt]

How do we change and move forward if our brain keeps pulling info from the past?

[bobdillaber]

We don't change our circumstances. Our circumstances change us.

[igorvolkov]

How to control your emotions? The computational theory mentioned here 3:27 4:03 is the theory of Finite State Automata. Read in Wikipedia. Not very complicated. No need to debunk well established science. Just enough to mention that there are quite a few inborn emotions and in pure form they are rather rare. In addition we learn many other states. Also we learn associations between sensory signals and emotional reactions. This is a whole science of self-programming.

[estarbiencadadia]

“Emotions dont happen to you but are made BY you” 😮 🤯
…
If the brain is always predicting, is this the reason why human civilizations have always had an oracle or a way to predict the future?

[humanyoda]

4:18 She said, "Your brain doesn't react to things in the world. It's predicting."

But the brain does that in *reaction* to things in the world! In other words, it reacts to things in the world.

[Michaelfrikkie]

How would the neural activity associated with the sense data and those associated with the memories integrating be identified, not just separately but as they integrate to become awareness?

[JanaSefcikova-ff]

This video is called How to Master Your Emotional Life, but there is no way to figure this out based on this video. If her theory is valid, then I cannot learn any new interpretations of my emotions...??? If all is based on the data my brain has accumulated in the past. That would make me limited to experiencing only very limited range of emotions that were experienced during childhood? How could I explain going through life being open-minded and learning new explanations for my feeling states? What if her feelings during the date were intuition telling her the guy is not a good company? And she misinterpreted that....

[mikemccarthy]

Confusion is a Paleolithic survival emotion.

[jyothishmg]

I would like to know how music trigger emotions....

[moyagreene]

Everything you hear is a combination of what’s in your body AND what’s in the world.

[AnnHelle]

Sure, but how did the initial response come about? The predictions are still based on a response created by the mind, aren't they?

[tcdavidson]

I saw the blobs and immediately said two bees out loud.. Autism does have a few perks

[JanaSefcikova-ff]

Perhaps the brain being enclosed in the dark does not need any "outside world" to process data. What if the brain's job is to send data out via the sensory organs and make us feel and perceive a certain way based on what it receives from the life intelligence that animates us? We are than able to experience "life" with emotions and feelings being projections of the life energy to the outside world.

[Contribute_TakeCare_Learn_Play]

Seeing that most of our suffering comes from our minds itself it seems the Buddhist idea that mindfulness can help with relief of suffering is true. I mean all of my suffering coworkers etc. If you can just rise above it like in meditation you're fine. Why suffer from a brain that creates a thought process that doesn't know how to be happy