LIFE

5 ways to grow emotional I.Q.

Lu Hanessian

If I could choose one theme to write about for the rest of time and still not scratch the surface, it would be this one.

Emotions.

That's the subject of the new Pixar film "Inside Out,'' which I saw last night with my teenage sons. We all thought it was brilliant, but not simply for the usual Hollywood special touches.

It wasn't the animation that resonated with us. It was the poignant truth told in a story of what goes on in the mind of an 11-year-old girl Riley who, until uprooted from her hometown in Minnesota to San Francisco, was a "happy girl."

The emotional inner turmoil that ensues takes place in her mind with Fear, Sadness, Anger, Disgust vying for control when Joy loses her grip.

Pete Docter, director, screenplay co-writer — and father — wanted to explore what happens at the intersection of joy and all the emotions that can wrest joy's fingers from the control panel and take over in difficult times.

He told the story about a girl at the precipice of adolescence, but the story is universally human.

We are all born for connection and relationship. Inside those connections, we make meaning together. Those meaningful experiences not only inform our inner world as we grow and evolve, they color our lives with infinite nuances and create an unspoken scaffolding that remind us that life is worth living — with others.

Disney-PixarThe character Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, appears in a scene from Disney-Pixar’s “Inside Out.” In this image released by Disney-Pixar, the character Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, appears in a scene from "Inside Out." (Disney-Pixar via AP)

Heart of Being Human

Emotions are the heart of what makes us human.

The holding space of trust, empathy and longing.

As well as the netherworld of our broken places.

They drive our response to the world. Our waking up to possibility and our urgent calls to action. They can also signal our retreat from the world.

Our self-guarding from the pain of rejection and failure, urging us to dig the moat we build around us.

But emotions are not just the gateway to the world outside us.

They begin within, in the limbic area of our brain, a complex constellation of cells and circuits that makes the galaxies pale. Emotions are the unseen building blocks of well-being, the foundation of our most significant relationships, built and organized through them from the earliest moments in our lives.

When relationships are safe havens in which we feel soothed, seen and secure from infancy through childhood, the brain is organized such that a full range of emotions will be expressed as a way of growing, thriving and deepening healthy connection.

But what happens if we are in an environment in which feelings are taboo? Where sadness is seen as a threat to joy? Where nobody talks about how they feel or anger is rampant or where everyone's affect is flat? Where we are advised to close the cauldron lid and let the pressure build?

Emotions adapt accordingly.

When we are not accustomed to feeling the full range of our emotions, we learn to suppress our natural exuberance, spontaneity, enthusiasm, curiosity and wonder. That's when emotions get stuck and create roadblocks like immobilization and rumination, an abyss for regrets and disappointments too painful to feel.

All experiences have emotional resonance of some kind. As we grow, the way we process those experiences are organized into memories, some of which we will never recall. When experiences are frightening or painful and we don't have an opportunity to process them with someone in a compassionate and safe way, those frightful feelings get stuck, jammed up in our brain's memory bank and our bodies. We seize those moments because they seize us.

Affects and emotions

In the last several years, researchers in emotion psychology, trauma and healing have made remarkably hopeful discoveries.

Our capacity to flourish is based on our capacity to cultivate positive emotions, understand and work with our painful emotions, and learn how to "struggle well," as the late positive psychology author and professor Chris Petersen said.

Barbara Frederickson says positive emotions are like micro-nutrients.

"They are like tune-ups for the heart," says the author of "Positivity'' and "Love 2.0,'' a positive emotion researcher and director of the PEP Lab at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The late psychologist and pioneer in affective sciences, Silvan Tomkins, devoted his career to exploring and defining affects and emotions, and suggested that we all have nine fundamental, biologically based affects present at birth:

•Interest/excitement: "the pull toward mastery"

•Enjoyment/joy: "the social bond"

•Surprise/startle: "the reset button"

•Distress/anguish: "the cry for help"

•Disgust/revulsion/contempt: "the need to expel"

•Anger/rage: "the demand to fix it"

•Fear/terror: "the signal to flee or freeze"

•Shame/humiliation: "the self-protection signal"

It's not that feelings are inherently good or bad. It's that emotions and how we respond to them have real positive and negative effects on our bodies, brains, relationships and health. We are wired for fear, but that doesn't mean we must live with it as a way of being. While we live in an age of anxiety and stress, it is not only possible to grow our joy, awe, gratitude, sense of belonging and purpose, but absolutely necessary for us to thrive.

