Completing Emotional Information Cycles (Part 11) - Talking to the Washed Up Volleyball and …

… liking what it says?

There is a never ending conflict between the current nature of your self-talk and the nature of the feedback you receive from your different environments.  Are you normal?  Are you acceptable?  Do you need to change?

Or do you need to change your environment instead?

Ever been ‘sent to Coventry’ - given the silent treatment?  This is a standard social punishment technique. Or have you ever received negative feedback?  Did it hurt? If it did: did the level of pain you felt vary according to who the person giving the feedback was; the social situation and the type of relationship you thought you had with them? 

The reason we are vulnerable to feeling pain when exposed to this kind of thing is because the final stage of completing our internal emotional information cycles depends on feedback from sources outside of our control - ‘out there’. 

We have a built-in need to express, and then receive positive feedback on what we express, in order to feel safe in our environment.  The nature of the feedback matters to us.  It decides things for us.

You cannot complete your internal information cycles, so achieving happiness, when your external environment is so hostile you are not even allowed to express yourself out into it. 

In such an environment we have only two choices to make: do I stay and make my environment adapt to me, or leave to find a new environment?  This decision is based on self-talk.  Unless you are a young child, or an adult with some severe disability, no-one else but you can make this decision for you.

You have a problem when most of your self-talk is based on subjective memories of how others treat you, rather than your own self-produced objective understanding.  Particularly when you’ve received negative feedback from those you see as ‘special’. 

We let ‘special’ people into our inner world, attaching to and valuing all they say and do.  Unfortunately we’re at a disadvantage if they do not behave likewise.

We open up our Unconscious to them, trusting they have our best interests at heart. Sometimes what they say and do becomes what we say and do to ourselves - it’s called brainwashing. Mental and emotional marination.

Allowing yourself to be mentally and emotionally marinated by the negative opinions of trusted others means after you’ve left their company you walk away thinking you are the negative environment who imposed yourself on them.  This is often the cause of low self-esteem.

We need to be careful out there - but we also need to be even more careful in here too.  We need to keep control of our self-talk.

In an earlier post I explained the Left Neo-Cortex, the thinking part of us, will not allow the transfer of information confirming a negative self-image.  It remains stuck in the Right Neo-Cortex, keeping us emotionally charged up about it.

This is because a negative self-image means we are not in balance with our environment.  All living organisms have a continuing need to know whether or not they and their environment are in tune - their survival depends on it.

We repeatedly send signals out asking ‘how am I doing here?’ and we need positive signals coming back or we start to question the imbalance.

The true measure of how successful we are in managing our internal world of information is decided by whether or not we, as a whole being, are being accepted or rejected in our external environment (socially and physically) and whether or not we can trust the feedback signals we receive from our own unconscious.

We want to know we are normal.  A person who regards themselves as abnormal, in any way, is by default a more anxious person.

Expression

In the film ‘Castaway’, actor Tom Hanks plays a FedEx employee stranded on an island.

Discovering a washed-up volleyball he paints a face on it, calls it ‘Wilson’ and starts talking to it.  In the character’s mind Wilson acts as a feedback mechanism and he’s so emotionally dependent on Wilson’s company he experiences genuine grief when Wilson gets washed away by the sea later. 

At the start of the film we see Tom’s character concerned mainly with solving logistical and time management problems; he does not come across as a people-orientated man.  As events unfold, however, we see the part of his nature that keeps him going is his emerging need to reconnect with people - he doesn’t just have conversations with Wilson, he also talks to a picture of his wife as if she were present too. 

Have you ever spoken to someone not present?  I have - particularly when clearing emotionally charged memories.  I’ve had full-blown arguments with imaginary people; telling them exactly what I failed to tell them when I had the real-life opportunity. 

I’ve achieved quite a few insights and cleared some very painful emotional responses doing that.  Is this normal?  For me it turned out to be essential.  I know a lot of people who’ve used this kind of approach to resolve their inner demons - including a counsellor friend who cleared an emotional response by beating up her imaginary ex-husband with an imaginary baseball bat. 

And, although this method was usually painful to go through, it allowed me to finally accept it was they, not I, who were creators of the unacceptable environments I had left. 

We need to express, using whatever method best suits us at the time in a safe environment, in order to clear out our emotional baggage and accept our emotional process.  It’s how we work.  Quite often the reason people develop emotional disorders is because they’ve been brainwashed by a hostile environment, created by one or more other people, into repressing this need.

