Have you ever heard about the children born
without pain sensitivity? It's an incredibly rare congenital condition, it only affects around
100 people in the whole world, and on the surface it sounds amazing right? Like how cool would it
be to never feel physical pain? Well actually, it's a nightmare. These little kids who can't feel
pain they also have nothing to protect them from injury. One of these kids named Isaac, when he was
a toddler, he would throw a tantrum and he would smack his face like so hard into the ground that
he was almost breaking things and he would just laugh because he thought it was funny. He would
chew on his tongue until it bled, he would poke his fingers into his eyes because they felt weird, but
he was actually damaging his eyeballs. Now normally, your pain receptors would send a strong message:
"stop biting your tongue", "stop poking your eyes", "stop hitting your head", but for him no pain meant that
there was little to stop him from harming himself. Ashlynn is another girl who feels no pain. As a
baby she never cried when she was hungry or when she had a really bad diaper rash, and again, this
seems like the ideal baby right? But then one day they had her into the doctor for a regular checkup
and they found out that she had this huge tear on her cornea, and normally this would be incredibly
painful, but because she didn't feel pain she wasn't able to alert her parents to her injuries
or her needs. Now Ashlynne and kids like her, they live in danger every day because they don't have
the automatic protective alarm system of pain. In her life, Ashlynne has walked for two days on
a broken ankle without realizing it, she sat in a pile of fire ants without being bothered
by their blistering bites, kids like her stick their hands on hot stove burners or
into boiling water without shedding a tear, and their lack of pain creates a real
difficulty for them and for their parents who are trying to just keep their kids safe without their
children having this internal system to help them. Ashlynne is now 13 and she's learning to cook and
take care of herself, but every day they worry that she's going to get hurt without realizing it.
Ashlynn's parents have created a facebook group for other families with this condition and it's
called "The Gift of Pain", and it's not until you see what life is like without any pain at all
that you can kind of start to appreciate the benefit of pain in your life. Now while this may
seem like an extreme example, I hope it helps you break down this idea of "positive" and "negative"
emotions a little bit more. Pain is uncomfortable, but it serves a purpose. In this section in
skill number two we're going to talk about how every emotion you experience serves a function.
In their purest forms, emotions like fear, sadness, joy, love, guilt, hurt, they all serve
important roles in our lives. You're going to learn how to get better at feeling by listening
to your innate wisdom and you're going to learn why coping skills don't work in the long run and
you're also going to learn what to do instead. This video is sponsored by Skill Share where
you can learn all sorts of really cool things, Skill Share has a ton of classes on creative
arts. Last week when I was traveling I just tuned in for this class- "Podcast Marketing: How
to Grow Your Audience with a Marketing Plan" by Amanda McLaughlin. (Amanda) "This course is about how
to market a podcast as you watch along you'll be building a marketing plan for your own show",
(Emma) and in 24 minutes she helped me clarify my voice and my marketing plan to share my podcast with
easy actionable steps and I've taken a half dozen other classes about podcasting on Skill Share,
and I'm loving it, I'm really learning a lot in such a short amount of time. The other cool
thing about Skill Share classes is they usually have a project involved and so you can see the
projects that other class members are making and I think that's a really cool part of these
classes. There's also a ton of other classes on productivity, creativity, and self-care. Becoming
a Skill Share member is less than $10 a month with an annual subscription and the first 1000 of my
subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial of premium membership so
you can explore your creativity and use it to work through your emotions. You already have within
you the inherent ability to resolve and manage your emotions, you have a deep knowledge inside of
you that will guide you and help you work through thoughts and emotions with strength and integrity.
The problem is that many of us have been taught that there are "good" emotions and "bad" emotions, and
that gets in the way of us being able to listen to our emotions and honor them. When we focus our
energy on making "bad" feelings go away we lose track of who we want to be. When we choose to see
emotions as functional instead of just you know uncomfortable inconveniences, we use our emotions
as a resource instead of seeing them as an obstacle. So let's talk about one example of how a
so-called "negative" emotion can actually be really helpful. If I hurt someone, let's say let's say I
punch him in the face for no good reason, I'm gonna feel regret, I'm gonna feel some guilt, guilt is
uncomfortable, does that make it a "negative" emotion? Our cultural approach to "feeling good" says we
should try to make the guilt go away, but in this case the guilt is actually helpful. I did something
wrong, I should feel guilty. Now if I listen to that guilt it should help motivate me to change my
actions, to not do that again, to apologize, to make repairs, to pay their doctor bills, or whatever and
when I've taken care to resolve that problem then the guilt will probably naturally dissipate. Every
emotion when it's pure can serve a function and when we clean up our emotions they can guide us
to a life of integrity and happiness. Now in this course we're going to learn a lot of ways to clean
up distorted emotions and what I'm talking, what I mean by that is like if I have distorted
thinking that says like 'oh my gosh everything in the world is terrible and I'm a terrible
person' then I'm gonna feel like really depressed, but when we clean up that distorted thinking
then I might just feel a little bit sad about something that's happening in the world and that
sadness is a beautiful and pure emotion. So before we can move into those sections in the course this
section is essential because first we just have to talk about the function of emotions. Okay, so let's
talk about that. The function of guilt is to ask 'Did I do something wrong?' and then if yes, I need
to fix it and make repairs and if the answer is no, that I you know, I didn't do something wrong,
then when we really address that guilt we'll be able to let it go. The emotion of fear or
anxiety asks 'Am I in danger? it says 'Look out!' it asks 'Is this actually dangerous?'. Now I want my
daughters to feel some anxiety, I want them to feel scared on a cliff edge so they don't go
too close or to worry a little bit about cars so they don't run into the street. So when you
feel anxious you ask 'Is this actually dangerous?' if yes, then take action to create safety, fight off
the danger, run away from the danger, leave it right, freeze up and hold still until the danger passes.
