Tag

feelings

The brain and the heart

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[Written last week]

Today I was doing a lesson with one of my speech and language groups about nonverbal communication. We were identifying the “clues” that can help you figure out what a person might be thinking or feeling. We talked about what eyes can do (look up, look sideways, be open, squint), nose, mouth, and eyebrows. We talked about how hands can point and make gestures, how shoulders can shrug.

Then a student suggested, “What about your heart?” (In the Social Thinking curriculum that we use, we often talk about how we listen with our whole bodies – including our hearts).

I smiled, and told her, “Our hearts help us know how WE are feeling. But can we look at someone’s heart and know how they’re feeling?”

She shook her head and said she understood what I was saying.

A boy in the group, who had been fiddling with the ipad he was using, tapping his pencil, and seemingly not paying attention at all, turned to us and said, “Wait a minute. Your heart doesn’t tell you how you’re feeling. Your brain does.”

“No,” the girl replied. “Your heart feels the feelings.”

“Not for me,” the boy said. “Technically your brain tells you everything, it’s the only part of your body that can think.”

The third student in the class chimed in, with, “For me, they work as a team. My brain thinks and my brain feels and they work together.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” the boy responded. “But for me it’s usually my brain. My brain tells me what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking.”

“I think it’s both for me, too,” the first girl added. “Like, I know that my brain thinks, but sometimes I do more thinking and sometimes I do more feeling.”

They all looked at me.

I was (obviously) trying not to tear up.

“I think that you are all so smart and insightful and have such good thoughts and ideas,” I unhelpfully said, as they wanted an answer.

“There isn’t a right or wrong answer. We have a heart and we have a brain, and for some people one works more often than the other, and for some people they’re an equal team. For me, they take turns. Sometimes I listen to one more than the other, sometimes I need to remind them to work together.” I told them.

And as kids do?

They nodded, satisfied, and moved right on.

Because it’s that complicated – but it’s that easy, all the same.

A weather analogy

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I have said many times in my life, and probably many times on this blog, that I feel people’s feelings. I know that the highly-sensitive people out there know what I mean, know what it is like to have someone else’s emotions permeate your soul. But I also know that for the majority of people, that concept makes no sense. And for whatever reason, the other day, I found an analogy that might explain it better (and we know I love using analogies to understand things!)

So, you know when you go outside? If it’s windy out, you feel the wind. If it’s cold, you feel the cold. If it’s rainy, you get wet. You can’t NOT feel the weather. And that’s how it is for me. I’m wired to feel people’s emotions, such that I can’t not feel them, the same way that I can’t not feel the warmth from the sun on a 90 degree day.

Of course, you might feel the wind but not be bothered by it. Like, it’s there and you notice it but it doesn’t consume you. And that’s what I work towards. Knowing that I’m wired to feel people’s emotions, but, like the wind, I can notice it and move on without letting it become the main focus of every single cell in my body. And it’s hard! If you’re outside on a day where the temperature is 3 degrees Fahrenheit, you are going to feel cold to your core. Your bones will feel cold. Try as you might, you can’t really ignore it.

But you can try. You can feel the cold yet know it will pass when you go inside. And I can feel the emotions of the loved ones around me, without letting them become my own, without letting them permanently take up residence inside.

Does this make any sense? Can anyone relate? Does anyone have another way to explain it?