We can express in a variety of ways, but the two main types are Unconsciously and Consciously.

Unconscious Expression

Unconscious expression is all about energy release.

When you manage information in your Unconscious, through your feelings and your image-based Right Neo-Cortex, you are managing vibrational energy.

This energy projects outwards through your physical mannerisms, voice tone and behaviours. Do you have any personal habits you’re only aware of when others point them out?  I have a few.

When I’m concentrating I tend to have a ‘Mr Sad’ introspective face.  People sometimes comment ‘Carl, don’t look so sad’ and I reply ‘I like being sad, it cheers me up’. 

If I’m walking somewhere with an intention of doing something I find meaningful I tend to lean forward a little bit - I’ve had colleagues refer to it as my ‘purposeful walk’. 

As a child I would always have a red nose because if I got excited about an idea I would rub my nose furiously (looking like a rabbit cleaning itself) and I had a lot of ideas.  I still have this tendency but it’s not as bad as it used to be; some folks think it’s due to heavy drinking but it’s not.  Honest. 

So if I’m thinking excitedly about something while walking towards it you’ll see me leaning forward with a sad expression sporting a bright red nose. All driven by unconscious energy.

We express unconsciously through all the things we physically do or don’t do.  If a friend tells you three times they definitely want to do something with you but three times they don’t show up what are they really telling you?  It’s their Unconscious expressing what they really want; overriding what they’re consciously planning. 

If you were to point the difference out between what they’re saying and what they’re doing they might admit, perhaps emotionally, you’re right.  Experience has taught me to watch what people do; rather than what they say - because our Unconscious energy is what decides the future in the long term.

I’ve also learned not to blame or point out these inconsistencies unless absolutely necessary - why bother?  It just causes bad feeling on all sides. 

Let’s say, though, that instead of people pointing my unconscious habits out to me in a playful way, as they usually do, there’s a real atmosphere of social rejection in which I am being punished, maybe being shouted at or ‘sent to Coventry’.  What do I do then?  To escape the pain of social rejection I may decide to repress my unconscious energies.

Repression of Unconscious Expression

We can tune into our unconscious energy and create different routes for releasing this energy as it arises - so if I know I can do this, and want to, I can find ways to change my current automatic physical responses by directing my expression of energy into other activities.  For example, if a situation makes me angry on a regular basis I can take that anger to the gym and get a better workout instead of releasing it directly at the original trigger.

Alternatively, I can decide to use the energy produced to leave; avoiding the trigger creating the anger response in me.  Or I could use the energy aggressively to tackle the trigger head on.

Trouble is, both the retraining and the leaving options take a lot of time and effort.  I’m only going to do these things if I am willing to funnel the energy into achieving a new goal or if the pain caused by staying where I am is intense enough to drive me away.  The third option, tackling the trigger head on, could involve negative consequences outweighing any benefits gained.

The last option, and its the option all people with emotional blocking disorders have taken, is to trap the emotional energy inside my body so I stop expressing outwardly altogether.  I pretend the energy is not there.  I try to fool my environment - and myself - in the hope my environment will give me positive feedback.  This is ‘denial’.  When the positive feedbacks still fails to come and the trigger keeps triggering my unconsciously driven response I am well on the way to being emotionally ill.

In any environment where the act of expression itself is rejected, no matter what form it takes, we are susceptible to looking at our unconsciously produced energies and, after deciding they are unacceptable for whatever reason, start trapping them inside.

Those of us who adopt the blocking option can become skilled at it, masking our external expressions to the point when we finally start to talk about our inner struggle with others who may have been around us for some time they think we’re lying. 

A blocking person can seem completely calm and ‘together’ on the outside while living in hell on the inside.

The trouble with unconscious energy is it doesn’t just disappear because you don’t want to express it.  It keeps attempting to come up for release and finds various alternative routes to try and project out of the body-mind system.

If we look at people suffering with obsessions, for example, their trapped physical energies are trying to escape through various strange images.  The sufferer is consciously forced to see ever-repeating imagery wondering why on Earth they are unable to stop this from happening in their brain - they believe it’s a ‘thinking’ problem.  It’s actually an energy release problem.

Once the energy has been released, simply by feeling the feelings attached to the imagery, the images disappear as a side affect (just a note here to say that although this is a ‘simple’ process it’s still a difficult and painful thing to do). 

If you’ve opted for blocking, so repressing your emotional energies as a solution to deal with a long-term rejecting environment, your first step may need to be leaving the environment generating the need to repress.

