Emotions & the Brain: How Does the Brain Influence Our Emotions, Thoughts & Values?
The relationship between our emotions and brain is central to how we show up in the world.
There is a vast infrastructure of pathways in our brain impacting how we feel and respond to our surrounding environment – and, like any road under construction, our emotions are impacted by what happens to us.
But we can play an active role in shaping how our brain responds.
By learning the right skills, including emotion regulation, we can adjust the way our brain processes emotions so we can thrive.
Emotions and the brain
Emotions aren’t simple.
Our emotions, thoughts and behaviors all work together and are shaped in the brain.
When we “feel” something, what is actually happening is that a certain part of our brain is being activated, and we process that experience by tying it to a behavior, thought or whatever triggered it.
In this way, we “store” information in the moment that then increases our ability to predict, to learn and to examine similar situations in the future [1].
Thus, our emotions are inextricably linked to our experiences; they store and provide information to our brain so that we know what to expect in future situations.
But keep in mind that, as with our road analogy, the interplay of our emotions and our brain is not a one-way street.
How emotions impact the brain
Lucas Bagnara, LPC, senior primary therapist at Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center (Pathlight), explains how emotions impact the brain:
“Emotions have a huge impact on the way the brain functions.
When strong emotions are present, it can impact our perception, ability to problem-solve, attention, learning and memory.”
So, when is this helpful?
“When our emotions are intense, whether pleasant or unpleasant, our brain pays specific attention to how we are feeling and often signals us to engage in behaviors to satisfy the emotion we are feeling,” explains Bagnara.
“That may be to increase or engage in a behavior that continues the pleasant emotion, or to avoid or distract ourselves from the unpleasant emotion.”
How the brain influences emotions and thoughts
We’ve established that when we feel emotion, it is a response to some sort of external stimuli.
Our brain receives the experience, then connects this to a similar past experience so we know how to respond.
One way the brain can influence emotions and thoughts is when it is in a constant state of stress.
Prolonged high stress can trick our brain into thinking it’s in perpetual danger, keeping the fight-or-flight mechanism turned on 24/7.
As a result, our brain literally turns off production of certain hormones that make us experience the feeling of safety, ease or wellness because it needs to keep the “valve” open for the fear-based hormones to keep going.
Trauma has a similar effect.
How trauma impacts the brain
A perpetually stressed brain can also cause clouded thinking, exhaustion, poor memory, agitation, edginess, anger, and emotional hypervigilance. Bagnara explains:
“When individuals go through a traumatic experience or any experience that causes severe emotional distress, our physiological stress system (think of fight, flight or freeze) can become oversensitive to external stimuli that remind us of the painful memory.
This ends up tricking our brain into thinking we are in danger and turns our stress system into overdrive.
This is why many people who have been through a traumatic event become easily frustrated, irritable or hypervigilant.”
Specific medical conditions can also alter your emotional state, such as multiple sclerosis or stroke. Research has found that these “induce changes in emotional status, which are often recognized clinically as changes in a patient’s personality” [2].
Our brain seems to have the wheel when it comes to who or what drives emotions, but there is a way to train the brain to respond to stress in a less destructive way: emotion regulation.
Emotion regulation and the brain
The best way to understand emotion regulation is to start with what emotion dysregulation looks like.
When we live in a dysregulated state, we aren’t able to use helpful skills to reduce or moderate negative emotions. This can look like:
- Mood swings: You are extremely happy and then extremely sad, with no sense of balance.
- Irritability: You feel triggered and yell at the driver who just cut you off, even though they will never hear you.
- Feeling stuck: You can’t move beyond feeling angry or jilted, and it keeps replaying in your mind.
So, emotion regulation is practicing skills to reduce these intense emotional responses to a situation.
This is like opening up our brain’s pathways to find new avenues to communicate experiences, fixing the fractured roads so traffic can flow freely.
“Emotion regulation is important to learn and master at a young age, as it can lead to higher emotional intelligence and self-resiliency,” notes Kris Ramos, LCSW, CEDS, clinical director at Pathlight.
Parents and caregivers can even learn the skills to teach emotional resilience to kids and teens.
“A great place to start is by simply labeling emotions,” explains Ramos.
“Younger people often only know three emotions: happy, sad, angry. Expanding their emotional vocabulary can lead to better outcomes because they are able to target the actual emotion with coping skills.”
The American Psychological Association teaches that, with practice, emotion regulation can become implicit – meaning it’s second nature and just part of how you process emotions.
Like riding a bicycle, we eventually regulate without thinking about it once we get the skills and practice down.
Improving emotion regulation with DBT
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment method proven to help with emotion regulation. How does this happen?
Emotionally charged experiences can feel so intense that the brain perceives its interpretation is the only one. By bringing in a dialectical approach, we allow for the brain to consider other possibilities and interpret an event from different angles. This diffuses the charge of the emotions associated with the event.
DBT provides a set of skills that make it possible to regulate emotions so our brain is open to different possibilities and the fact that multiple things can be true at once. This allows us to not be controlled by our emotions.
The 4 core skills of DBT
DBT emphasizes the development of four core sets of skills:
- Mindfulness: Examining your own thoughts and behaviors with curiosity and no judgment
- Distress tolerance: Making peace with feelings of discomfort
- Emotion regulation: Identifying, acknowledging and coping with intense emotions
- Interpersonal effectiveness: Learning how to have strong, effective relationships and set necessary boundaries
“DBT emotion regulation skills can be very helpful to learn from early years,” Ramos reiterates.
How medication supports the brain
Sometimes the nerves that transmit signals allowing us to regulate emotions need a little help doing their jobs.
For example, when someone is living with depression, the messages between emotions and the brain aren’t making it back and forth the way they were designed.
This is when medications like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can help reset the lines of communication.
Despite the relief this can provide to someone who is struggling with a mood or anxiety disorder, there is often a stigma surrounding the use of medications to support emotion regulation.
On this episode of Pathlight’s Mental Note podcast, musician David Wimbish of the band The Collection shared the incredible impact that medication had on his mental health, and why it’s important to speak openly to reduce the stigma.
“I think before I got on medication, nobody I knew was talking about being on meds,” shares Wimbish.
“The journey feels very isolating because you think nobody else is on this. And there's a lot of stigma around that.
Once I started talking about it, I was like, whoa, even half my friends have all been on medication at some point. They've just never told anybody about that, but it's been very, very normal.”
How to get help
Our brains are complex structures with numerous influences shaping how they function and respond to the world around us. If you’re feeling stuck, help is out there.
At Pathlight, we use DBT and other proven treatment methods to help people develop the skills they need to regulate their emotions and thrive.
You can call us at (866) 622-5914 or reach out today to get matched with the exact support you need.
Related Reading
Sources
- Šimić, G., Tkalčić, M., Vukić, V., Mulc, D., Španić, E., Šagud, M., Olucha-Bordonau, F.E., Vukšić, M., & Hof, P.R. (2021). Understanding emotions: Origins and roles of the amygdala. Biomolecules, 11(6), 823. doi: 10.3390/biom11060823.
- Moawad, H. (2017, June 5). How the brain processes emotions. Neurology Live. https://www.neurologylive.com/view/how-brain-processes-emotions.
