How to Master Your Emotional Life-Lisa Feldman Barrett

Lisa Feldman Barrett discuss the differences between the classical psychological view of emotions versus her work on the subject. Also discussed is how the brain uses past experiences in order to predict rather than react, and finally we discuss what it means to be experientially blind.
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Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett is in the top one percent of the most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, and also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior.
In addition to the books Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and How Emotions are Made, Dr. Barrett has published over 260 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes. She has also given a popular TED talk with over 6.5 million views.
You can learn more about Dr Barrett's work by going to: www.lisafeldmanbarrett.com
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Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a psychologist, neuroscientist, professor, bestselling author, and one of the most cited scientists in the world. She received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multimillion-dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the APS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology in 2021.
Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Barrett has testified before Congress, presented her research to the FBI, consulted with the National Cancer Institute, appeared on Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and The Today Show with Maria Shriver, and been a featured guest on public television and podcast and radio programs worldwide. She is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.
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Interview Links:
- Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain - Lisa Feldman Barrett: amzn.to/3CWM1VQ
- How Emotions are Made - Lisa Feldman Barrett: amzn.to/3Rx1BeT
- Dr Barrett’s website: www.lisafeldmanbarrett.com
- Matter and Consciousness - Dr Iain McGilchrist: bit.ly/3RGSQz0
3 Books Dr Barrett Recommends Every Therapist Should Read:
- Between us by Batja Mesquita - amzn.to/3FdYkxT
- The End of Trauma by George Bonanno - amzn.to/3AW1fbL
- How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett - amzn.to/3GVdxFl

[@BloomwithAna-rs2ll]

“Emotional Alchemy allows us to turn pain into wisdom, fear into courage, and sadness into compassion.’’- Andrew Kenneth Fretwell. From his book Emotional Alchemy the Love and Freedom Hidden within Painful Feelings.

[@oneworldonehome]

"You are greater than your emotions, and you need not repress them to realize this. To become objective with your own internal states, you must operate from a position where you can observe them and where you are not dominated by them. This will allow you to become present to yourself and will give you true compassion and understanding. Then you will not be a tyrant with yourself, and tyranny in your life will come to an end." *_Steps to Knowledge, The Book of Inner Knowing_*

[@ianreclusado]

The concept of mindfulness comes from the Sanskrit word “sati” which it has been argued is better translated as “memory of the present”, so that’s super interesting. I too immediately saw the connection with Dr McGilchrist’s work, and I also think Jules Taylor Shore’s work with memory reconsolidation is really relevant here! And wonderful talk, thank you for sharing, so many new connections in my head.

[@Abc19853]

great lecture

[@CreativeEmotionalIntelligence]

This is what Creative Emotional Intelligence is all about!

[@humanyoda]

4:18 She said, "Your brain doesn't react to things in the world. It's predicting." But the brain does that in *reaction* to things in the world! In other words, it reacts to things in the world.

[@zackarysun297]

She's saying that you can change that reaction. The output of a given situation can be changed for the better. For example, if you fail at something you might feel defeated, but the next time fail you might feel motivated to improve. The input "failing" was the same, but your output/reaction was changed to something more positive

[@wanderingdude.]

Implications for psychotherapy?

[@estarbiencadadia]

So when I tried to explain a deep concept to somebody who has no previous experience of it (knowledge) then he is experientially blind? It happens with lots of people I have talked with 😥

[@bobdillaber1195]

We don't change our circumstances. Our circumstances change us.

[@mikemccarthy1638]

Confusion is a Paleolithic survival emotion.

[@estarbiencadadia]

“Emotions dont happen to you but are made BY you” 😮 🤯 … If the brain is always predicting, is this the reason why human civilizations have always had an oracle or a way to predict the future?

[@Neilgs]

The very concept used, “made by you”, is already if you will, unconsciously embedded in a particular social-cultural mileu (language), which is amusing with respect to the naïveté of Lisa’s presumed, “objectivity.” She decides upon the interpretative of a computational cognitive model . That’s fine and dandy but it is severely limiting (emotionless, disembodied) and distorted. There are unconscious drives that form her (all of our) narratives. To assume a computational model of preeminence is pure folly. Amusing

[@SamuelOrjiM]

It's Lisaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I'm happy

[@DCornwell-d2t]

How do we change and move forward if our brain keeps pulling info from the past?

[@Michaelfrikkie]

How would the neural activity associated with the sense data and those associated with the memories integrating be identified, not just separately but as they integrate to become awareness?

[@igorvolkov6396]

How to control your emotions? The computational theory mentioned here 3:27 4:03 is the theory of Finite State Automata. Read in Wikipedia. Not very complicated. No need to debunk well established science. Just enough to mention that there are quite a few inborn emotions and in pure form they are rather rare. In addition we learn many other states. Also we learn associations between sensory signals and emotional reactions. This is a whole science of self-programming.

