When I first read Dr. Bestselling Julia Digangi, Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power, I knew it was a game changer for improving our love lives, our work lives and the most important life we have – our inner life with our emotional selves. Dr. DiGangi is a neuropsychologist who completed her residency at a consortium of Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
I interviewed her recently and we explored her unique background and skills, her family challenges, the surprising reason she got into the field, and how her work has impacted the world. I wrote an earlier article about her work, “The Neuroscience of Emotional Power,” and here we go deeper into the three critical “marriages” we all need to address according to David Whyte, author of The Three Marriages: Reclaiming Work, Self, and Relationship.
“There is this first marriage, the one we usually mean, to another,” says Whyte, “this second marriage, which may so often appear as a burden to work or profession, and this third, and probably hidden, marriage in a core conversation within us.”
Understanding emotional power
People are complicated and emotions can be confusing. But we all want to know ourselves and feel good about the person we know. We call our species ‘Homo sapiens’, which means ‘the wise man’. We often think of ourselves as being smart, able to think clearly and make wise decisions.
People, especially those known as men, often place too much emphasis on our thinking abilities and not enough on our emotions. Dr. DiGangi defines emotional strength simply as
“Your ability to stay strong in the midst of life’s inevitable challenges.”
Whether we want to be strong in the face of a difficult marriage or we want to be able to stand strong when we have to make a difficult business decision, we do our best when we harness our emotional strength. We recognize the value of a passionate love life and a fulfilling and successful career, but we also want to feel good about who we are inside our body, mind and soul. However, many of us fall short.
Emotional strength is the foundation for success in all areas of our lives.
“Your emotions are, in many ways, the final judge of your experiences.”
says Dr. DiGangi.
“Until you figure out how to work more effectively with your emotions, it’s easy to spend enormous amounts of energy on ineffective drivers of change.”
In our interview Dr. DiGangi presents her findings on “neuroenergetic codes,” including:
How to turn your emotional pain into emotional strength
All of us strive to avoid pain and seek pleasure. It is the core of our evolution-based survival mechanism. However, we want to do more than survive in life. We want to thrive. To do this, we must learn to overcome our brain’s automatic pain avoidance response and turn our emotional pain into emotional power.
Dr. DiGangi reminds us that our brain creates many sensations that are both painful and pleasurable, but they all boil down to two kinds of emotional energy. He calls out to them: Emotional Pain and Emotional Power.
Emotional pain includes any kind of negative sensations you feel. These can include things like anxiety, fear, worry, irritation, anger, shame, etc.
Emotional strength includes all kinds of positive feelings that make you feel worthy. These include positive sensations that we call confidence, strength, resilience, significance, etc.
Here is the basic fact of neurobiology: The most effective, scientifically supported forms of behavior change are people-based transforming their relationship with the emotions they were avoiding.
“Over the years”,
says Dr. DiGangi,
“I’ve worked with many people who have experienced extreme trauma—everything from war-torn soldiers to survivors of rape and child sexual abuse. In all cases, healing came from helping people regain courage move towards the feelings and experiences they have avoided all their lives.”
He looks at some of the commons ways we avoid pain in our love lives. Check the ones you recognize:
- Being attracted to people who are unavailable.
- Save a relationship that could be good and avoid dealing with what scares you.
- Finding fault with small things that a potential love interest does or doesn’t do creates emotional distance.
- Try to change other people’s behavior instead of dealing directly with your fears.
- Jumping into a new relationship and avoiding looking at what went wrong in the last one.
- Fill in your own example here________________________________________________.
He goes on to describe commons ways we avoid pain in our professional lives. Check the ones you recognize:
- You’re excited about starting a new project, but you’re afraid it can fail so you avoid doing it.
- You want to tell someone at work that they said something that hurt your feelings, but you do embarrassed so you put off telling them.
- You have a problem with one of your employees who keeps making mistakes, but you afraid they may be hurt by your criticism, so avoid telling them.
