We have five physical senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We form relationships with what our senses detect. For example, when you hear something, you focus on the sound. You are in relationship with that sound. The cortex of our brains is designed to recognize patterns. Therefore, if you recognized the sound you hear (are able to associate it with previous experience, and linked with an identifier such as the name of an object, animal, musical composition, composer, face, etc.), then the depth of the relationship or association is richer and more meaningful.
Remember Pavlov and his dog? What is called classical conditioning is what I call a study in relationships. In summary, a bell was rung and the dog did not salivate. The dog was given food and the dog salivated. A bell was rung when the dog was given food and the dog salivated. Eventually, the bell was rung and no food was given, and the dog salivated. The dog was “conditioned” to relate with or associate the bell with food, and therefore when the dog heard the sound of the bell, the dog associated the bell with food and salivated. This is a relationship dynamic.
Over time, however, if the bell was rung too many times without food, the association of the sound of the bell with food was extinguished, and the dog did not salivate to the sound of the bell anymore. Therefore, the relationship with the sound of the bell and food was broken.
Memories are like that. We may hear a song on the radio, and it brings to mind an event, possibly from years ago. And we can picture the scene, hear the sounds, and smell the smells in our memories. This also is a consequence of our brains functioning in pattern recognition.
I suggest there is another sensory organ, which does not detect a physical sense, but rather detects a social (or “spiritual”) dynamic. This sensory organ is none other than our emotions. If a person acts in what you determine is a socially acceptable manner, then you will detect the dynamic of advocacy with a positive emotion. On the other hand, if a person acts in what you determine is a socially unacceptable manner, then you will detect the adversarial dynamic with a negative emotion. The socially relevant situations our emotions detect ,negative and positive, are what I call “potatoes.”
So in the same way we form relationships with what our eyes and ears detect, we form relationships and associations with what our emotions detect. Much of the difficulty we come across when our emotions are detecting social dynamics is that our brains are highly developed to relate with the physical world. Our brains also relate with the spiritual (social) world, but we tend to form our primary relationship with the physical world ahead of the social world.
When our emotions detect a potato, we may relate our emotion with what we see, in the same way that Pavlov’s dog related the sound of a bell with the anticipation of food. What we see and relate with when we are upset is the person who is responsible for the adversarial dynamic (e.g. lying). The result is misaligned association of a social sense to a physical dynamic; this relationship is what the destructive mindset is. An example is negative self-talk: saying to yourself “You idiot!” when you did something wrong and felt frustrated. You are basically associating the potato with yourself as a person and relating with yourself as if you are a potato, just like the dog related the sound of the bell with food. Unfortunately, your brain may learn this association and it may become your “go-to” (automatic response) when you are upset.
On the other hand, when we relate our emotions primarily to the social dynamic they are detecting, and then relate secondarily with the person responsible for the potato (in the context of the adversarial dynamic), then we are aligning a social sense with a social dynamic. We become free to relate with the person responsible within the constructive mindset. For example, your self-talk when you did something wrong and feel frustrated about it could be: “Not again! How did that happen? I’m okay. What can I learn about this situation?” You are free to relate with yourself as a person, who is passionate and learning about the physical and social world in which we live. Our emotions detect potatoes (social dynamics). You may be responsible for potatoes, but you are not a potato! Re-train your brain. Learn to associate the potatoes your emotions detect in the constructive way.