Conscious Expression

Emotional outbursts occur when the unconscious, working through the emotional Limbic, overrides the restrictions placed on it by the master conscious controller of you - your Prefrontal Cortex - and projects itself unrestricted onto the outside world.

Outbursts are particularly likely to happen during the period of life when we are dealing with our most important life choices but at the same time lack the self-control mechanism provided by the Prefrontal Cortex because it is not yet fully formed and connected to the rest of our brain and body.  This period occurs between puberty and our mid-twenties. 

Up until then parents and other responsible adults need to act as the controlling mechanism (unfortunately it is also the time when when we are most vulnerable to the influences of irresponsible adults and the manipulative plans of others who can see our naivety).

The command to engage consciously with your unconscious signals, transferring them to your image and thought processing Neo-Cortex, comes from your Prefrontal Cortex.  This part of you looks backwards at the incoming sensory signals like a rower in a rowing boat; deciding which signals it will pay attention to and which it will block.

It is the part of you that forms a judgement about your self-image and decides what directions you should move in to achieve a positive one.  It decides which of your sensory signals will be forwarded on to your Motor Cortex for physical action to be stimulated.

Physical conscious expression involves talking; writing; drawing; and all your other deliberately planned physical actions. Nice, neat and appropriately packaged for you and others to accept and look at (unless you’re in an environment which refuses to accept your consciously controlled expressions and then don’t be surprised when unconscious expression kicks in and overrides it all again!).

What we need to receive, in response to whatever method of conscious expression we use (and we really do NEED this), is acceptance. 

Unfortunately, because you can’t rely on other people to give you this, you need primarily to learn to give it to yourself. 

When I was emotionally ill I distinctly remember the moment when I decided ‘I need to be more selfish - I need to give myself the absolute right, above everything else, to get happy’.

Once you decide to do this for yourself the next step is to stop tolerating non-accepting environments because they will wear your commitment to self-acceptance down.

Achieving Total Self Acceptance

I like dealing with people who have achieved total self acceptance because:

• they are congruent - what they consciously and unconsciously express match up; as a result of this …
• they don’t tell me what they think I want to hear; so they don’t fool or manipulate me and I can decide quickly whether or not I should invest in developing a common positive-feedback environment with them and if I don’t …
• neither of us feels bad about that - in fact we simply reaffirm our individuality and our right to be who we are.  There is nothing wrong with not being suited to someone else or deciding not to share an environment of some form with them if you are completely unsuited.

Here’s a personal life example: an attractive woman I’ve known for about 15 minutes in total approaches me and asks me to take her back to my place in order to have sex.  I’m taken aback by the direct nature of her approach and I suspect she uses this approach a lot and often gets the results she’s looking for.  I don’t do this kind of casual thing myself so I just laugh it off.

She comes back to me a few weeks later, still interested, and asks me what I look for in a woman.  I tell her ‘honesty - if a woman is honest with me that allows me to make a valid decision about whether or not I should get involved with her and I can’t complain if it turns out later she is exactly the kind of person she said she was’.

So this lady says to me ‘well, I’ll tell you honestly if you get involved with me you’ll find I’m not the kind of woman who sticks to one man and you’d have to accept I see other men for sex too’.

I thanked her for her honesty - and I respected her for it and still do (no, I didn’t get involved). 

She was self-accepting of who she really was and so was I.  When it comes to identifying what a ‘positive feedback environment’ looks like it doesn’t mean you need others to conform to your idea of who they should be.  It means you’re allowed to be who you are.

Choosing and Creating Positive Feedback Environments

I had to get more selfish in order to heal from my emotional disorders.  I had to be willing to end relationships I had long-term emotional commitments to because the others involved had got used to treating me without respect and as though there was something ‘wrong’ with me.

The only thing wrong with me was that I had put up with years of being treated as though there was something wrong with me!  I had come to believe it myself - and it had affected me at the unconscious level.

If you are coming out with expressions such as ‘I need to toughen up’; ‘I’m too soft’; ‘I shouldn’t be letting these things get to me’ - it means you’re forcing yourself to stay in environments you’re unconsciously absorbing negative signals in and you’re trying to pretend otherwise.

We need to live in environments that support our individuality as a person; forget all the gender based prejudices; the shaming tactics and the social politics of it all.  We are individuals foremost.  There is no ‘should be’ when it comes to who we are.

If you are someone who has developed an emotional disorder as a result of not being allowed to express yourself in a rejecting environment it means your body is overcharged with emotional information and the environment you were in has convinced you your feelings are abnormal and you should not complete your own information cycles.

