Life History Part IV - Emotions

This is the 4th of 7 posts with prompts to develop a life history. Previous posts in this series: 

• Introduction and childhood
• Favorites
• Habits

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This fourth in the series is about emotions. Emotions are the manifestation of feelings. Sometimes they are not entirely logical - but they give our lives dimension. Questions about emotions sometimes beg for a story to provide context. Here are some questions to start exploring the emotional side of a life history. 

• What has been the happiest moment of your life to date?
• What has been the saddest moment of your life to date?
• What holidays do you celebrate?
• How religious are you - what role does religion play in your life?
• Do you attend church (regularly...occasionally...ever)?
• What do you like most about your life right now?
• What do you like the least (or dislike) about your life right now?
• If you have to leave the house in a hurry - maybe not ever to return - what would you take with you?
• What is your definition of success?
• Give a couple of examples of things you enjoy doing with someone else.
• How do I know I can trust you?
• Are you an introvert or extrovert?
• Describe the clothes you like the best.
• Describe an emotionally charged event at work.
• Describe an emotional charged event at home or with your family.
• What makes you angry and what do you do when you are angry?
• How often have you gotten angry in the past month?
• Describe a conflict that did not work out as you had hoped.
• What is your general approach to conflict?
• How emotional are you generally - are you volatile or stoic? 

Topics for the upcoming parts of the series: family and friends, the present, and the future. I’ll be posting them about once a week.

Quote of the Day - 2/3/2012

Newborns are like cats, they have no emotions and no memory. - Isabel Allende in Daughter of Fortune: A Novel (P.S.)

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Newborns and cats…maybe it isn’t exactly that they have ‘no emotions and no memory.’ Maybe those things are just reduced enough that we perceive the difference and/or the difference is magnified by inability to communicate effectively.

We watch our newborns for signs of developing emotions and memory. I remember years ago watching my baby in REM sleep. She made a series of facial expressions from smiling to frowning in her sleep; she was practicing the emotional feedback our faces provide to each other. A few days later she smiled at me and her father for the first time. It was a milestone both for showing emotions and memory.

Our indoor cats have bursts of emotion (cat fights, acceptance of short duration cuddles with lots of purring), but most of the time seem very self-contained, even introverted. Clearly they are dependent on their ‘people’ but they are intent on not acknowledging it any more than absolutely necessary. They are very stoic almost to the point of not showing any emotion most of the time. And on the memory front - our cats have been known to re-discover an old toy and play with it as if it was ‘new to them’ even though they played with it the same way just yesterday.

How endearing newborns and cats are - even without emotions and memory!

Quote of the Day - 1/16/2012

"Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus." - Emerson as quoted by Louisa May Alcott in Moods.

  

Moods are an overlay to our perception of the world. The more we hold moods in check by melding everything into a homogeneous demeanor we can sustain for long periods of time, the more consistent everything becomes. This is often the ‘professional’ behavior that training and workplace metrics encourage. It comes at a cost. We are purposely looking through the same lens…that paints the world the same hue…and only shows what lies in its own focus. It can make life easier for us because we know exactly what to expect of ourselves; it can also help our relationships for the same reason.

It can also be boring and stressful.

Acknowledging a different mood, even slightly, can change the experience of an everyday situation and provide new avenues to address problems. For example, usually Andrea is in a good mood in the morning when she gets to work but one morning she arrives having spilled coffee while driving in and now she is upset, feeling that nothing has started right with the day…she is grumpy. She opens her email and there is, yet another, request for help finding a chart set from a recent review. Usually she replies to these requests with a link to the location. It takes less than 5 minutes to find the location and respond. In her grumpy mood - she realizes this same person has been asking this question pretty frequently and she starts a note with a link to the library and plans to tell the person to ‘find it themselves.’ Fortunately she realizes it will come across as abrupt and rude before she hits ‘send.’ The outcome, in the end, was positive because she wrote up a very simple procedure to find the chart sets and now sends it out when requests come in - just below the specific link to the one requested; the number of requests have gone down because the frequent requesters now understand how to easily find the chart sets themselves.

Keeping moods internal - not showing them outwardly - can be stressful. It is probably healthier than not acknowledging the mood at all since the ‘focus’ for your mood is still visible (i.e. you have not narrowed your perception by only experiencing/acknowledging one mood). Because you restrict yourself from jumping up and down with joy or clomping down the hall with tight fists in frustration, there need to be alternative escapes for the emotion of the mood. Think about what works for you. Physical activity works well for me because it serves to break the thread of activity my mood had created:

• Take 5 deep breaths. Air in through your nose…out through your mouth.
• Walk rapidly to your car…and then back.
• Roll your head clockwise 10 times, counterclockwise 10 times.

Remember - The more intense the mood, the more intense the new perception might be so seek to use the positive aspects of that perception while curbing the actions that could damage relationships.

And - enjoy your life’s “train of moods like a string of beads.”