Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright

The Weather Inside Part 2

• Scott Conkright

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What if your emotions are not problems to fix but a precision navigation system that evolved to keep you alive, connected, and learning? We dive into core feelings as the body’s fast meaning-makers, showing how they tag what matters long before your thinking brain catches up.

We start with a vivid contrast: plants don’t move, so they don’t need to decide. Animals do, and movement floods life with decisions about safety, energy, and opportunity. That’s where psychologist Silvan Tomkins’ affect theory shines—core feelings are the spotlight of the mind, pushing some moments into awareness while letting others fade. From survival and social bonding to curiosity and mastery, these affects bias us toward three essential outcomes that shape every choice and memory.

Then we flip a common belief: feelings aren’t triggered by content but by patterns of intensity over time. Think music, not single notes. A gradual rise invites interest, a sudden spike triggers startle or fear, persistent high levels become distress and then anger, and a decrease brings relief and joy. Through everyday scenes—a car alarm, a delayed text, a quiet room—we map all nine core feelings, including the social nuance of shame, the boundary wisdom of disgust and dismell, and the rewarding pull of interest and joy. Along the way, we reveal how interpretation can create these intensity patterns even when nothing changes outside you, and how body state and context shift your emotional landscape.

To make it practical, we share a weekly challenge to spot the build, the spike, the persistence, and the release in real time; to trace whether the source is external or interpretive; and to find the smallest intervention that makes the pattern more manageable. You’re not turning feelings off—you’re steering with them. If this lens helps you see your inner weather more clearly, follow and subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show. Curious where you are on your growth journey? Take the free self-discovery snapshot at scottconkrite.com.

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For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright

SPEAKER_00:

Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Conkrite. What if your body is holding memories your mind can't access? We explore how early relationships shape your nervous system and how healing begins through relationship, not just insight. Tune in now. Your body has something to say. The weather inside you, chapter two. Why do we even have core feelings? By the end of this chapter, you'll understand why core feelings exist at all. You'll learn that they evolved to solve a fundamental problem. How does a creature that moves through space figure out what matters without thinking itself to death? You'll discover that core feelings respond to patterns of intensity, how things change over time, not to specific content, and most importantly, you'll see that these patterns can be created by your interpretations just as powerfully as by external events, which means you have far more influence than you think. The plant versus animal problem. Before we dive into the nine specific weather systems, let's step back and ask a bigger question. Why do core feelings exist at all? Think about a plant. It's rooted in one spot for its entire life. It responds to sunlight, water, and soil nutrients, but it never has to make complicated decisions. It never has to ask itself, should I should I stay here or move over there? It doesn't need to evaluate whether the ground it's standing on is solid or whether that rustling sound means danger. It doesn't predict outcomes or react quickly to threats. A plant's life is relatively simple because it never has to move through space. Now think about an animal, even a simple animal like a mouse or a bird. The moment a creature can move, everything gets infinitely more complicated. An animal moving through space has an enormous amount of information to keep track of moment by moment. Is this food safe to eat or poisonous? Is that the sound of a predator or just the wind? Should I approach this other creature or run away? Is this place safe to rest or dangerous? Do I have enough energy to keep going? Or should I take a break? Which direction leads to water, to shelter, to safety? Every single moment requires processing hundreds of pieces of information and making rapid decisions. What do I do? What do I need to avoid? What matters right now? A moving creature needs much more than simple reflexes or instincts. It needs a sophisticated system not just for responding to information, but for storing it, classifying it, retrieving it, and ranking it. As it moves through space, it needs to learn, adapt, predict, and decide all of this constantly in real time. This is where core feelings come in. According to psychologist Sylvan Tompkins, the originator of affict theory, core feelings evolved specifically to solve this problem of knowing what matters. Nothing becomes conscious without a core feeling. Nothing becomes into awareness. Nothing is remembered without a core feeling. Nothing is sought or avoided without a core feeling. Think about that for a moment. Every single thing you've ever paid attention to, every memory, episodic memory, memories of your past that you've ever formed, every choice you've ever made about whether to move forward towards something or away from it was tagged by your core feeling system. Imagine you're in a vast dark warehouse filled with thousands of objects. You have a flashlight, and whenever you point that flashlight at something, it becomes visible and important. Everything else fades into the darkness. Core feelings are the spotlight of your mind. They illuminate what matters. They make things urgent. They attach meaning to everything you encounter, labeling experience as good, bad, interesting, dangerous, new, smelly, scary. Without that spotlight, you'd be drowning in an ocean of meaningless information with no way to know what to care about. When a core feeling fires, your whole body reacts with pay attention to this, this matters for your survival, your relationship, or your learning. Tompkins asserts that core feelings evolved to favor three crucial outcomes for any creature that needs to move through the world. First is survival, keeping you safe by steering you away from danger and towards security both in the world and in your relationships. Second is affinity with people, building genuine connections so you can work together and care for one another. And the third is the discovery of the new. It drives you to explore, learn, and master your environment. Every single one of the nine core feelings serves at least one of these three purposes. Let's break this down. Fear, terror, warns you of immediate danger. Run, hide. Distress, anguish, signals that something is persistently wrong and you need help, whether this is emotional or physical. It's basically saying this is too much, please come help me. Anger rage gives you the energy to fight back or demand change when distress isn't working. It's saying fix this now, it's too much, whatever it is. Disgust and dismell keep you away from things that could poison you or harm you. Don't eat that, stay away. Enjoyment joy makes you smile, and when you smile at someone and they smile back, it creates a bond. Enjoyment joy says this person is safe and good. Stay close to them. Shame humiliation is a very complex one, protects your social standing by making you pause when you might be rejected or when your connection to others is threatened. It says, wait, something just interrupted my connection. I need to figure out what went wrong so I can fix it. It's the core feeling, the affect, that makes us self-conscious. Whenever shame happens, you know it's there because you're now aware of yourself unlike any other way. Interest excitement pulls you towards new information and experiences. It's an up energy. It makes learning feel rewarding instead of just boring or scary. Most of the time. It says this is new and manageable. Explore it, master it, and figure it out. Surprise startle resets your attention when something unexpected happens, clearing your mental slate so that you can take in new information. It says, stop what you're doing, something just changed, pay attention. It's the reset button. Core feelings don't just tell you what to pay attention to, they inform you of the urgency and what to do about it. This is why. Positive core feelings, interest, excitement, and enjoyment, joy, feel good. They are inherently rewarding and designed to pull you towards experiences that help you learn, connect, and thrive. Your brain wants you to seek out more of these feelings. They're designed for that. The negative core feelings like fear, distress, anger, shame, disgust, dismell feel bad. They are inherently punishing. They're designed to push you away from experiences that might harm you physically or socially. Your brain wants you to avoid or escape these feelings. Surprise startled don't feel good or bad on their own. They're just reset buttons that clear your attention so you can figure out what comes next. Often, if it's bad, it's fear or anger. Or but it could be surprise with enjoyment. The genius of this system is that it works through feeling rather than thinking. You don't have to stop and consciously analyze whether that rustling in the bushes is dangerous. Fear just happens, and your body is already moving before your thinking brain catches up. That split second advantage has kept humans and all animals alive for millions of years. Here's what most people get confused about when it comes to core feelings. Core feelings aren't triggered by specific things. I know that sounds odd. They're triggered by patterns of change in the intensity of your experience over time. Of course, I'm going to break that down. Let me say that again because it's so important. It's not what is happening that triggers a core feeling. It's how the intensity of what's happening changes. Think of it like music. Music isn't just one note held forever. If someone played a single note on a piano and sustained it for three minutes straight, you wouldn't call that music. You'd probably call it annoying. Music is patterns of notes that rise and fall, speed up and slow down, get louder and softer. The beauty, the emotion, and the power of music comes from how the sound changes over time. A note that gradually gets louder feels different than one that suddenly blasts at full volume. A melody that slowly climbs up the scale feels different than one that jumps around unpredictably. Your core feelings work precisely the same way. They're not responding to the note, the thing itself, they're responding to the melody, how intense the experience is, and how that intensity changes. These patterns of intensity can come from multiple sources. Sometimes the pattern is purely external, a car alarm suddenly blasts at full volume, a song gradually builds up, the stimulation is happening in the world around you, and your nervous system is tracking it. But just as often the pattern is being created by your interpretation of what's happening. Let's say you're waiting for an important email. Every time you check your inbox and don't see it, the intensity of your anticipation builds. Check, check, check, check again. That's a gradual increase in intensity, but it's not due to external stimulation getting louder or brighter. It's being created by your mind repeatedly focusing on and amplifying the significance of the missing email. Interest fires, then anxiety, then distress, all from a pattern of intensity that you are generating internally. Or let's say you're at a party and you notice two people whispering whilst glancing in your direction. Your mind jumps to an interpretation. They're talking about me. They think I'm weird. That interpretation creates a rapid spike in intensity. Your face flushes, your heart races, shame fires. But you don't actually know what they're saying. Maybe they were talking about somebody else. Maybe they were planning a surprise for you. Maybe they were commenting on your cool shirt. The core feeling fired based on the intensity pattern created by your interpretation, not by objective reality. This is why the same situation can trigger completely different core feelings in different people or in the same person at different times. Two people can attend the same party. Person A interprets a quiet room as peaceful, intensity decreasing, joy fires. Person B interprets the same quiet room as boring, persistent low intensity, distress fires. Or even the same person on different days. Monday, well rested, meeting invitation comes in, gradual anticipation builds, interest fires. Friday exhausted. Same meeting invitation comes in, feels like one more thing. Intensity spikes, distress fires. Your interpretations, your memories, your body state, and your nervous system's capacity all influence what patterns of intensity your feeling system experiences, and therefore which core feelings fire. Once you understand this, you realize you have more influence than you thought. You can't always control external events, but you can learn to notice when you're creating intensity patterns through interpretation. You can learn to pause before jumping to conclusions. You can take care of your body and nervous system so you have more capacity to handle intensity when it does arise. The patterns are real. The core feelings are automatic. But what creates the patterns is more complex and more within your influence than it first appears. When I say intensity, I'm talking about how much neural firing, brain activity, is happening. Think of it like the brightness of a light or the volume of a sound. High intensity, bright light, loud sound, strong sensation, the intensity can gradually increase, gradually decrease, suddenly spike, or stay constant. Your nervous system is constantly monitoring these patterns of intensity, and different patterns trigger different core feelings automatically. So low intensity, dim light, quiet sound. Low intensity, for example, dim light, quiet sound, gentle sensation. High intensity, bright light, loud sound, strong sensation. What can be confusing is that the exact same thing can trigger completely different core feelings depending on how the intensity changes. Let's use sound for example. Imagine your neighbor's car alarm. The sound itself didn't change, but depending on the pattern of how intense it was and how that intensity changed over time, it triggered four completely different core feelings. Gradual increase equals interest. Sudden spike equals startle or fear. Persistent high levels equals distress and likely anger. Decrease when it finally shuts off after an hour, it's enjoyment, relief. Let me walk you through each one. Gradual increase creates interest. You're in your room studying and you hear a faint sound outside. At first, it's barely noticeable, then it gets a tiny bit louder, then a bit more. Your brain is tracking this gradual increase, and because it's manageable, it's not too fast, not too intense, interest excitement fires. Your head turns towards the window, you lean forward, you want to figure out what that sound is. A sudden spike creates startle or fear. You're studying in total silence. Suddenly, bam, the car alarm happens all at once at full volume. Your whole body jumps, your heart races, your eyes go wide. If it's really intense and seems dangerous, fear fires. If it's just brief and surprising, the core feeling of surprise fires. That's it. Persistent high level creates distress, then anger. The car alarm has been going off for 20 minutes straight at the same loud volume. It won't stop. This happened to me all the time in Chicago when I live there. At first you may have been annoyed, but now it's becoming persistent and overwhelming. Distress fires first. This is too much. Someone turned the damn thing off. I remember feeling that all the time at nighttime. If it keeps going and nobody fixes it, anger kicks in. This needs to stop. I'm calling the police. Which I did on a couple occasions. Decrease creates enjoyment, joy. Finally, after 30 minutes, the car alarm stops. The intensity of the annoying stimulation decreases. Suddenly, relief washes over you. Your shoulders drop. You might even smile, like, oh finally, enjoyment, joy fires. Let's look at another example where the intensity pattern isn't external at all. It's created entirely by interpretation. You send an important text to a friend