Emotions are reactions in your body. Instead of falling back on negative coping strategies for stress and conflict, learn to Locate, Describe, & Transform your emotions.
“Into the youth’s eyes there came a look that one can see in the orbs of a jaded horse. His neck was quivering with nervous weakness and the muscles of his arms felt numb and bloodless. His hands, too, seemed large and awkward as if he was wearing invisible mittens. And there was a great uncertainty about his knee joints…
He became like the man who lost his legs at the approach of the red and green monster.”
Negative Coping Strategies: You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Henry Fleming, the central character in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, was terrified. He and his fellow soldiers had just fought in their first battle, and the enemy had retreated. So why the terror now, when he felt only mild fear before the battle began?
Crane first describes Henry’s relief:
- “the supreme trial had been passed”
- “the red, formidable difficulties of war had been vanquished”
Riding the high, Henry “went into an ecstasy of self-satisfaction.”
But the enemy was returning.
Understanding now what battle truly felt like, Henry froze. And as he saw the “fleeting forms” of others in his regiment, his coping strategy was to run away:
Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap of his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. On his face was the horror of those things which he imagined.
But things were not all as they seemed. Most of Henry’s regiment did not run. And in standing their ground, they were victorious. Now feeling shame and humiliation, Henry was at a loss of what to do, or where to go, next.
As a coping strategy, running away only made Henry feel worse.
What Battles Do You Run From?
You may not be at war, but you are fighting your own battles (we will explore healthier metaphors in later articles). Everything from tiny, persistent stressors to life-altering conflict draws out a coping strategy from you:
- Do you have a “go-to” food, drink, or drug when you feel stressed?
- Do you over-exercise, or over-couch-potato?
- Do you explode, or go silent?
- Do you fight when you should stand down, or run when you should dive in?
Running comes in many forms, and you likely already know which form yours takes. Yes, there are times when it is healthiest to leave, but as with Henry, running away never makes you feel better.
LDT™- Locate, Describe, & Transform – offers you an alternative.
LDT™: Locate Your Embodied Emotions
In the LDT™ overview, you learned that emotions don’t happen to your body; they are reactions in your body.
As I highlight some research behind the Locate step of LDT™, the opening excerpt from The Red Badge of Courage presents a clear example to work with: Henry’s terror was visible in his eyes, neck, arms, hands, knee joints, and legs.
Research in biology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and conflict transformation all support LDT™. Yes, there are competing theories as to how emotions are embodied. And no, not everyone can agree on whether facial expressions for emotions are the same regardless of culture. But there has been longtime universal agreement that emotions are reactions in your body. They don’t cause the reaction. They are the reaction.
While I focus on the work of pioneers Paul Ekman (facial expressions) and Antonio Damasio (embodied emotions), you may be interested in any of the following books, including a few other early researchers:
- Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Biology. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. (1872)
- Paul Ekman, Psychology. Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication. (2007)
- Charles Darwin and Paul Ekman, Biology | Psychology. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Anniversary Edition. (2009)
- Paul Ekman, Psychology. Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review. (2015)
- Antonio Damasio, Neuroscience. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. (1999)
- Antonio Damasio, Neuroscience. The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. (2018)
- Antonio Damasio, Neuroscience. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. (2021)
- Joseph LeDoux, Neuroscience. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. (1996)
- Jesse Prinz, Philosophy. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotions. (2004)
It's Written All Over Your Face
Dr. Paul Ekman
Psychologist
Paul Ekman is a psychologist and pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions. His work might readily be summarized with the phrase it is written all over your face. In his earliest work, Dr. Ekman built on Charles Darwin’s work on universal expressions in humans and animals. He also looked for answers to explain Margaret Mead’s work on cultural differences.
In 1967, Dr Ekman went to New Guinea to study the facial expressions in a tribe who had no connection to the outside world. Through his research, he discovered that there were, indeed, universal expressions of emotion, just as Darwin had stated.
To date, researchers disagree on which emotions are universal, but Ekman narrowed the list to seven:
- anger
- disgust
- fear
- surprise
- happiness
- sadness
- contempt
In 1969, Dr. Ekman conducted a study on Japanese and American students to determine if, and how, culture played a role in the display of facial expressions.
- During the experiment, while looking at emotion-invoking images, all participants visually expressed their emotions when they were alone.
- However, when the instructor was in the room, the Japanese students masked their emotions.
Ekman had discovered a balance between Darwin’s universality approach, and Mead’s research on cultural specificity, noting:
But Dr. Ekman dug deeper. Calling them micro expressions, he detected that each of us has fleeting expressions we cannot control, and are often not even aware of, regardless of cultural display rules.
