Neuroscience Nuggets #5: Emotional Guessing Game

Novak Djokovic, the world’s #1 men’s tennis player and potentially G.O.A.T, rarely shows emotion unless he’s smashing rackets, violently screaming, or accidentally hitting balls at line judges. (Honestly, I’m not a fan though I totally respect what an outstanding athlete he is.)

Yet on Sunday night, as he teetered on the imminent edge of unexpected defeat, the crowd at the US Open Final match rose to its feet to encourage him on, shouting his nickname "Nole, Nole, Nole" in unison. 


Novak smiled, waved to the crowd and then did something completely out of character: he showed he was a real human being. 

Peaking out from beneath his towel as he wiped the sweat from his face, viewers caught sight of a twisted, anguished mouth that looked like it walked off a Francis Bacon painting. 

It became suddenly clear that the typically stoic, unflappable super athlete was having a big, ugly, uncontrollable cry. 

And it was shockingly beautiful.
 

But what was it? What exact human emotion was Novak expressing?
 

• Was it joy from feeling the love and support of a hard-knocks crowd that usually jeers at him?

• Was it the dread of letting everyone down?

• Was it a release of the weight of expectation?

• Was it frustration and fear?

• Was it physical pain?

• Exhaustion?

The truth is that no one besides Novak could really know what the tears were about because, and here comes today’s neuroscience nugget: emotions aren’t uniform, universal reactions to life that have ready-made ways of showing up on our faces and in our bodies.


You can’t know what someone is feeling just by looking at them.

You may think that when you look at someone's face you can understand exactly how they feel. But in fact your brain is guessing, and it's using your own past experiences to make those guesses. 


We construct our own emotional experience, and our perception of others’s emotions, on the spot.

“Emotions are your brains’ best guess of how you should feel in the moment,” explains neuroscientist and author of How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barret. 

They're your brain’s “creations” of what your bodily sensations mean in relation to what is going on around you in the world, and those “creations” are the sum of three distinctly subjective ingredients:

1. Your internal bodily cues (heart rate, muscle contraction, temperature, etc)

2. Your external surroundings (what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch)

3. Your past experiences (and how those past experiences compare to the present)

“Our emotion concepts vary widely from culture to culture. They come with a rich set of rules, all in the service of regulating your body budget or influencing someone else’s," says the founder of The Neuroscience School, Dr. Irena O’Brien. "That’s why we shouldn’t assume that we know how someone else is feeling from their facial expression or body language."

So what do Novak's mysterious tears have to do with you?

1. It’s easy to assume you know someone’s emotional state through observation, but you’re really just guessing through your own experiential lens. If you want to know what someone is truly feeling, you need to ask them.

2. Be it your boss, your spouse, your kids, your friends, you shouldn't assume that any one can correctly read the emotions you’re feeling either. Best way for them to know what you’re feeling is to go out on a limb and tell them. 

So, what emotion was Novak truly expressing on the courts? Click here to hear all about it from the "Joker" himself. 

Neuroscience Nuggets #3: Know Your Body Budget

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but your brain couldn't care less if you have a meaningful job, make a positive impact, or feel inspired daily.

It's got one main subject on its mind: to keep you alive and well. Basta! 

The brain's #1 job is to regulate your body’s energy so that you can grow, survive and sow your seeds. This is called allostasis, or the body budget. 

Think of your brain as a brilliant (albeit not-so-fun) bank account manager. She knows (even when you try to convince her otherwise) the amount of money coming in and out of your accounts at all times. She has exclusive analytics and back-end prediction algorithms that can anticipate and satisfy your spending needs based on your past experiences in order to keep you on track and out of trouble. 

The way she works her magic is by:

1. Perceiving the sensations within your body (which she reads without your conscious awareness).

2. Perceiving the information from the outside world via your skin, your eyes, your ears, etc.

3. Interpreting your internal and external worlds to decide the best way to allocate your body’s energy to keep you alive based on your past experiences.

While she's fussing over all of this data, you, my friend, are doing normal life things that may strain your body’s budget in small and big ways: filling your to-do lists will impossible tasks, meeting up with friends four nights in a row for drinks, bing-watching Netflix series and going to bed each night after midnight, eating take-out because you have no time to cook, feeding yourself a steady stream of anxiety-producing news. Sound familiar?