So, how can we become more emotionally aware, grow our emotional intelligence or E.Q., and create more emotional resilience in our lives and relationships?

How can we snare the good stuff?

S.N.A.R.E. stands for:

1. Sense it: When you can sense feelings within you, you can recognize how they show up in your body. Joy can feel like a tingling, an expansiveness in your chest, a light-heartedness, clarity of thought, and increased physical energy. When we practice sensing, we naturally move ourselves out of the practice of reacting. Sensing is an important practice for us in our modern age of distraction and anxiety as we find ourselves disconnected from what we feel and need. If you can sense it, you can feel it.

But we can't get to joy without our other emotions. Fear helps us identify and understand our needs. Anger almost always signals an unmet need, and, as a secondary emotion, covers our more vulnerable feelings like sadness. Once we sense those and unearth them, the next step is to …

2. Name it: Siegel has coined a helpful phrase for supporting ourselves and others in distress: "Name it to tame it." Research on the brain has revealed that when we can notice, identify and name how we feel in the moment, our brains are quicker to recover from stress. We bounce back faster than if we can't name our feeling or don't know we feel anything at all.

At a recent workshop presentation to an auditorium of juniors and seniors from high schools across South Jersey, I had a chance to work with and hear directly from a group of bright and enthusiastic teens. When we tried to name the feeling associated with an adversity, many had to pause and reflect. Emotions are a language. When we practice speaking in terms of feeling, we not only build EQ, but we feel good, too.

3. Appraise: Appraisal is a built-in brain mechanism of our limbic system. Along with emotion, motivation, attachment, memory, appraisal is our ability to size things, options, people — and our body's responses — up. Choice and action require appraisal. Before we trust, our limbic brain appraises the situation, the people and what our gut is telling us. We reduce our capacity for it if we practice reactivity or avoidance. Emotions and appraisal share the same real estate in our brain for a good reason: they are connected to memory and our earliest attachments. All of this creates our drive, what motivates us to approach or retreat, to take the new job or start a business or put it off, to say yes or no according to the complex system of how we assess what's meaningful, if it's meaningful at all, and what to feel — and do—about it.

Provided/Pixar Anger (voice of Lewis Black) loses his cool in “Inside Out.” INSIDE OUT â?? Pictured: Anger. ©2015 Disneyâ?¢Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

4. Reframe: In the Pixar film "Inside Out,'' Riley, the 11-year-old main character, struggles to feel happy in her new city and home, away from friends and her hockey team. When we sees through the lens of anger, fear and disgust, she can't access any positive emotions. When anger takes over the control panels, Riley's face changes expression to reflect that, and the images she plays in her mind reflect the same. She sees her life and parents through an angry frame. The moment she changes her affect, she increases her capacity to re-frame.

As Cherry Hill high school student Brian Aylesworth says, "I liked how all the characters worked together to solve the problem she was having. It was a great message about how not allowing ourselves to feel certain feelings can lead us further away from who we are."

5. Engage: When we do, at times, drift away from who we are, where is the road map home? Our human need and goal is to engage with others from a place of connection within ourselves. Suppressing our emotions, like sadness and fear, requires enormous energy to manage and inhibit our body's response. Sensing, naming, appraising, and re-framing make way for engagement, not just so we can access our own emotional inner life and well-being, but because it's the key to authentic, abiding relationship with others.

Cherry Hill resident Debra Lyn says, "The times in my life when I have felt the best, the most powerful and productive, the most connected, is when I'm fully engaged. And I know I can't get there if I stuff my feelings and ignore all the things my emotions are telling me from the inside out.

"Sometimes, the fastest way back to joy, for me, is through embracing my fear and owning my sad feelings and disappointment … so I can move forward."