Transcription
If you look at an evolutionary point of view, why do we have emotions? Okay, so what's the function of them?
Okay, the first function of emotions is that they motivate behaviors needed to solve common problems in evolution. Essentially, that's what it is. So, they motivate the behavior. Okay.
Second, emotions communicate. They communicate to others. Okay?
And the third thing they do is they communicate to yourself, which they say to you, check this out. In a sense, they're a rapid fire system. So, for example, if you have something dangerous coming towards you. If you have to sit around and analyze whether that's danger, what should I do in danger? Should I run or should I not? Should I hide or should I not? By that time, you're dead.
Or think the tsunamis that came when the ocean came up and you see your children down there and you know right away you're motivated highly to get those kids off out of there so they live. However, you go down and you say, "Okay, children, I think we should run." Okay, that's not communicating an emotion and you're unlikely to get them to run. What gets them to run is when you say, "Run." So, it it's an automatic communication system.
And then the other is, you know, parents have this all the time. They look in a room with their kids and they start thinking, "Okay, something's going on here. I don't know what it is, but something." And they start checking everything out. So, emotions do that for you.
So, this gives you a lot of information though about why it could be so hard to regulate emotions. If you've got an emotion that when you go to communicate it, no one listens to you or you get invalidated, you have to ask yourself, what would you do? What you do if you think it's important is you escalate. But the other person, if they don't agree with you, when you escalate, what they do is they also escalate their invalidation. So you end up in these situations where emotions start going up mainly because they're not getting validated. Parents always think if I validate it you'll go up. I'm reinforcing you. But it's exactly the opposite. If you validate they go down and they go down because of this evolutionary function of emotions.