Inner Voice — THE EDGE

This article is part of our Spring 2022 print issue. See the full, digital version of the issue here.

Many of us have been driven by our emotions at some point in our lives. This is a normal facet of the human experience. We are sentient beings with big, complicated brains that allow us to assess and react to our surroundings and circumstances. Our emotions are such an intrinsic aspect of our everyday lives that we often fail to acknowledge the power they can hold over us.

Thanks to the work of the late Dr. David Hawkins, we now understand the impact our emotions have on our physical and mental health. Dr. Hawkins was a celebrated psychologist, physician and spiritual teacher who is remembered for his Map of Consciousness as well as his bestselling novel, Power vs. Force. Hawkins’ groundbreaking research found that our emotions have measurable energy. It’s this emotional energy that causes the physiological sensations we often feel when an extreme emotional state has been triggered. Have you ever felt such an intense joy that you feel you could float? Or have you ever been so grief-stricken that your entire body aches?

These palpable physical sensations are the result of emotional energy passing through your body. According to Dr. Hawkins' Map of Consciousness, each of us has a log level that determines the measurable energy level within our magnetic field. Our individual log level rises when we feel positive, high-energy emotions and falls when we feel negative, low-energy emotions. Hawkins’ logarithmic scale ranges between 1-1000 and is split into seventeen different energy levels which are labeled according to the emotions they represent.

Not only do our emotions have measurable energy, but they are also capable of promoting cell growth as well as cell death. Higher log levels associated with positive emotions, such as joy and peace, have been found to promote cell growth. Conversely, negative, low-log emotions such as anger and fear actually kill our cells.

When we suppress these negative emotions or react to them in unhealthy ways, we risk negatively impacting our mental health, physical health and general well-being at a cellular level. Additionally, our emotions are directly responsible for how we decide to show up in the world. Seventy percent of our body’s total energy stores are emotional, not physical. By giving in to the negative thought patterns that result in low-energy emotions, we are depriving our bodies and minds of the energy we need to flourish.

Emotional regulation can be a tricky task. Many go their entire lives without realizing that emotional regulation is possible. The first step to regulating our emotional state is understanding the connection between our emotions and thoughts. Human beings have two central thinking systems that are used to process and categorize information—controlled and automatic. Controlled thinking occurs when we are consciously contemplating a situation or concept, such as when we study for an exam. On the other hand, automatic thinking occurs subconsciously, as our inner monologue is constantly assessing our external surroundings. It’s this automatic processing system that is directly responsible for our feelings and emotions. Our brains create and sift through tens of thousands of ideas, memories and concepts in a given day. The automatic processing system allows us to subconsciously filter out unimportant information and focus on what is deemed important. Our brains identify what details are important according to our life experiences. The details that have historically been important in the past will likely be focused on again and again. Internalized fears, hopes and beliefs also influence what details our brains may decide to focus on. Once our brains have decided what details are important, they will assign a meaning to these specific details, which results in our opinions and feelings on things.

While the automatic processing system allows us to navigate our lives with relative ease, it does not always work in our favor. We sometimes fall into negative thought patterns, which cause our brains to focus on less relevant pieces of information. When this happens, our brains assign meaning to a detail that is not grounded in the facts of our reality. This is referred to as negative filtering. For example, say you are invited to a dinner party, but you aren’t the biggest fan of some of the people who will be attending. You may mull over the prospect of going several times, but you’ll keep coming up with more and more reasons for why you would be miserable. You won’t have anyone to talk to, the food will probably be gross, you’ll get home too late—the list goes on and on. These negative assumptions trigger equally negative emotions that seem to reaffirm any beliefs you’ve established about the situation. Say you do end up deciding to go. You have already assigned so much dread and displeasure to the evening that you will continue looking for evidence that reinforces your preconceived beliefs. By spiraling into negative thought patterns and negative emotions, you are showing up with low energy and will likely not enjoy the night. If your brain had instead assigned more optimistic meanings to the dinner party, you would’ve shown up with positive emotions and a higher energy level, and you would be much more likely to have a great evening out with friends.

Learning how to process these negative emotions in a productive way helps us escape the spiraling thought patterns that tax our mental health and exacerbate issues such as anxiety. The first step in this process is allowing yourself to feel the unwanted emotion without judgment or fear. Facing the emotion head-on rather than suppressing it will allow you to begin processing the emotion both mentally and physically.

Next, it is helpful to try identifying the thoughts that contributed to the unwanted feelings. The act of identifying your thoughts as thoughts, rather than objective truths, is known as metacognition. This allows you to put the situation in perspective and identify the extreme and potentially baseless beliefs that are creating your negative mood. By adopting metacognition practices such as journaling and meditation, we are able to distance ourselves from involuntary thoughts and beliefs. After we recognize and analyze the automatic thoughts that contribute to negative feelings, we are able to consciously assign more positive meanings to the situation. This process of actively assigning positive meanings to difficult situations makes it easier to identify the lessons and silver linings that are inherent in every life experience.

Our thoughts create our perception of reality. As a result, we are actively creating our own version of the truth. By harnessing the power of our thoughts through metacognition practices, we are developing the ability to maintain a more positive worldview. Actively seeking out positive meanings and beliefs also provides an opportunity for unprecedented personal growth. You can use these practices to improve your mood, build confidence, alleviate anxiety and so much more.

We are the authors of our own stories. You can choose to focus your thoughts on whatever you so desire, so why not try and focus on the positives? It’s not always easy to break out of the long-held convictions and thought patterns that have constructed your sense of self and worldview. The good news is you quite literally have nothing to lose by trying.

Let us end with a bit of advice from Gandhi himself: “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he is.”