Normalisation

We need to express and gain acceptance so that we can normalise our experiences; name them mentally and let them go.

Imagine you’re listening to a five year old child talking to their teddy bear and when it comes to their doing the voice of the teddy talking back to them you hear them speak, in a deep teddy bear voice: ‘you’re not normal - I think you should see a psychiatrist. You’re not good enough to be playing with the likes of me; I think it’s you who should be locked up a toy box somewhere, not me’.

Would you think that strange?  That’s the kind of self-talk people with anxiety disorders are inflicting on themselves.  They need to find environments in which they can consciously express their unconscious world.  They need to do this so they can bring out and ‘normalise’ their inner experiences as they finally complete their internal information cycles.

Regards - Carl

Completing Emotional Information Cycles (Part 10) - Focusing on The Limbic

The Limbic is where your most intense negative emotional responses are attached to sensory stimuli.

Those sensory stimuli can include images, sounds, smells and, strangely enough, the physical sensations of emotional responses themselves.

Positioned close to the middle of your brain the Limbic has evolved from what used to be the area used for detecting smell and avoiding suffocation. It sits below the Thalamus, the brain’s signal routing system.

Whenever your Thalamus sends a sensory signal straight to the Limbic, via what is called the ‘short route’, you experience an immediate full-body emotional response.  Thinking doesn’t get a chance to directly intervene in the reaction - it happens and your conscious is informed afterwards.

We create and maintain anger, anxiety and other similar negative responses in the Limbic.

Other emotional brain parts, such as the pleasure/reward system (based in the medial forebrain bundle) and the disgust response (managed in the insular cortex) also affect us but, if you can learn to work with the Limbic in reducing negative response levels, you can use the same approach to improve how other emotional brain areas perform for you as well.

The main parts of the Limbic we want to focus on when thinking about emotional healing are the Hippocampus and the Amygdala (there are two of each sitting symmetrically alongside each other below the Thalamus, so they’re sometimes called the Hippocampi and the Amygdalae).

The Hippocampus

The Hippocampus is our environmental and territorial mapping system.

Shaped a bit like a runner bean pod it creates cellular maps using incoming sensory signal information. These maps are so accurate scientists using a brain scanner can identify where test subjects are in a computer maze game by looking only at the live scans of their Hippocampus.

Journeys are mapped here - real and virtual - in specific detail.  The Hippocampus stores its maps in layers.  When we reflect on memories of a previous journey or repeat a real-life external journey we begin accessing these layered maps.

As soon as you enter unfamiliar territory the Hippocampus starts the map-building process and another layer is created.

If you have an intense negative emotional experience in an environment the Hippocampus will map where that occurred in the territory and will also map other environmental details present at the time of the experience.

An entire map can switch from feeling ‘safe’ to feeling ‘dangerous’ instantly due to one negative event occurring when you are in that map - for example if you have an argument with a colleague or are abused in some way on the way to work by a passer-by it can take several days for the Hippocampus to retrain itself to see those places as safe again.

Anticipatory Fear

Once a negative experience has been mapped in a particular territory or situation your Hippocampus will trigger anticipatory signals preparing you for fight or flight when that territory or situation appears to be approaching.  The closer you get to the specific triggering point in the map the more intense the emotional response becomes.

If your general approach to this process is to change your route to avoid the trigger (for example you change your job to avoid a colleague) the Hippocampus not only maintains the original map but goes on to trigger the same avoidant responses in new situations where the sensory signals only vaguely resemble the original.

Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there.  Your entire Unconscious watches the direction you take in regards to the energised map in question and if you repeatedly avoid facing it, as well as other things vaguely reminding you of it, the map spreads, and you now start developing full-blown emotional responses to those vague reminders as well.

The whole process is designed not just to protect you when you find yourself directly in the presence of the original fear-triggering situation, but prevent you entering its presence in the first place.

A single map of this nature can affect your whole body-mind and stimulates beliefs that you cannot cope - both with the original situation and now with the steps leading up to the situation.

Secondary Emotional Response Signals

Most fear-inducing things in life can be avoided.  Having these fears is not a problem because we don’t come into contact with the triggers on a regular basis.  A fear of lions; a fear of bungee jumping; a fear of sitting in a bath full of venomous snakes; a fear of looking foolish in front of others at an important social gathering we have been asked to speak at; a fear of slipping on ice this year because last year we slipped over and broke our hip.  These are all natural fears to have.