- You feel like you’ve taken on too much work, but you worry that saying no will make you look bad, and so will you reluctantly say yes.
- You want to move on and take on more responsibility, but find it difficult to make decisions that can upset people you care, so you hold back.
- Fill in your own example here________________________________________________.
It looks at commons ways we avoid pain in our inner work with ourselves. Check the ones you recognize:
Spending time…
- Worrying what do other people think about you?
- Irritated by what others do or say?
- Afraid did you do something wrong?
- Worried that you have upset others?
- Terrified that if you lived your life the way you want you would be rejected?
When he talked about the ways in which we try and compensate and create stability, safety, security by engaging in the “overs,” I felt some uncomfortable feelings of recognition. How about you? You…
—I’m overthinking Looking for the perfect solution?
—they overanalyze things trying to make sure you haven’t missed something important?
—grant to make sure people like you and don’t let anyone down?
—they overreact to stop people from taking advantage of you?
-overwork so no one can accuse you of not being on top of things?
–Fill in your own example here________________________________________________.
I added overdo. I often feel like everyone is depending on me—my family (Carlyn and I have six grown children, seventeen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren)—plus, I have clients and colleagues—I tell myself that I have to do more otherwise the world will fall apart and the people I care about most will die.
I found a lot of what he said to be counterintuitive, but on the money, particularly when he said that one of our main problems in life is our attempts to avoid pain. Instead of continuing with our desire to avoid pain, Dr. DiGangi recommends us “Choose a stronger pain.”
Here is an example from my own life. I played basketball in high school, but I was always short and slightly built. I would bounce and dominate. I decided there was nothing I could do to get taller, but I could get stronger. I started with leg presses. At first I could only do three sets of ten with 100 pounds. As I built up my leg muscles, I could eventually do three sets of ten with 200 pounds. It was painful, but the benefits were worth it. I could be stronger and more able to be successful playing a sport I loved.
When I could deadlift 200 pounds, it wasn’t like 100 pounds wasn’t there anymore. Every time I deadlifted 200 pounds, I first had to add four 25-pound plates to get to 100 before I could add four more to get to 200. Here’s how this analogy applies to emotional pain.
Like many couples, my wife and I shared our duties. Even though she worked outside the home, I was the main “bread maker” and she did most of the bills, taxes, food preparation, and cleaning. In March he slipped and fell on a wet pavement. He suffered a broken hip, required hip replacement surgery and suffered a stroke.
Suddenly, I had to take over all the things she did, except take care of her health needs when she got out of the hospital. I also had to continue to fulfill my ongoing work obligations. At first I was overwhelmed, irritable, frustrated, resentful and angry. I knew none of this was her fault and I was desperate to take on my new duties, but I was afraid I would fail. At first I wanted to escape, to escape the pain of increased care. But as I stayed with it, I let go of my frustrations, resentments, and fears. Gradually I gained confidence as I embraced the most intense pain by facing my fear of failurethe worry that I would mess up or disappoint my wife or even make a mistake that would worsen her health or even lead to her death.
I kept at it and over a period of eighteen months, I gradually gained more and more weight and gained increasing strength as I felt more capable, confident, worthy, loved and loved. Instead of running away from my original pain, I chose a more strength pain that I thought I couldn’t handle, but I surprised myself that I could become emotionally stronger.
As Dr. DiGangi says,
“When it comes to a difficult situation in your life, you really only have two options: walk away from it or grow stronger in the face of it.”
Your nervous system has 150 million years of evolutionary strength. You are built to be handled harshly. Pursue what you want in life it is powerful precisely because it is painful.”
I hope you found this article useful. If you want to know more about Dr. DiGangi’s work, you can find out more here: https://drjuliadigangi.com/. If you’d like to learn more about her upcoming program, ‘The Age of Energy’, you can do so here: https://drjuliadigangi.com/the-age-of-energy/.
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