Happenstance

I love how things, if you get yourself out of the way and let it be, just fall into place. However minuscule it may be, it gives a sense of enjoyment. That feeling of just right.

During this morning my mind was racing with ideas of what I could share with you all today and this next week. What I found was a path of ideas funneling down into the core of what I truly wanted to write about. Emotions.

I know I might have written about emotions before, but to truly dive deeply into what they actually are and maybe even into how they form, what vibrations are having a party today to cause you to feel how you are feeling right now, seems fun to me. And so, my mind jumps.

I, firstly, want to give warning that my ideas might seem a little far fetched but currently I am working with a migraine that is causing one side of my brain to pulsate so if I can ignore long enough I will be peachy; however, I notice that it makes the rest of me feel a little out of my body. Hence the farfetchedness. It’s fantabulous, I know. OK, I shall proceed now. Emotions.

“Emotions change how we see the world and how we interpret the actions of others. We do not seek to challenge why we are feeling a particular emotion; instead, we seek to confirm it.” Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Understanding Faces and Feelings.

You might have heard that name before in my column a time or two. Paul Ekman, one of the psychologists who spotted micro facial expressions during a study he was conducting which showed “strong negative feelings” in which the patients were trying to hide.

During his time of research, Ekman has been known to say that he believes there are seven core, universal emotions all of us feel and that “each of the universal emotions has distinctive signals, physiologies and timelines with varying onset, duration and decline.” Those seven universal emotions consist of: anger, contempt, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness and surprise.

As to why we feel these certain emotions can be explained by our own past social interaction, physical surroundings, cultural influences and things we were conditioned to as an infant or young child. Where emotional and behavioral responses are said to be in the brain is the limbic system.

The limbic system is comprised up with many different structures, but scientists can agree that the hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala and limbic cortex are at its main core group of interconnected structures. That makes sense seeing as the amygdala and hypothalamus generate and process fear and are in charge of kicking in your fight-orflight response, or sympathetic nervous system into high gear.

Again, I find myself just getting to the good stuff and running out of room. Me thinks we shall dive further into the world of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, as they are just part of the process of emotions and how are bodies respond.

So to sign off this week, be true to you.

Seeking

W

onder

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