Unveiling construction

“The Ifaluk of Micronesia consider emotions as transactions between people. To them, anger is not a feeling of rage, a scowl, a pounding fist, or a loud yelling voice, all within the skin of one person, but a situation in which two people are engaged in a script – a dance if you will – around a common goal. In the Ifaluk view, anger does not “live” inside either participant.”

Lisa Feldman Barrett

Considering variation as the starting point and exploring what, in the metaphorical middle of this variation, this common goal actually is…That, to me, sounds like potential sensitive and creative ways of being together.

Whatever I might frame as “falling in love,” the other might frame as “deep resonance,” “a newfound family”, “insecurity”, “uneasiness” or even project violently, phraming it a character, or maybe even ontological, flaw on my part.

In what kind of dance are we entangled here? The ripening of a relationship is like a construction (deconstruction and reconstruction) of this dance. Just a second ago, what was endorsed as love, now appears to be anger. I might reject myself or the other; how could this shared reality possibly be so changeable in a split(ting) second?

Whatever you frame anger might be something quite different for the other person in a particular context. And might even ‘mean’ something wholly different to you, in a different context or through the activity of different concepts!

Feldman Barrett prefers to speak about “emotion categories.” What exists in the body and brain is affect, emotions include (inter - and intrapersonally) diverse multiple brain networks working together:

"In every waking moment, your brain uses past experience, organized as concepts, to guide your actions and give your sensations meaning. When the concepts involved are emotion concepts, your brain constructs instances of emotion."

Fedman-Barret’s “Theory of Constructed Emotions” influences me to feel – interoceptively, conceptually and ‘realize’ socially - a sense of humility. Was it love – or was it anger? Keep that question in mind, keep it open…. Lot. Is it either/or? Discernment is a skillful dance.

“Ingredients going into this [emotion] construction include interoception, concepts, and social reality. Interoceptive predictions provide information about the state of the body and ultimately produce basic, affective feelings of pleasure, displeasure, arousal, and calmness. Concepts are culturally embodied knowledge, including "emotion concepts". Social reality provides the collective agreement and language that make the perception of emotion possible among people who share a culture.”

Life seems so much simpler when understood from a binary position. Or is this a form of emotional imprisonment..?

Through emotional development (shall I say “emotional re-construction”?), interconnection can again serve as a base for emotional flexibility and a greater variety of being together, taking care and being authentic at the same time. Not suppressing embodied processes of traumatic life experiences, processing experiences through different therapeutic, cultural, and artistic perspectives, may serve to have more embodied wisdom, more conceptual freedom, and more culturally rich ways of constructing “instances of emotions.”

When my friend, with whom I just had a fight (or so I construct), walks towards my front door, the tension in my body is conceptualized as fear, and I get ready to defend myself. Am I still angry?

When my friend, with whom I just went through an intense emotional journey in a new environment, walks towards my front door, the tension in my body is conceptualized as excitement, and I get ready to open my body for more inspiration and connection, shaking a bit while doing so. Am I falling in love?

When, in that very instant, I was about to get sick, my body temperature rising bit by bit, the uncomfortable sensations contribute to my interpretation of anger ‘versus’ love, thus depending on the concepts and (constructed) social reality I am in.

“I must be love-sick,” I tell myself.

You see, it is of utmost importance we dance this emotional dance together. So that we can be creative together in the ways we construct the realities we live in. Emotions can teach us this highly creative power; they mirror how we construct “instances of emotions,” how we give meaning to, and how we (re)create our sense of reality. Since everything is connected, there is much to integrate in this process of sense making together. Storytelling, education, embodiment,….to name a phew.

How does this energy-in-motion dance on the landscape that I call ‘me’ or ‘we’? Mountains of conceptual frameworks and broadening rivers reflecting our social realities influence the course of the sensorially intense waters which we are. We do not 'unveil' our emotions, we (de)construct them, even if - and let us keep that deeply in mind - not everything is relative.

See this Wikipage for more background information.

Photo: Annelore Bensink