Read With Me : How Emotions Are Made -

This year, we’ve started a series called ‘Read With Me’ we’re sharing all most of what we’ve read this year in hopes you’ll follow suit and dust off that book you’ve been meaning to devour! Here are all the previous Read With Me posts.

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett took me several months to finish maybe closer to a year. This book is written for the layperson, but it is packed full of emerging neuroscience as well as past theories and research about emotion. In short, it’s a lot. Much of the information was new to me, which also meant I had to do a lot of highlighting (320 highlights to be exact!) and rereading as well as jumping back and forth when certain terms or studies were referenced again later. I read a few books at a time so I can chose depending on my mood and I had to bypass How Emotions Are Made before bed because I so badly wanted to read and understand each sentence.

I loved reading How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. It was challenging, informative, and thought provoking. I actually exclaimed with sadness when I got to the end of the book. I didn’t realize it was over because there are hundreds of pages of footnotes and sources. I was reading it on Kindle so I thought I still had 30% of the book left! You know it’s a good one when you’re upset that it’s over.

You’ll Enjoy How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain if:

You have an interest in psychology.
You have an interest in neuroscience.
You have a desire to learn about emotions.
You want to understand yourself and others better.
You are a counselor or therapist.
You manage group dynamics.
You’re an adventure guide. (Hay! That’s me!)

Why We Should Read More Often :

Expands your vocabulary and improves your writing

So. many. new. words. Medical terminology is like Greek to me, well, I guess it actually is Greek and Latin-based, which made reading this book a more attentive act than say reading Calypso by David Sedaris.

Improves your understanding of the world

While I could read this book another couple of times, after just one pass, I feel I’m better able to not only understand, but inform others on this emerging theory of the neuroscience of emotion. I’m also able to take this information and allow it to aid myself when I’m dealing with something very emotional or stressful. Reading this book feels almost like I took a course or therapy session in understanding emotion. It’s refreshing.

Prepares you to take action and create change

As a meditator and instructor, I’m able to slip these little nuggets of knowledge into my classes each week. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain is basically a toolkit for understanding the root causes of your own and others emotions. I made 320 highlights in the book, the most highlights, 75 to be exact, were made in the chapter ‘Mastering Your Emotions’ if I can teach even seven and a half people how to master their emotions, I’ve done my job.

Boosts your imagination and creativity and improves brain function

I had to commit my full attention to this book otherwise I found myself re-reading the same page several times. I highlighted, I made notes, I re-read, I referenced, yep, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain definitely increased my brain function, not sure about improving it 😉

A few passages + bits from How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain :

“In short, we find that your emotions are not built-in but made from more basic parts. They are not universal but vary from culture to culture. They are not triggered; you create them. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a flexible brain that wires itself to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing, which provide that environment. Emotions are real, but not in the objective sense that molecules or neurons are real. They are real in the same sense that money is real—that is, hardly an illusion, but a product of human agreement.”

“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.”

“Each of us understands the world in a way that is useful but not necessarily true in some absolute, objective sense. Where emotion is concerned, social construction theories ask how feelings and perceptions are influenced by our social roles or beliefs.”

“Your experience right now was predicted by your brain a moment ago. Prediction is such a fundamental activity of the human brain that some scientists consider it the brain’s primary mode of operation.”

“We humans are architects of our own experiences. We do not passively detect physical changes in the world. We actively participate in constructing our experiences even though we are mostly unaware of that fact.”

“Whether you cultivate awe, meditate, or find other ways to deconstruct your experience into physical sensations, recategorization is a critical tool for mastering your emotions in the moment. When you feel bad, treat yourself like you have a virus, rather than assuming that your unpleasant feelings mean something personal. Your feelings might just be noise. You might just need some sleep.”

Books I’m (kinda) reading now :

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff