Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Meaningful Happiness is a podcast that unpacks the science of emotions, relationships, and personal growth through the lens of Affect Relational Theory (ART), Chronic Shame Syndrome (CSS), and Latalescence—the second act of life where experience, adaptability, and purpose shape our journey forward.
Each episode explores how shame operates beneath the surface, influencing our confidence, connections, and sense of agency. Through deep insights and practical tools, we uncover ways to rewrite our personal narratives, break free from shame-based cycles, and cultivate a life rich in authenticity, curiosity, and joy.
Join me as we dive into the psychological frameworks and real-world applications that help us navigate relationships, self-perception, and the ever-evolving landscape of human experience.
Let’s make happiness meaningful.
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https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Ep. 05- Controlling Your Emotional Console
Ever wondered why your emotions often lead your actions, even when logic seems to make more sense? Get ready to unlock the mysteries of your emotional console with insights from Sylvan Tompkins' affect theory and the animated film "Inside Out." We break down the common misconception that thoughts govern behavior, using the relatable example of a young violinist’s performance anxiety to illustrate how feelings frequently drive our actions. By expanding your emotional vocabulary and understanding the nine affects, particularly the positive ones like interest/excitement and enjoyment/joy, we aim to empower you to take control of your emotional life.
Journey with us as we examine the complex relationship between emotions and memory through the lens of "Inside Out" and its sequel. Observe how Riley's emotional console evolves as she matures, leading to deeper and more nuanced memories. By connecting these cinematic developments to affect theory, we show how emotions like sadness can add richness to our experiences and memories. Our discussion provides valuable insights into how emotional awareness can impact your relationships and personal growth, ultimately guiding you towards a more fulfilling and meaningful life. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Welcome to Controlling your Emotional Console, the keys to meaningful happiness. I'm your host, scott Conkright, the founder of Affect Relational Therapy, and this podcast series is going to be on what emotions are, what affects are, what that emotional console is. And I'm referring right now to Inside Out, that wonderfully fun movie, touching movie, in which we see Riley grow up, hit the puberty button in number two and I hope in another series that are coming up I assume there's going to be many of them. As she grows older we'll find out how her emotional console, her command center for her emotional life, works. What I want to do is empower you to be in control of that console. Interestingly, it was several years before the movie came out that I was working on these theories and really expanding on Sylvan Tompkins' affect theory, creating my own theory. When that movie came out and I watched it and went, wow, how fortunate to have a multimillion dollar budget that Disney, pixar put together to explain my theories. I am so lucky. Actually, the movie is really good. By the way, I don't get any royalties or anything for promoting this, it just is a good movie and the truth is it does a really good job of explaining how our biologically based feelings work. So thank you Disney, pixar, and wish I had written it, been involved in it, because I would love some royalties from that, but that's not going to be the case. What I can guarantee you of in watching and listening to this podcast is that you'll have a better understanding how this console works. And it's a great metaphor because the truth is, from an affect theory point of view, we are more dictated by our feeling states, our biological feeling states, than we are by our thinking, and this movie Inside Out does a great job of illustrating that. So I'm going to jump into that right now.
Speaker 1:Most of us are aware of how thinking colors how we feel, though, interestingly, we don't often think about how feelings influence our thinking. Our thinking is influenced enormously by the feeling states that we wake up with, that we have. If we're feeling anxious, we're going to have anxious thoughts. If we're distressed, we're going to have distressing thoughts. If we're in a good place and feeling curious and happy and interested in stuff, guess Guess what type of feelings we're going to have. I mean Guess what type of feelings we're going to have. I mean, guess what type of thoughts we're going to have. They go hand in hand the complexity of how feelings work and how thinking works needs to be dealt with with more complexity than it is right now. Right now it's really simplified. What I want to do is increase your vocabulary around how these things work and it's really not that complicated, but it's a notch up from what most people know right now.
Speaker 1:Most people think of behavior as being governed by thinking that you can think yourself into doing stuff. That's not been my experience in my life. It's also interesting as a psychologist to listen to lots of theorists talk about feelings as if all they are are appraisals of events that are taking place. So, for instance, I just got done reading a really fascinating account of a young violinist let's say Sarah, let's say 22 years old, is now doing a recital in front of a bunch of people as a violinist to get inside, let's say Juilliard or someplace like that. In this account by the psychologist who's using cognitive models, thinking models, they basically say this group of psychologists say that she gets up there. Yes, she might be nervous and she's aroused, which I think is an odd word, because I don't know about you, but when I think of arousal I think of sex. So I don't think this nervous 22-year-old is thinking about sex, but arousal, I guess, in this sense, well, I don't think this nervous 22-year-old is thinking about sex, but arousal, I guess, in this sense, well, I know, in this sense she is what.
Speaker 1:What does arousal mean in this case? Well, to me it's kind of crazy because clearly she is full of potential shame. She's up there, nervous, worried about how her performance is going to be, and her appraisal, her cognitive appraisal, is not a thinking one. Yes, of course she's thinking. She's not going to stop thinking, but she's mostly feeling at that time. She's feeling and having thoughts around am I going to screw up or not? Am I going to perform well? Am I going to be able to contain myself? Do what I need to do as a violinist? Do what she's been rehearsing and training for for all these years? She's not appraising, she's not aroused in that sense, in any positive sense. She is filled with potential shame, the fear of shame. This is what I'm trying to get at.
Speaker 1:When it comes to affects, we lead with our feelings. In a situation like that, I think the cognitive psychologists have it backwards, absolutely backwards. So let's talk about feelings. So I know in other podcasts and in other videos that I've done. I've talked about the affects, and again, there are nine of them. There's two positive ones interest, excitement and enjoyment, joy. Those are the two positive ones that, by the way, make up for everything that we think of as love. Anything that we care about, anything that we're interested in, anything that we desire, anything that we put our energy into in a positive way comes from those two affects. They provide the motor force to do things, to get things done.
Speaker 1:Without it, where would it come from? When you think about it, I was dog sitting for a friend of mine in DC a couple months ago and it's still a bit of a puppy of a dog and it was smelling everything. It was curious about everything. It was going everywhere and when I pulled it gently, because it smelled like 50 things in a row and it was time to get back, it gave me this look of disappointment, you know, with the head down, it gave me the slump of shame. So again, shame in my model is any barrier to good stuff, to good feelings, good connections. Louis wanted to keep smelling things, wanted to keep playing around, wanted to look at stuff, wanted to see and hear all the motorcycles going by and the cars and so forth. That interest and excitement gave him the energy to keep his brain and body alive, to do what he needed to do.
Speaker 1:This is not we have to think about it in terms of coding in some ways, when you think about AI, where is the energy going to come from in AI if it's not coded? And what needs to be coded for that energy to be directed in a way that shows curiosity, that shows motivation? Well, it's going to have to come from affects and, as my understanding right now, we don't code for affects. Matter of fact, we know very little about affects when it comes to the AI world. It's not a big interest in terms of actually what feelings are. So interest, excitement and enjoyment, joy Interest, excitement is up, energy, enjoyment, joy is down. Energy Enjoyment, joy is that we're home, safe, feeling. Let's all hang out, crack open some beers and chill out. Interest is always up. Let's go out and chill out. Interest is always up. Let's go out and explore stuff.
Speaker 1:Shame, again, is any barrier to that and you'll see that, whether it's a dog I know cats do it actually, but dogs, humans, kids, kids are humans, of course, but try to think of another species that shows that slump of shame Dogs do it really well. Anytime there's a barrier to getting what you want, whether that's getting that elevator door, or you can't go into the park and run around and chase the ball in Louie's example. Or you can't go into the park and run around and chase the ball for Louis in Louis' example. Or you fail an exam or you don't get what you want is going to cause the affect of shame, which only lasts a second, and then it gets replaced with the memories of shame, which for each of us, is different. Each of us has an autobiography around shame and excitement and enjoyment and all the other affects that make us different. We're similar when it comes to each of the affects. We all will have an affective response. We all will be afraid of something that's worth being afraid of. How I deal with that and how you deal with that are two different things. I might have a completely different history of what to do with my fear than you do. I may have been trained in my family differently around that. So it's just very important to keep those two different feeling states separate, as much as they blend in together, as much as they can seem the same, because they happen right after each other. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, but they are different, and why that's so important we'll get to later on.
Speaker 1:So the emotional console, the control center that Riley has in Inside Out, is a brilliant example of the sort of struggles that each of us have when it comes to the multiple different feelings that happen all at the same time in most of our social interactions. In our fantasy worlds, no matter what we're thinking and feeling, we're having to juggle multiple feeling states. Things can be sad and happy at the same time. You can be angry and disappointed, you can be distressed and still interested. You can be interested and somewhat ashamed. They all come together and in this console you need to be the one who's in charge, and this is what I'm really wanting to help you out with. We all have more or less the same console. We have the same command center. Up to a certain point, we all have the same affects. Learn them, get to know them. You need to be get to know them, you need to be able to identify them and you also need to be able to get all of them at the command center when it's appropriate to have them there, also need to have the choice to dismiss them when they're not appropriate.
Speaker 1:So if on your console, anytime you deal with shame, you will let anger take control of the console. That's your responsibility. That has consequences that you may not like. The people around you may not appreciate it. Every time you don't get what you want, every time you're disappointed, every time you feel slightly slighted. Any time you feel a little bit hurt or disappointed, you get angry, you go on the defensive. You're going to struggle in intimate relationships and I don't want you to. I want you to be able to be in control of that console. But you have to learn what the console is, what that command center is, and we're learning that.
Speaker 1:Watch InsideOut 1, watch InsideOut 2. You'll see, as she gets older, after the puberty button gets pushed, the console changes, it gets bigger and Riley now has access to a lot more feeling states. She also has in the first one when she gets in touch with sadness sadness, by the way, I would describe as shame. Sadness is a low-level shame. When Riley gets in touch with sadness, all of a sudden her memories are much more complex. They become more complex in Inside Out 2 as well. As you get older, your memories, your thoughts, your feelings, all of this get more and more complex. You have to be more and more aware of what you're feeling, what the feeling states are, what your memories are, how they're informed and what keeps you from getting close to people and what's allowing you to get close to people. And taking a look at that and taking a look at your responsibility for that part of it, that control center, that console, is intimidating for most people, but I think it's a great metaphor and I'm going to work with it.
Speaker 1:For now, I would love your feedback to know whether this is a good metaphor or not, to see if pairing up inside out with affect theory is the right thing. I think it is. I think it's a great way to understand even how thinking and feeling works together. You notice that in Inside Out, when memories come in, joy basically takes those little orbs and puts them in long-term memory. And puts them in long-term memory. That's somewhat accurate, it's simplistic, it's simplified. Of course, it's a Disney, pixar movie, but the affects actually have a lot to do with what goes into memory and we can come back to that. So in the meantime, stay tuned, hit, subscribe all that sort of stuff and give me some feedback. My job here is to make your life the life you want to live. And the life you want to live my guess is the life you want to live feels good and feels meaningful. Dr Scott Conkright here signing off, take care.