We could overcome them if we really wanted to - and some people do and then like to show off about it.

Difficulties arise for us when we have to come into contact with these triggering situations on a regular basis, but have not yet removed the natural fear response attached to them.  Coming into contact with them means we now have an ‘emotional problem’ to deal with.

Things get even more difficult if, when we keep coming into regular contact with these things, we refuse to internally complete the emotional response process needed to adjust and become comfortable again.

We are now vulnerable to producing secondary emotional responses; particularly if we are being socially rejected by others (or believe we are) because of our fear or if we negatively criticise our own emotions.

Secondary emotional responses are produced with the intention of removing or reducing the affects of primary emotional responses when we believe our own primary response is wrong or abnormal.

Produced with the intention of removing the symptoms of fear, or whatever other negative emotion is involved, the actual result is to trap the emotional response and then magnify and pressure-cook it.

And, because Secondary responses are usually applied using the same type of emotional response as the Primary, we cannot ‘see’ what we have just done.  There’s no visible join - we’re left mystified as to why the response has become so unbelievably, overwhelmingly intense.  We create an ever-repeating emotional loop with both the Primary and Secondary responses triggering and fighting each other.

Panic attacks are the result of a fear of fear; phobias are a fear of feeling fear in the presence of an object or situation; rage attacks and depression are caused by anger at having to feel anger or grief, sadness or shame; obsessions are caused by a fear of an intense disgust response.

The Hippocampus Maps Primary Emotional Responses When a Secondary Response is Produced

When we produce a Secondary emotional response the Hippocampus identifies the ‘symptoms’ of emotional responses themselves as dangerous.  The strange thoughts and not-usually-felt feelings are themselves identified as things to be avoided or fought.

The Hippocampus now starts building organic maps in regards to your own, allegedly dangerous, responses.  You create layers designed to defend against these internal emotional layers and their behavioural affects, building what I call ‘lands of the mind’; in the same way it builds maps of the external world.

Your own emotional system becomes the threat your emotional system wants to avoid.

When you decide to compel yourself to start accepting your own feelings again you have to take an actual journey inwards, in just the same way you would if the threat were mapped as an external threat.  The journey is long; fraught with multiple emotional responses designed to warn you of the hidden dangers - and every physical sensation looks like a potential killer.

The Argument Between Reality versus Imagination

One of the arguments you may come up against, if you have an emotional disorder and want to remove it, is that this inner journey is an imaginary thing and so therefore not ‘real’.

We have a tendency to think of things outside of ourselves as being ‘real’; therefore genuinely existing and worthy of attention; but things happening mentally and emotionally inside of us as somehow ‘false’, so not as valid.  We tell ourselves we should maybe ignore these inner parts of ourselves most of the time.  This is, to a great extent, a socially programmed illusion designed to make us more useful to others.

The truth is, whether you think you are managing external or internal reality, it is all the same internal process.  You are not, in reality, capable of fully experiencing or controlling external reality.  Internal reality is your only reality.

Everything is an internal adjustment process.  Whether you approach an apparently ‘external reality’, as mapped by your Hippocampus, or what you see as an ‘internal unreality’, it is the same internal mapping system you are travelling through and reacting to - not the actual environment.  You are consciously approaching a place in your own brain.  It is all real; it all operates by the same rules.

We project this internal, emotionally charged map onto the external world and react to it as if it were ‘real’, until we learn to retrain those internal maps telling us the threat does not really exist -and all of this happens only inside of us.

This is why you can remove a phobia or an obsession, or any other trapped emotional response, without having to revisit the actual original external fear-creating situation that caused you to map it in the first place.

The whole thing is real, and valid, fully mapped, inside your own Limbic brain.

Projection

Ever had others project their currently stuck internal maps on to you when they react to you as if you did or said something you did not actually do or say?  I’ve had this kind of thing happen to me about 4 or 5 times where the consequences seemed to go on for long periods before dying a natural social death.

If you’re aware of the nature of ‘projection’; and care about how it affects you and others, you can reduce how much you do it to others and avoid the affects it has on you when others project their trapped emotional maps in your direction.

It’s not just individuals that do it to each other either - whole groups, even nations, can remain stuck in frozen prejudice - treating others as if something that happened once, decades ago, is still happening today.

The responsibility for changing these internal maps lies solely with the person or group doing the projecting.  The reason we project is because we have not fully travelled the journey mapped in our own Hippocampus - we have not completed the emotional information cycle and trained our Limbic to see the original threat no longer exists - perhaps it never did.