[@jyothishmg5041]

I would like to know how music trigger emotions....

[@igorvolkov6396]

This is inborn mechanism of speech processing. The song consists of words and melody. Both convey definite info.

[@JanaSefcikova-f5f]

This video is called How to Master Your Emotional Life, but there is no way to figure this out based on this video. If her theory is valid, then I cannot learn any new interpretations of my emotions...??? If all is based on the data my brain has accumulated in the past. That would make me limited to experiencing only very limited range of emotions that were experienced during childhood? How could I explain going through life being open-minded and learning new explanations for my feeling states? What if her feelings during the date were intuition telling her the guy is not a good company? And she misinterpreted that....

[@moyagreene9590]

Everything you hear is a combination of what’s in your body AND what’s in the world.

[@tcdavidson5934]

I saw the blobs and immediately said two bees out loud.. Autism does have a few perks

[@AnnHelle]

Sure, but how did the initial response come about? The predictions are still based on a response created by the mind, aren't they?

[@Kyrani99]

Created by a conscious being, who has the ability to think and reason, imagine AND mentally perceive ideas being presented to them in or through relationship. This is what is behind the coffee shop experience. It was a "love at first sight cheat" that was played on her and she didn't recognize it as most don't.

[@JanaSefcikova-f5f]

Perhaps the brain being enclosed in the dark does not need any "outside world" to process data. What if the brain's job is to send data out via the sensory organs and make us feel and perceive a certain way based on what it receives from the life intelligence that animates us? We are than able to experience "life" with emotions and feelings being projections of the life energy to the outside world.

[@Contribute_TakeCare_Learn_Play]

Seeing that most of our suffering comes from our minds itself it seems the Buddhist idea that mindfulness can help with relief of suffering is true. I mean all of my suffering coworkers etc. If you can just rise above it like in meditation you're fine. Why suffer from a brain that creates a thought process that doesn't know how to be happy

[@Tkrzychowiec]

👌👌👌🥂

[@stanley5394]

Bait and switch title.

[@ivandansigmun3891]

Blank screen anybody?

[@alexanderkane3960]

I’ve never experienced war in my back yard. But I can imagine the horrible sounds the cannons and guns along with the screams of young men that were there dying!! Does that mean it never happened??? Preposterous theories that come out of the mouths of these scientists!

[@squaretriangle9208]

I thought highly of the woman's brain until she told the story of the guy she met in the coffeeshop, thought she was attracted to him, turned out it was a virus AND she dated him for 9 more months🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 this is ludicrous

[@Adapt_Counselling353]

she sets up her skittles and then knocks them over stating that there's little scientific evidence for the neurochemistry of several basic instincts by simply dismissing that domain of research or magically switching the experienced endogenous affect for the word a culture uses to label the Universal Human experience. I wonder is her tendency to over simplifications getting so much exposure because her work is funded by the US Army ? Are they more 'weaponisable' than other equally fact based theories from non US sources? Something about her 'appears' to my resting state mind as cultural dogmatism which gets my hair standing on edge given the rise of the siloed views of the MIC and Ultra-Nationalists. Maybe you can offer me techniques and life practices which will help me agree with you and like your preferred domain of facts rather than any of the others Dr. Feldman. You have exposed the problem of Science I had never conceptualised before. Great Scientists must remain unsure and open minded. They must account for ALL the conflicting and contradictory facts before you crow 'success!' . Reality is messy and the mind remains unmastered by few individuals and by no group on the Planet for now IMO. Just look at the primitive behaviour of the Intelligentsia in Business and Political Parties, in Multinational Corporations and NATO Command and Control leadership. If Brain and Mind Science had solutions we'd be having more success living peacefully in the multipolar and multicultural community of families and Nations which we constitute by aggregate. Don't you think doc? Humility please. But IF you do KNOW the method do be sure to avoid sharing it via the Capitalist Mode of distribution -unless you and your funders want to cull off the non privileged majority of Humanity who don't live in the US of A. Heal the World.

[@Neilgs]

“Your brain is not just guessing based upon what happened in the past” That is a very skewed reductionist left brain compartmentalized emotional-less interpretative concept. There is a bi-directional dynamic homeostasis mind-brain-body/body-brain-mind (afferents and efferents) epigenetically, bio-psycho-social at each moment of reciprocal interpersonal-intrapersonal engagement.

[@DCornwell-d2t]

English,please. LOL

[@Neilgs]

Well, if perchance you need a translation into your native language let me know, would be more than happy to provide one!

[@sherrybutts5947]

So this is how heaven on earth is being established in the eternal present

[@sherrybutts5947]

So memory of the present means we never left the garden called Eden

[@sherrybutts5947]

You have eyes but you don’t see and ears but you don’t hear: the Bible

[@sofimazi555]

So this is the source of AI...