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What is Emotional Versatility Training?

What is Emotional Versatility Training? The scientific study of emotions began with Charles Darwin, who first taught that all higher mammals are driven by emotions that foster survival, reproduction and societal success. That means that all emotions help us succeed in our environment, even though over half of them feel more bad than good. In the twenty-first century, however, the ways we act on our emotions have made us a threat to our environment and ourselves. Our high intelligence has made us so powerful that we’re degrading our land, waters and air and spoiling our habitats, and our capacity for love has led us to vastly overpopulate the earth and drive many other animal species towards extinction. We must stimulate our own evolution or we may go extinct ourselves. Shortly after Darwin embedded humans in the animal world, Freud told us that much of what drives us is unconscious, and 60 years later Silvan Tomkins told us that some of the most important unconscious drivers are our emotions. In the last 30 years most scientific research has focused on investigating the brain, while some in the therapeutic community are trying to change how we operate with our emotions now. At the Love and Power Institute we are introducing people to the nine inborn emotions and studying how they work, separately and together, as well as with action and thinking, so that we can become more conscious of what drives us—besides hunger, thirst and sex and much more often and intricately. These emotions include interest-excitement, joy, surprise, distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust and contempt. All of them support the survival and success of human groups, since we’re not just individuals but a herd species.  Each emotion has unique beneficial and challenging aspects, so understanding them helps us navigate the emotional landscape we share with others. Men and women normally approach emotions differently and are outspoken in some and hidden and shy or unconscious of others. Exploring this honestly can improve our skills in mixed groups. Though some emotions feel good, like interest, joy, contempt and sometimes anger, and others feel uncomfortable, like distress, fear, shame and disgust, surprise just makes the emotion following it stronger. But studying emotions actually feels pretty good, since it is interesting, that revises how any other emotion feels. There are many fascinating pair-relations between emotions, such as interest and shame. For when we’re interested enough in a person to call or text them on our cell phone and all we get is an answering device or no response at all, we may start second-guessing what might be happening. We may stay uncomfortable until either they intervene to reassure us or we can switch our attention to something else. Hurt feelings also warn us that a damaged personal connection needs repair. Another powerful pair of emotions is joy and distress. When someone we like or love is gone for longer than we want, separation distress can, “make the heart grow fonder.” So when we get together again we’re “overjoyed,” and the person we have missed becomes more valuable to us. The balance between these opposite feelings regularly makes relationships more durable. Both distress (as anxiety and sadness) and shame (as shyness, embarrassment, hurt and guilt) are regularly handled defensively by withdrawing, by blaming oneself or others, and by immersing oneself in work, addictions, or anything that gives us joy or excitement. These substitutes can be quite valuable as regular habits, but sometimes we need to examine our own patterns to find the suffering behind them.   This is just a sample of the breadth and depth of emotional versatility we gain in this class. And much of the learning is experiential, through many methods, such as pair sharing, group dramatizing and two-chair work. With the trust that develops from these encounters participants can explore and resolve emotional problems in their own lives. They can work on damaged relationships through roleplaying and learn the courage and language to restore them. Finally, outdoor walks to admire and connect with a particular plant, animal, insect or natural feature combined with writing, sketching or meditation will help us expand our love for nature, as we have enhanced our emotional fluency in the human sphere.

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