The Emotional Revolution:

Harnessing Power Of Your Emotions For A More Positive Life

Norman E. Rosenthal

• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780806536620
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Miglioramento personale

Feel Better...Live Better Scientific discoveries are unlocking the mysteries of our emotional lives. Every week brings us new information on the environmental, hormonal, genetic, and chemical factors that affect our feelings, and an ever-expanding repertoire of methods to manage specific emotional conditions. But how can we apply this cutting-edge research to our own lives? In The Emotional Revolution, Norman E. Rosenthal, psychiatrist, researcher, and specialist in the fields of psychopharmacology and psychobiology, offers a comprehensive guide to these exciting breakthroughs. He explores the latest findings about the body mechanisms that create emotions--and why our feelings can sometimes go out of control. He also offers simple self-help strategies and evaluates dozens of the newest treatments--both traditional and alternative--that can help with everything from depression and addiction to anxiety and excessive anger. Here is fascinating, up-to-the-minute information you won't find in any other single resource, including: •Clues to the biological basis of monogamy
•A new link between depression and heart disease, and what this means for the treatment of both conditions
•How simple patterns of eye movements can help alleviate painful memories
•How taking a commonly-used blood pressure medication can help you cope with trauma
•How lying in the dark releases a hormone that can alleviate anxiety and craving
•The surprising health benefits of friendship and religion
•The deadly dangers of anger
•The health-promoting powers of love The first book to combine scientific research with prescriptive guidelines for the general reader, The Emotional Revolution is your guide to understanding the complexities of human feelings--and improving your life. "A well-researched, clearly-written, and absorbing book. Highly recommended for anyone who's ever seen a psychiatrist--or who hasn't!" --Dean Hamer, Ph.D., author of The Science of Desire Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University. A practicing psychiatrist, Dr. Rosenthal has been listed in The Best Doctors in the U.S. For twenty years, he was a senior researcher in psychiatry and psychobiology at the National Institute of Mental Health. He has appeared on 20/20, CNN, National Public Radio, The Today Show, CBS Morning News, and Good Morning, America. Dr. Rosenthal lives and practices in Rockville, Maryland. Visit his Web site at www.normanrosenthal.com.

PART ONE

REVOLUTION

Chapter 1

Welcome to the Emotional Revolution

Most scientists believe that the brain will be to the twenty-first century what the genome was to the twentieth century.

—Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, 2000¹

WHEN Joseph LeDoux, a prominent emotions researcher, first applied to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a few decades ago for a grant to study fear in rats, his application was rejected outright. In those days cognition was king. The burning question for neuroscientists was “How do we think?” not “How do we feel?” The research climate has changed dramatically since then. A recent computer search revealed more than 5,000 citations involving emotion published during the preceding five-year period.²

But a scientific revolution requires more than merely large numbers of scientists at work in an area. Instead, according to Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it requires a shift in paradigm.³

In the first part of this book, “Revolution,” I devote a chapter to each of the radically new ways that scientists are thinking about emotions, which collectively compose the Emotional Revolution:

1. Emotions are critical survival mechanisms that have evolved over millennia.

No longer content to regard feelings as soft and mushy concepts, scientists are beginning to view emotions in evolutionary terms, as Darwin did. Those animals with properly functioning emotions are more likely to survive and succeed in passing on their genes. Fear protects us from danger. A rat will not play in the vicinity of cat hairs, but is unaffected by hairs from a dog, which is not one of it’s natural predators. Anger helps protect our turf. A dog that barks at a stranger who ventures into his yard will be indifferent to the stranger’s interest in a yard three houses farther down the road. Love helps us bond and procreate. A male prairie vole, a type of small ground-dwelling rodent found in the United States, spends a great deal of his time alongside his mate and makes aggressive moves toward other males who venture too close to her. Sadness is a natural response to loss, helping us conserve our resources as we adjust to new realities. And happiness signals that we are in an environment where it is safe to play and explore opportunities. Emotions provide us with a special kind of intelligence and are important for proper decision making. This point of view contrasts sharply with traditional Western philosophy, which generally favors reason above emotion.

2. Emotions are processed in the brain by specialized circuits that are geared to anticipate, evaluate, and respond to reward and punishment—but the rest of the body is very much involved too.