Your day-to-day habits can take a toll on your body budget, resulting in a distressed bank manager who can resort to extreme behaviour to get your attention (like burning out, having a panic attack, lashing out at your kids at the end of an exhausting week).

But, more often than not, she’ll just send out a more subtle vibe or outlook on life. 

In scientific terms, this is called “affect.” In common language, it’s called mood and it’s the energetic budget our brain is working with. 

Affect is the general sense of feeling you experience throughout your day. It’s much simpler than an emotion and is based on the intersecting levels of two general feelings: pleasantness (aka valence) and intensity (aka arousal).


The combinations of high to low valence and high to low arousal look like this: 

When your body budget is unbalanced, it colors your mood. But a general bad feeling doesn’t always mean that something major is wrong (e.g. Like you need to leave your life and move to Brazil). It could mean that, or it may simply mean that you are taxing your body budget. 

What's the best way to maintain your body budget and positively influence your mood and energy? Healthy diet, exercise and optimal sleep are the three main ingredients to a balanced body budget. 


So, what's the moral of the story then? Before you jump to conclusions about what's wrong with humanity, or make big life decisions, you might want to first stop and look at your body budget. Are you hungry? Exhausted? When did you last get some exercise?


These very basic factors have HUGE implications on our moods, and therefore on everything. 

Don't be afraid to catch feels

I'm feeling a lot of "feels" as I'm sure you are too right now.

Disbelief, anger, fear, disgust, grief, hope, enthusiasm, excitement.

Those emotions were all of the menu in 2020, but this week's painful, protracted American election has been serving me feels in XXXL containers.

I've flopped so quickly and deeply from one emotion extreme to the other that I've started to get very, very acquainted with the sensations my emotions create in my body.

When I think of Trump undermining the election process all of the way to the courts, that feeling of doom and despair comes through my chest like a heavy hollow swoosh. Almost like a blunt sword cutting through to my belly.

When I think of Biden's face on the cover of the The New York Times with a big "WINNER" next to his name, a joyful, fluttery swarm of green music notes fly across my chest.

Have you ever tried that before,?

Think of something and then feel that "event" emerge as a sensation in your body?

Since I learned I could deliberately think of something and then instantly feel its presence in my body I starting adding that practice to my arsenal of self-discovery tools.

The more you practice observing the invisible network of thoughts, emotions and sensations in your body, the more information you have about the patterns and triggers that set you off in one direction or another.

It's kind of like creating your own personal "Physical Feelings Glossary."

When you take the time to observe what your feelings actually FEEL like, you can assign the sensations you discover names, colors, textures, shapes.

For example, in my "Physical Feelings Glossary" I have the following entries:

• DESPAIR: A yellow hollow sword-like swoosh down my chest when I think of something truly horrific, like the demise of American democracy setting off the next World War.

• FEAR: A red, hockey-sized puck that thumps in my belly when I'm startled by a car alarm or suddenly realize I haven't sent my taxes in.

• HOPE: A fireworks display of fluttery music notes flying across my chest when I think of Biden winning.

• SERENITY: The blue tingling lightness on my skin after a mediation or yoga practice.

I love to do this exercise with my clients so that they too can create their own "Physical Feelings Glossary."

It's especially useful when you feel overwhelmed by the sudden shifts in the world.

Being able to observe those sensations without judgement makes you less reactive and more proactive.

For example, instead of immediately reacting to the feeling of fear in your belly, you can look to understand the cause of the fear. The thoughts or circumstances that are creating that feeling.

We're going to have a lot of intense feelings come up over the next few days and possible weeks, so as a "fun" exercise I invite you to try and locate those feelings in your body, give them a name, a color, a shape.

Below is a picture of mine.

It could be a fun (and useful) distraction to the addictive drama of the USA election.


PS. If you decide to create your own "Physical Sensations Glossary" and draw it or paint it or whatever, be sure to send me a picture at zeva@zevabellel.com !! I'd love to see what you come up with.

PPS. Unpacking the way thoughts, emotions and feelings shape our reactions and actions is a huge part of the coaching process. Want to know more about it? I've got some spots opening up for individual coaching so book a call if you're interested.