If it's not dangerous, then it's imagined danger and we need to manage our response if we sit
with that fear and say "oh actually I am safe", and we calm our body and we calm our mind then
that fear and anxiety will most likely resolve and whether something is dangerous or safe we need
to check our values to see what's most important to us. Do we need to face our fears to live the
life we want or is it better to be extra safe in some situations? We'll just do a couple more
examples right- excitement, also known as stress, prepares us to perform. Love motivates us to
sacrifice for something we care about it asks you know 'Is this worth committing to, is this
worth sacrificing for?' Even hopelessness can serve a function, it asks 'should I keep trying?' Now
you can't build a bridge across a river with Ritz Crackers, you should feel hopeless after trying
this a number of times. Hopelessness will motivate you to stop wasting that effort and to try
something else, so instead try using steel beams or trees or rocks or whatever right, that's the
function of hopelessness, but false hopelessness is giving up when it's still possible. This is
usually what we see with a depressive disorder right we feel this distorted sense of hopelessness
about life or yourself when the truth is your life is actually okay, your life is good, there's there's
hope for good things to happen. Emotions serve at least three important functions the first is
as warning signs to help us notice problems. The second is they motivate us to change. The word
e-motion has the word like that latin word motion in it, I don't know latin that well,
but the the word emotion is literally about movement, about creating movement, and third,
emotions help us connect to other human beings. This is one of the reasons why coping skills don't
work in the long run. Here's another example, um let's assume that you feel very angry because your
child has been given an unfair grade at school. You're friends with the other moms of the
other kids in your, in the same class and when you compare the assignments it's clear
that the teacher gave him an F and others A's when the level of work was the same and
you know you're upset because this low grade might impact his ability to go to
college and that's really important to you. Now if you google right now, if you search how to
deal with anger, everything you read will say that if you're angry you should either express it you
know like vent or tell someone about it or two that you should cope, you should go for run, you
should punch a pillow, you should listen to some calming music, you should distract yourself. If this
is your approach and especially if this is your only approach then the problem never gets solved.
Coping skills just bury problems and emotions only to have them you know resurface later, so in this
case we can explore some constructive alternatives. If we pause and look at the anger, where is it
coming from? Anger is often about fairness and protection. If we listen to what the emotion is
telling us then some options open up. With anger we always need to check to see if it's a secondary
emotion, so that means an emotion covering up another more tender emotion, we're going to learn
like so much more about this in skill number seven, but basically before we try to solve the problem
just check to see if the anger you're feeling isn't really fear or guilt or disappointment,
those emotions beg for a different solution. Now if it is anger and this is about
protection perhaps the right solution is righting the wrong, making sure that you
stand up for your child who's being mistreated or that you confront the teacher. I mean we're
just talking about options here right? Another option is maybe the right thing to do is help your
child find safety by changing classes or schools or you could encourage your child to help him feel
more confident to talk to his teacher about the issue. Now another option look at this when we look
at what anger's trying to do it's about protection it gives us options for how to act maybe the
solution is actually that you need to change your perspective uh you need to look at this problem
from a different point of view and you might even see that what you thought to be mistreatment was
actually fair or helpful when you view it honestly. So let's say you call or email the teacher and
you politely ask them for clarification you find out that the teacher caught your son cheating, this
new perspective gives you lots of new options for action to solve the problem that have nothing
to do with the teacher right, this solution is like looking for a different perspective on
emotions it's often the most helpful and often the most difficult to do on our own, and then
again with anger in some rare circumstances the problem is completely out of our control and
the best thing we can do is open up some space to feel those emotions let them pass through
without us taking action. We can help our child understand that the world isn't fair but we
can try to live by that value of fairness we can try to be that change in the world or you
can go to school board meetings and you know try to influence the big picture problem of teacher
training. If we really look carefully at the root of the anger emotion then it gives us so many
options for action on the problem instead of just suppressing that emotion itself when we
pause to explore the emotion we suddenly have so many more available responses instead
of just you know react or suppress right. Pausing and exploring is really important and
we're going to practice that throughout the course. Now in the next sections of this course
we're going to ask what if I can't figure out where this emotion is coming from and what if
I can't take action. Okay, so what if I can't take action, what if I know what the function
of this emotion is but I can't take action? What am I supposed to do if I can't solve my
problem? What if it's out of my realm of control? If it's just someone's choices that made me
hurt can I cope then? Well, I would answer this by saying that coping implies active suffering
combined with trying not to think about it. Suppression usually leads to explosions later
so instead of coping I would encourage you to find active peace combined with a focus