When we impulsively hug someone, jump for joy, or stiffen in offense, we are experiencing emotions in our bodies, with which our brains are in intimate and continual connection. In the early part of the twentieth century, emotions were thought by many to be experienced in the body only, whereas later in the century they were thought to take place mostly in the brain. Today’s new and far more detailed understanding of the balance and interplay between body and brain in the experience of emotions represents a major scientific shift. In their exploration of the basis of emotions, scientists are looking at everything from the genes and single nerve cells to the whole organism.

3. The relationship between emotions and memory is now understood in considerable detail.

Separate types of memory, mediated by different parts of the brain, have been discovered. One memory system seems to record facts and events, while another records emotional experiences. Given this separation, it is no wonder that emotional reactions to situations may arise without being clearly linked to any conscious memories. For example, a person may feel queasy and scared at the smell of a surgical disinfectant without remembering that it was the disinfectant used to treat a wound he sustained as a child many years before. We now have a scientific basis for understanding unconscious emotions.

4. While intelligence has traditionally been considered a purely intellectual function, the concept of emotional intelligence is gaining ground. In both personal and professional life, we now know, success depends to some extent on understanding your own emotions and those of others, coupled with the ability to communicate, modulate, and channel these emotions.

5. Emotions profoundly affect physical health, even making the difference between life and death.

The so-called psychosomatic effect has mainly been regarded as a problem. Only recently have scientists really attempted to understand this powerful influence and understand what feelings can and cannot do to make us healthier or less healthy, to promote recovery or induce death.

Taken together, these new approaches constitute nothing less than a radical revision, not only of the role emotions are believed to play in our lives, but of the role it is believed they ought to play.

Many of these new insights would not have been possible without the discoveries of neuroscientists such as those awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000.⁴ One of the winners, Arvid Carlsson, discovered years ago that the substance dopamine is a chemical messenger that helps to pass nerve signals from one neuron to another. Dopamine helps regulate many brain functions, including the experience of pleasure. A second winner, Paul Greengard, helped figure out how nerve signals are passed along at synapses. A third, Eric Kandel, helped work out how nerve cells learn and record memories. (For a more detailed discussion of how the brain works, see chapter 3.)

Groundbreaking research has also been done by many other scientists whose work I discuss in this book. New discoveries and advances can be expected to proliferate at a dizzying pace, given the marvels of modern technology. Thanks to machinery of ever-increasing power and sophistication, it is now possible to see the regions of the brain that light up when people feel happy or sad, loving or hateful. The human genome, the basic human set of chromosomes, can now be unspooled to reveal which coding variations make people vulnerable to the painful experiences of anxiety and depression. Just as the Renaissance sea voyages of discovery would have been impossible without the sextant, the mariner’s compass, and the clock, so the Emotional Revolution depends on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), gene technology, and other technological discoveries. But it is the fundamental shift in perception among scientists, the view that emotions are vitally important and worth studying, that is driving the revolution as much as any technological breakthrough.

Another insight that has been key is the general recognition that animals other than humans also experience emotions. There are millions of pet lovers in the United States who can readily tell when their cat or dog is happy or sad. When a dog wants to play with his master, he may lean forward, tail wagging, ears pricked up, eyes shining with hopeful anticipation. When feeling affectionate, he may roll on his back, asking to be scratched. When angry, he may spread his ears, bare his teeth, and crouch, ready to attack.⁵

Evidence of emotions can be found in every mammal studied. After her calf died, one mother elephant stood beside its lifeless body for days before moving on. Over a year later, when she passed the same spot, photographers filmed her fondling the bones of her deceased calf with her trunk. For a long period she probed the contours and crevices of the skull, like a human mother might gaze at photographs, trying to recapture every memory of her lost baby. A continent away, off the coast of Argentina, two right whales were observed mating and, afterward, lingering and caressing each other with their flippers before they swam off.

While elephants and whales do not lend themselves to being studied in the laboratory, other animals do. Scientists have learned a good deal by studying fear in rats, rage in cats, monogamy in voles, and separation anxiety in monkeys. It is never possible to know exactly what an animal is feeling, since animals cannot talk, yet scientists increasingly accept that the emotional states of animals bear an important resemblance to those of humans. Scientists are careful, however, to distinguish between emotions, states that can be observed by outsiders, and feelings, internal states known only to the individual experiencing them. Emotions can therefore be studied in animals, whereas feelings can be studied only in humans. Of course, in most cases these two concepts overlap. A happy person will generally look happy. In this book I use the terms “feeling” and “emotion” interchangeably.