asking if they're upset with you. You wait for a response. First few minutes, you're checking your phone every couple of minutes. The intensity is building gradually as you focus on waiting. Interest fires. When will they respond? What will they say? An hour passes. They still haven't responded. Now your mind is running. Why aren't they answering? Why are they ignoring me? Oh no, did I did I say something wrong? Did I ask it the wrong way? The intensity is persistently high. You can't focus on anything else. Distress starts firing. This is too much. I can't handle not knowing. Are they gonna call back? Are they gonna text back? Your phone buzzes. After two hours of waiting, your phone finally vibrates. Your whole body jumps. That's startle. It's an unexpected change. Then because the intensity spikes from waiting anxiously to oh god, what did they say? Fear fires. Your heart is pounding before you even look at the screen. Pause. You read it and you have relief. Sorry, phone died, not upset at all, just been a crazy day. Hey, let's grab coffee. Instantly, all that built up tension releases. Your shoulders drop, you exhale, you might even laugh at yourself. Enjoyment joy fires from relief. Here's what's crucial. Your friend's phone was dead the whole time. Nothing was actually happening externally for two hours. But your mind created an entire sequence of intensity patterns, gradual build, persistent high, sudden spike, decrease, that triggered four different core feelings. The patterns were real. The feelings were real. But they were generated by your interpretations, not by external events. This is both challenging and empowering. Challenging because it means you can feel intensely even when nothing is happening. Empowering because it means you can learn to catch yourself creating unhelpful patterns and choose different interpretations. Here's a simple summary of how each core feeling maps to different patterns. Interest fires when stimulation gradually increases at a manageable pace, like a song slowly building. Joy fires when stimulation decreases, like the relief when tension in a song resolves. Surprise fires with a sudden brief change, like a sharp, unexpected sound. Fear fires when stimulation rapidly increases, like a sudden loud note. Distress fires when stimulation stays persistently too high, like a noise that won't stop. Anger fires when stimulation stays persistently way too high and distress isn't working, like a noise that won't stop even after you've asked for help. A little bit like what happened in Chicago with the with the alarms going off. Shame fires when positive feelings, interest or joy, are partially interrupted or reduced, like when a song builds beautifully and then hits a wrong note, but you still want to keep listening. Disgust fires when something toxic has been taken in and needs to be expelled. Your system is responding to something harmful already inside. It goes you want to get it out. You can see kids spitting the fruit out thinking it's toxic. Dispel fires when something noxious is detected that should be avoided or kept at a distance. Your system responding to something harmful before it gets inside. The crinkly nose that's stinky, that one. You don't learn any of these. You're born with them. Core feelings are your body's ways of reading the melody of your experience, not just the individual notes. They're tracking. Is this getting more intense? How fast? Can I handle it? Is this getting less intense? Ah relief. Is this staying at a high level too long? Help or fix this. Did this just change suddenly? Pay attention. The same note played at different rhythms, volumes, and patterns creates completely different music. The same experience, occurring with different patterns of intensity over time, create completely different core feelings. This is why core feelings are so much more sophisticated than simple stimulus response. They're not reacting to thing scary or thing good. They're reading the complex patterns of how your experience unfolds over time and responding accordingly. It's one of the most elegant systems in our biology, and once you start noticing these patterns in your own life, you'll see them everywhere. Your core feeling system is ancient. It evolved over millions of years to solve a fundamental problem. How does a creature that moves through space figure out what matters moment by moment without thinking itself to death? You can't wait there thinking through what to do with the lion that's coming at you. The answer, of course, is core feelings. They're automatic, biological meaning makers that work faster than thought. They spotlight what's important, they motivate action, they help you survive, connect with others, and learn about your world. When you understand this, you realize something profound. Core feelings aren't a flaw in your design. They're the most essential navigation system you have. They're literally what kept your and our ancestors alive long enough to have kids who had kids who eventually led to you. The problem isn't that you have core feelings. The problem is that most of us were never taught what they are, how they work, or how to work with them instead of against them. So let's learn. So try this. Notice the patterns in your life this week. Here's your weekly challenge. Spot the patterns. Over the next few days, practice identifying the intense patterns that trigger your core feelings. First, when you feel something strongly, pause and ask, is the intensity gradually building? That's interest. Did it spike suddenly? That's fear. Or startle. Has it been persistently high? That's distress or anger. Did something intense just decrease or stop? That's enjoyment, joy. Second, trace the source of the pattern. Is this coming from external events? A loud noise, someone's words, physical sensations? Or is it my interpretation creating this pattern? My assumption about what they meant, my worry about the future, my story about what this means is going to influence it. Your assumption about what they meant, your worry about the future, your story about what this all means, that has a big influence. Third, notice the space for choice. If your interpretation is creating the pattern, is there another way to read the situation? Can you pause before jumping to the interpretation that creates the most intense pattern? You're not trying to stop core feelings from firing. You're just building awareness of what triggers them and recognizing when you have more influence than you thought you did. That's the end of chapter two. Thank you for listening. Please follow me on social media and watch this on YouTube and listen to it on all available platforms. And we'll see you next week. So be sure to subscribe and follow along. And if you're curious where you are on your own growth journey, take the free self-discovery snapshot at scottconkrite.com. You can also join our newsletter for weekly insights and learn about upcoming therapy groups, meetups, and live workshops. Till next time, be kind to the part of you that felt everything first.

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Scott Conkright

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