The tug of war happening on your face everyday

Did you know that during every day of the year, there is a tug of war happening on your face for all to see?

Who are the two different sides in this tug of war?

There is side A - the unconscious, involuntary, automatic side.

And then there is side B - the consciously controlled, culturally and situationally aware side.

To understand why this tug of war takes place, we need to more deeply understand emotions. After all, if you were to take a moment to pause and try and define an emotion for yourself, how would you define it?

One textbook definition understands the concept of emotion to be "a process that involves a series of triggering conditions (relevant stimuli), the existence of subjective experiences or feelings (subjective interpretation), different levels of cognitive processing (evaluative processes), physiological changes (activation), expressive and communication patterns (emotional expression), which has motivational effects and a purpose - adaptation to a continuously changing environment. (Fernandez-Abascal 2004).

We can see from this one definition that the concept of emotion includes many different facets. There are also other authors who believe that it's not even possible to specifically define an emotion, only to identify the different characteristics that compose an emotion.

Another author, David Matsumoto, describes emotions as being triggered by "survival relevant information, meaningful to us, that may require an immediate response".

Regardless of how we define an emotion, the one thing we can know is that emotions are triggered by "meaningful and survival relevant information".

We also know this happens at a below conscious level.

And so in many cases, emotions happen to us.

Once we become aware of them, we can then modify them - creating the tug of war. But how?

When we look inside the nervous system, there are two different tracts that transmit information regarding emotional expression. One of these tracts is called the Extrapyramidal tract. The other is the Pyramidal tract.

The former contains information that is involuntary, automatic and unconscious, leading to emotional expression outside of our conscious control. The latter involves the conscious awareness of our emotional expressions and our ability to modify those expressions.

Modification may take the form of inhibiting them (not showing any emotion at all), masking (often the smile is the most common way of hiding our real feelings) or simulating other unfelt emotions, turning it into a blended expression.

These are often heavily influenced by the culture in which we live. Paul Ekman referred to many of these as 'display rules'.

Display rules can occur at the wider cultural level. For example, in some Eastern countries and cultures, it is inappropriate to show certain emotions whereas in the West, these same emotions are more readily accepted in public.

Then there are personal display rules. These are the specific rules that each of us learns as being part of our household when we grow up. If you were ever told things like:

"Show some appreciation"

or

"Take that look off your face"

These are elements of the training we receive in terms of our individual display rules.

So we have these two different tracts, which transmit different types of information.

One involuntary one voluntary.

The more fascinating component is that both of these tracts lead to the expression of emotion via the same Facial Cranial Nerve.

Because both of these tracts communicate via emotional expression through the Facial Nerve, when there is competing information, for example, an involuntary emotion is initiated because of a fear triggered in your environment. But then the individual display rules then tries to counter or modify that in order to hide it or mask it, these two competing tracts create a tug of war in terms of controlling the Facial Nerve.

This tug of war shows across your face.

That's why in certain times in places we're able to see subtle flickers of emotion that are then quickly wiped off and removed from the face.

And so why is this important on a day to day basis?

Well, emotions via the involuntary tract are triggered at a below conscious, automatic level, whenever our nervous system perceives something that is meaningful to us and relevant to our survival.

Therefore, the more experiences we have had in our past that were painful and threatening or scary, the more of these survival related triggers we have stored subconsciously.

The more triggers we have stored subconsciously the more regularly these emotional expressions will be initiated and the more you will feel at the mercy of your emotions.

The wonderful part of this is that what our nervous system perceives as being a threat to our survival is, to some degree, negotiable.

There will be basics such as if there is an immediate, potential physical attack, for example, those are built in and hardwired into our system.

However, if you are finding the you're become emotionally overwhelmed on a regular basis, or anxiety spirals out of control, where you find yourself worrying and struggling to stop. All of these are indicators that there is survival relevant information being triggered at a below conscious level that doesn't need to be.

When we can help you update that information, the tug of war comes to a peaceful and amicable conclusion and your face shows it.

Until next time,

Danny