Although the emotions have evolved to protect us and advance our interests, like all brain functions they do not always work as they should. Animals (humans included) whose emotions do not work properly are at a distinct disadvantage, for the world harbors threat and menace side by side with opportunity and challenge. The inability to fear can result in death; the inability to love, in failure to pass on your genes.

Problems of a different type occur when emotions are experienced to excess, resulting in some of the worst suffering imaginable. Acute anxiety can leave a person unable to sleep or act, and depression can be so unendurable that it may lead to suicide. Unfortunately, millions of Americans suffer from such emotional difficulties. For them in particular, it is good news that the emotions have entered the research spotlight.

In the second part of this book, “Feelings,” I discuss the five sets of emotions that have been studied most extensively. The first pair of emotions, fear and anxiety, as well as the second pair, anger and rage, typically arise in response to threats. The next two sets relate to the bonds between people. Love and lust arise when bonds occur, whereas sadness and depression accompany their dissolution. I close this section with an emotion that is universally desired—happiness. In each of these chapters I discuss the emotion as it has evolved to promote survival—the healthy form. I also describe the problems that result when the emotion goes awry.

One prevailing myth about emotions is that there is nothing we can do about them. While we may take some responsibility for our thoughts and ideas, we tend to consider emotions as states of mind that arise willy-nilly. According to this view, we are like tiny boats on a vast and rocky sea of emotions, buffeted helplessly about. Fortunately this is far from the truth. The more we learn about emotions, the more we see how much we can do to treat troublesome emotions and develop healthy ones.

Throughout this book I will point out how you can already use the discoveries from the new science of feelings to improve your life. In each chapter on specific emotions, I discuss ways to lessen painful feelings and enhance pleasurable ones. Given the pain of depression and the many ways in which it can be alleviated, I devote an entire chapter to strategies for treating it.

In the last section, “Change,” I discuss general principles for changing the way we feel, and outline scientifically and clinically validated strategies for leading a more fulfilling life.

Without further ado, welcome to The Emotional Revolution.

Chapter 2

The Intelligence of Emotions

The heart has a reason that reason cannot know.

—Blaise Pascal, Pensées¹

When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly.

—Mary Wollstonecraft²

ALTHOUGH they came from different cultures and different eras, French mathematician Blaise Pascal and pioneering British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft both recognized that feelings are intelligent. For Wollstonecraft, deep feeling constituted a profound type of reasoning. For Pascal, feelings were reasons of the heart that could not be fathomed by the force of intellect. In this regard, he was only partly correct.

Science has now shown that certain parts of our brain specialize in processing emotional information; these parts are somewhat distinct from those responsible for intellect. Further, the different regions may not always work in concert; we may experience feelings and not understand why. Even feelings that drive our actions may never surface into awareness. Pascal anticipated both Freud and those modern neuroscientists who have demonstrated the existence of unconscious feelings. But Pascal underestimated the power of the human intellect to comprehend mysterious and elusive things, feelings included. Now that thousands of scientists are focusing their intellect on the mysteries of emotion, reason is finally starting to comprehend the reasons of the heart.

Some feelings are instinctive, so obviously important to survival that their selection in the course of evolution is easy to fathom. When a creature is threatened by a deadly foe, fear-driven actions occur by reflex. We act without input from the intellect, even when we know intellectually that we are safe. Charles Darwin provided the following example of a reflex emotion during a trip to the zoo:

I put my face close to the thick glass-plate in front of a puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck at me; but, as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger that had never been experienced.³

Fearing snakes appears to be hardwired in humans and other animals, existing independent of prior exposure.⁴ Even though such reflex emotional responses are obviously critically important to survival, one would be hard put to elevate them to the level of profound reasoning. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has shown that reflex fearful responses can occur without involvement of the cerebral cortex, where higher reasoning occurs.⁵

In contrast to these reflex emotions are other, more complicated feelings that can probably be experienced only by complex organisms such as hum...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• PART ONE - REVOLUTION
• PART TWO - FEELINGS
• PART THREE - CHANGE
• Conclusion
• Further Reading
• Websites
• Appendix A
• Appendix B - A Guide to Evaluating Where You Fit on the Depressive Spectrum
• Appendix C - Daily Mood Log
• Notes
• Copyright Page