These expressions occur in less than ½ second, and can even be as brief as 1/25 of a second. Ekman states: “This involuntary leakage exposes a person’s true emotions.” It appears that, despite our best attempts, we cannot hide our emotions.
Emotions Are Your Body’s Reactions
Dr. Antonio Damasio
Neurobiologist
Antonio Damasio is a neurobiologist focused on the neural systems which underlie emotion, decision-making, memory, language, and consciousness. While working with people who had experienced brain trauma, Dr. Damasio discovered that all emotions begin at the base of the brain, in the hypothalamus, basal forebrain, or brainstem.
Some responses are quite visible, like those describing Henry in the opening quote. Others, such as hormone and peptide secretions and neurotransmitters, are hidden. He also found that different emotions are produced by different brain systems, and have distinct patterns. Damasio summarizes by saying:
Also of great interest is what Dr. Damasio calls background emotions. Background emotions are sensed without a single word being spoken. They are detected by subtle details of body posture; the speed and contour of movements; minimal changes in the amount and speed of eye movements; and a degree of contraction of facial muscles, just as we saw with Paul Ekman’s work.
According to Damasio, we might describe these background emotions as:
- tense
- edgy
- discouraged
- enthusiastic
- down
- cheerful
If you think you would make better decisions without the interference of emotions, Damasio notes otherwise:
Conflict Theorists: What's Your Story?
Storytelling is a widely supported tool within the field of conflict resolution. By telling your story, you can begin to transform your negative emotions and heal. Not all stories, however, are told verbally; our bodies also tell our stories:
- “Deep-rooted conflict is about interiority” (Vern Redekop)
- “Listen to people [talk] about conflicts they have experienced; they will often use words that reference the body” (Michelle LeBaron)
The “face embodies one’s emotions and one’s ethics” (Marc Gopin)
Give It A Try!
While it is good practice to find facts to support a process such as LDT™, from a practical perspective, you don’t need research to tell you what you already know. You may not speak as poetically as Stephen Crane (I certainly don’t!), but:
- When you read the opening description of the youth’s terror, you could turn Crane’s description of each body location into your own image.
- You could feel the youth’s fear in your own body.
Poetically or not, you reference your own body, naturally and frequently, when you have negative emotions. Body references differ according to culture, but below are a few common ones from my neck of the woods that you are likely familiar with if you are reading this article.
Fill in the blank with a body part that best locates an emotion:
- stuck your ____ out
- dip your ____ in
- put on a brave ____
- ____ed your way through
- ____strong
- ____jerk reaction
- ____ out of joint
- ____ glazed over
- broken-____ed
- lost your ____
Are your answers the same as mine?
1. neck 2. toe 3. face 4. elbow 5. head 6. knee 7. nose 8. eyes 9. heart 10. voice
Set Off By The Sound Of A Horn
Why is it so important to locate your emotions in your body?
Joseph LeDoux noted that the emotional systems of your body develop separately from your conscious memory system. This makes transforming negative emotions, or healing larger stresses or conflicts, more complicated because you do not always have conscious awareness of the roots of your negative emotions.
LeDoux gives the following example:
In a situation like this, you may find yourself in the throes of an emotional state that exists for reasons you do not quite understand… [While the] explicit memory system is notoriously forgetful and inaccurate, conditioned fear responses exhibit little diminution with the passage of time. In fact, they often increase in their potency as time wears on.
You can’t remember, but your conditioned fear or negative emotion associated with the experience becomes stronger as time passes.
Snake In The Grass
I have experienced this myself with garter snakes. Small. Harmless. And, for me, so terrifying that I would jump at the sight of a neon pink, plastic link snake that someone bought my daughter as a toy!
I could never understand my over-the-top reaction. I could remember holding garter snakes when I was a young child. Into my pre-teen years, I wouldn’t hold them, but I thought they were harmless, and certainly never startled or screamed.
I could have spent the rest of my years jumping and shouting if I focused on trying to remember what triggered my fear. Instead, I used LDT™ to gradually transform my embodied emotions and release my fear. I’m still not a fan, but I am no longer terrified or jumping out of my skin.
As an added unexpected bonus, with my negative emotions transformed, I remembered two incidents that set my fear in motion. Neither involved conflict behaviour on the part of a snake! Both involved stoked fears from others.
You Can Learn To Better Connect
As with my own use of LDT™, psychotherapist Mia Leijssen found that embodied healing processes can be beneficial for accessing these historic “stories” in our body. In fact, this is a well-documented psychotherapeutic approach:
Adding a caveat, Dr. Leijssen cautions that “some clients might need more guidance and practice to learn how to let a bodily felt sense come in relation to their life experience” (emphasis in original).
LDT™ offers you that guidance and opportunity to practice. And Locate is your starting place for eliminating negative coping strategies for stress or conflict.
