"Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives."
-Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things
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What we think of 'stability' might not be as it seems...
As you might’ve heard me say before.. Emotion regulation isn't about being calm and collected all the time.
It's about being able to hold what's actually happening inside you.. including when what's happening is contradictory.
Excited about a new beginning AND mourning what you're leaving behind.
Wanting someone you love to succeed AND feeling tinges of worry about what their success means for you.
Research in affective neuroscience shows that the capacity to hold mixed feelings is a developmental achievement (Bourgeois & Hess, 2008; Larsen et al., 2004).
Young brains experience the world in simpler terms.. aversive or appealing, fun or not fun.
The ability to hold contradictory feelings simultaneously emerges as the brain matures.
Which means when we feel absolutely certain.. when an opinion feels rock-solid with no room for nuance.. we might actually be reverting to a more rudimentary mode of processing.
Certainty is easier. It feels more stable.
But what we might label as stability or certainty isn't always wisdom.
The next time conflicting feelings arise, consider it a sign that your nervous system is doing something sophisticated. 🙂
And the next time you feel absolutely certain about something, get curious:
What might I be missing?
What am I no longer open to learning?
Mixed feelings are a mark of a brain still growing…
..Still capable of being changed by what it encounters.
That’s a beautiful thing. It’s the Essence of Intelligence Itself..r
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"Let's face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic.
It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria.
It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity.
That's what makes the world interesting, that's what makes it beautiful, and that's what makes it work."
—Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
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P.S.
If you want to go further, this is one of the threads we pull on in Teach the Nervous System. People tell me they use it less like a course and more like a working library. pulling language and frameworks into their own posts, client sessions, and workshops when they're trying to make something land. The science is yours to use. → Grab it here