Now let’s take a look at the almond-sized brain part that sits at the end of the Hippocampus.  The part of us where the most intense, most painful emotions we are capable of producing are generated.

The Amygdala

While the Hippocampus maps environments surrounding specific threats, the Amygdala stores imagery and other sensory stimuli of the specific threats at the centre of the overall reaction.  The most intense emotional responses you are capable of producing are attached to the sensory constructs mapped here.

It’s as if you travel along a corridor-like map in the Hippocampus in order to reach the fear inducing signals stored in the Amygdala at journey’s end.

The Amygdala operates as a ‘negative sensory signal register’.  It stores sensory lists of all the things you have an intense negative response to.

People; objects; sensations; shapes; sounds.  Anything can be registered here.  These things will normally appear perfectly harmless to you - unless they are being managed in the Amygdala.

As you move consciously towards the sensory stimuli being managed here you may get a sense of your being suffocated by the intensity of the emotional response attached.  Latest scientific research tells us this is exactly what the amygdala responds most strongly to - a sense of suffocation.  The reaction is designed to kick in when a predator has you by the throat.

When you feel overwhelmed by an emotional response, as it closes down your ability to think clearly while filling your mind with imagery attached to intense unwanted physical symptoms, it can be easy to see how this experience itself can mimic suffocation, convincing the Amygdala to list the emotions themselves as a suffocating, life-threatening experience.

Completing Emotional Information Cycles in the Limbic

Apart from the emotional cycles related to bonding and reproduction, which can keep recharging and discharging for a lifetime, the emotional process in the Limbic is designed to produce singular negative responses which can be permanently discharged and removed.

All of your negative emotional responses; primary or secondary, are designed to be discharged after serving their purpose.

If you have an emotional blocking problem, in which you are producing a Secondary emotional response to a Primary, it will take some time and effort to achieve emotional freedom, but it can be done.

When your Limbic is given the job of managing a specific set of sensory signals it acts like a spark plug to the rest of the body and brain, causing the release of hormones containing those molecules known as ‘ligands’ throughout the body-mind.  These molecules attach to your various body and brain parts causing them to become vibrationally activated - that is, producing energy intended to drive physical action - the fight, flight or freeze responses.

If you have not yet faced up to the threat (the original stimulating trigger at which the emotional charge is targeted) your body remains in a state of charged alertness - full of high energy emotional information signals.  Ready for action - tense.

Full discharge only occurs when you have made the journey through the Hippocampus maps towards the Amygdala registry where the image and other related sensory signals are stored.  You will know when you’re getting closer to full discharge because the painful negative emotional affects get stronger and stronger.  When your conscious mind arrives at the triggering sensory signal - perceived as being external or internal - that’s when you are at full emotional discharge.

This is how it works when you use the systematic desensitisation approach (exposure therapy) method, anyway.  This is the method I used and which some other therapies use.  There are other methods, such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which can be used to remove the feelings in a more gently way.

Emotional Acceptance

I’ve written elsewhere on the blog about the process of emotional acceptance and I’ve put a link to an article about it at the end of this post.  Achieving emotional acceptance is concerned with training your thinking brain to surrender to the full emotional process by bringing a stop to how you think your emotional process should work and learning how it actually does work - and accepting just how overwhelmingly powerful it can seem at times - yet still be safe.

When you mentally deny an emotional response the right to discharge the signals keep driving up from the body as though to say ‘eh, we’re still here!  You’ve got to do something!’.  If the Prefrontal Cortex - the part of you watching you, decides to block release of these energy signals they stay active. Your body remains tensed and ready and emotionally energised and it keeps telling your upper brain about it.

If your thinking decides to try and block the signals using Secondary emotional responses it intensifies the situation even further.

So the answer to how we allow the Limbic to complete its information cycle so we can get rid of our emotional problems is really simple. We reverse what we are currently doing and start to discharge the energy attached to the sensory signals through the process of feeling our feelings.

Feelings attached to individual sensory constructs, not thoughts, and whether or not you move consciously towards or away from them, is the language of your Limbic and the rest of your Unconscious below it.

You accept an emotional response by moving towards it.  This allows the Limbic to complete its responsibility in regards to the information it contains - and from there, following discharge of the emotional energy, the energy-stripped informational content of the experience is passed up as imagery into the Right Neo-Cortex then transferred into thoughts in the Left Neo-Cortex.

Regards - Carl

Article: The Three Elements of Emotional Acceptance