Читать книгу Beyond Emotional Intelligence - S. Michele Nevarez - Страница 23

While there are many neuroscientists engaged in researching how our emotions intersect with what we understand about the brain, I am most familiar with and take my lead from Richie Davidson's work. And though I've only recently become acquainted with Lisa Feldman Barrett's research, she makes an extremely compelling case in her book How Emotions Are Made for the constructed basis of emotions in which she covers vast territory between the historical and current understanding of the human brain, emotion, and perception itself (Barrett, 2017). Her departure from classical notions of emotion processed by a triune model of the brain in favor of a whole brain, constructed view of emotions, resonates with my own assessment of where we have wherewithal and say in the rather complex process of perception and interpretation.⁴ She offers readers both a novel and sophisticated articulation of a topic we've had the collective tendency to misunderstand—despite the feeling I had at times like I was wearing an itchy, wool sweater as I had to inch my way out of positions no longer tenable. Meanwhile, my head has been left delightfully spinning as I continue to contemplate and puzzle the practical implications of her brilliant work. Had it not been for me rescuing her book from the bookshelf where it had been peering out at me for well over a year, whispering “read me,” the one you're reading now would likely not have had the richness nor depth of scientific understanding to lend to the practical insights and observations underlying the methods I've spent the past six years developing to train our coaches and clients to operationalize EI within their own lives.

And though I'm not a neuroscientist nor have I been able to visit with her yet about her work—though I'd very much like to—I'm admittedly flying a bit by the seat of my pants. I've done my best to synthesize and integrate key insights from her research into how I'm thinking about my own work and theories as they continue to evolve and mature, not to mention how I'm parsing the science with my own understanding of the nature of reality relative to my Buddhist practice. It has been both remarkable and entertaining for me to see the notable parallels between the latest neuroscientific findings on perception and emotion and the insights I've gleaned from having studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism for more than half of my life—that and the uncanny overlap with certain themes from the remake of Battlestar Galactica, a television series my boyfriend coerced me into watching at the outset of the pandemic, which I'm now completely hooked on. All this is to say, let this serve as my apology in advance if I've missed the mark in any way in my attempts to explore the practical implications of any of the scientific insights I've tried to incorporate along with her absolutely remarkable contribution to how we conceive of our own emotions. Now, let's look at both schools of thought on emotion, the classical and constructed views, summarized by me in my own words as she portrays each in her book.