on living the life you value using your willingness skills to make space for that
pain will help it dissipate instead of you know make it something that you just have to
keep pushing off or carrying around with you your emotions aren't out to get you there's a
very high chance that your mind is not broken or defective and when we think of emotions as "good"
or "bad" we tend to try to create change at the emotional level we try to make those emotions go
away when we just try to stop an emotion it's like trying to get rid of an iceberg by cutting off the
top but all that ice underneath keeps resurfacing. If we see emotions and behaviors as functional,
we can create change at a deeper level. We tend to resolve problems because we
see an emotion as simply an indication that there's something we need to change. Both
approaches to emotional change take work right, coping or resolving emotions, the difference is
that coping creates a cycle that's not sustainable, it usually is built on short-term fixes, it's fine
in the short-term crisis, I'm not trying to say never cope, coping is fine when you're in crisis
it relies on things that make us feel better now, but in the long run we need to keep feeding that
coping and this keeps all our energy focused on emotional control and we're completely distracted
from the direction we want to go with our life. Resolving emotions focuses on acknowledging
problems as a step on the road to solving them, it creates a sustainable change that leads
to more and more fulfillment as time goes on. Okay, question number two- What if I can't figure
out where an emotion is coming from, like how can I understand the function of an emotion if I don't
know why I'm feeling it, or where it's coming from? Now there's a couple options here- option
number one is you've been doing what you're doing for so long that you've got this serious
backlog of fish trucks and there's so much history there that it's hard to even tell them
apart so like this is common with depression or generalized anxiety disorder or you know trauma
and the solution is to just get started shoveling, start processing emotions one at a time and
it's going to start making a big difference and the first way to practice this is through
the emotion tracker right? Option number two- you might be having a pure emotion that
comes from being human it's not a sign that something's wrong or that you're doing
anything wrong or something needs to change, this is a beautiful aspect of being alive, it's
laughing so hard that milk comes out your nose and sobbing so hard when you lose someone
you care about. The solution to this kind of emotions is don't make these emotions try to
go away, they're a beautiful part of being alive, instead increase your willingness skills and
your emotions will no longer feel disabling. Now I'm gonna talk a lot more about willingness in
skill number four and five so stay tuned for that. Okay, number three- if you can't figure out where
this emotion is coming from your emotion might be a secondary emotion. The solution to this is to
explore the emotions and see if there's something else there if there's something deeper. The closer
we get to the core emotions the more sensitive they are, but the greater power we have to take
action. Now you may be wondering how does this apply to depression or anxiety disorders and I'm
not trying to say that a depressive disorder or an anxiety disorder is functional but I will say that
often the primary, core, rude emotions of sadness or fear it can be very functional when we learn to
use them in the right way, but there's a lot that we do to exaggerate, distort, or feed those emotions
and that can lead to us drowning in them. So I consider depression disorders and anxiety
disorders as often you know created emotions or distorted emotions this this can be pain that we
create by something we're doing. Now that's not always the case obviously there's a hundred causes
of depression and anxiety but when we're making our pain worse it's called you know pain that
we create and in this course we're going to go into a lot more detail about how you can clean
that pain up and resolve many of those distorted emotions but we can't do any of that if we don't
understand the function and the purpose of those root emotions now on a side note some people are
just born more or less emotionally sensitive right? Some people are born, some people are more prone
to be anxious and others less anxious and I also think this serves an important function in the
community. If we have 100 people in our village and 10 of them are extra anxious and 10 of them
are extra unanxious, they're you know the group that's rarely bothered or worried, the 10 extra
anxious people might be more likely to raise a warning when something's about to go wrong
or they'll keep a closer eye on the children to keep them from falling off a cliff and that
serves a role in our community right and the 10 unanxious people probably would make good warriors
or hunters but they maybe would have a harder time getting along with other people in the village
right people who have extremely low or no anxiety tend not to worry about how they impact the people
around them and they can even end up as sociopaths. Now as a community, we can value these differences
and find good roles for them instead of labeling some as good and some as bad. It is
fair to say that some emotions are comfortable and some are uncomfortable to have and in that
sense some are easier to experience and others take more energy they're more challenging, but I
want you to ask yourself right now- has trying to get rid of uncomfortable emotions made your life
better? Emotions are not bad, they can be functional. When we stop getting in the way of their inherent
purpose and we flow with them, then we're able to live better lives of meaning and integrity and as
an added bonus we're often able to resolve them. In your workbook explore one of the recent intense
emotions that you had. What purpose could it have, what was it trying to accomplish or show you,
what kind of action did it seem to be asking for? Okay, I look forward to working with you on the
next skill. Thank you for watching, and take care!
