Pakikiramdam: 4 Insights from Emotions Research
On experiencing, labeling and understanding our feelings towards greater Emotional Agility and Emotional Liberation for self and others
Coming from a workshop on Resilience in the Workplace that I co-organized for Culture First Manila last August 3, it was clear that being able to mindfully express one's emotions can help improve our resilience and wellbeing at work.
This was not completely new to me, given the work I do with Haraya Coaching (and having produced a podcast episode on emotions for The Imaginable Workplace), and our appreciation of the work of Susan David and Lisa Feldman Barrett around emotions.1
What was interesting to me though was how much of that conversation revolved around emotions, and how it felt like we needed more time and space to talk about emotions at work.
This compelled us to organize a Culture First virtual workshop on Emotions at Work on September 20, 6-7:30PM PHT. You can learn more and sign up to join here.
Emotions in our lives
I’m that person who will often cry in movies, I will tear up when I see someone else getting genuinely emotional, and empathy is supposedly my #1 Gallup strength. At the same time, I also know it’s something I also have the capacity to switch off when I don’t want to deal with my emotions. I can shut them off and distract myself with other things.
[Muni-muni muna]
What do you notice about your own default responses to your emotions, internally (physiology, thoughts) and externally (behaviors)?
Generally speaking, when I think about my experience with emotions in the past, I think I would have some default responses in certain situations:
Intrapersonal / within my self: If I’m feeling an emotion that I don’t particularly like feeling in myself, my mental chatter is usually quite judgey, as I imagine is the same for most people. I might chastise myself for feeling a certain way, or acting a certain way that now makes me or another person feel “bad”. I might tell myself I shouldn’t feel this way and I should just get over it and move on, etc. etc. You get the idea.
Interpersonal / with others: When it comes to emotions I feel with another person, I’ve usually allowed myself to feel my feelings and express them honestly, though more often with little processing time “in between stimulus and response”2 in the past, and that’s gotten me into a few pickles. In my personal relationships, I’ve usually been quick to infer and make judgments based on what I think I know about those close to me.
In more recent years, I’ve tried to do more work on myself to actually listen to what my emotions may be telling me, and creating more space (even if it’s just a minute or a matter of seconds) between stimulus and response. And it’s spelled the difference between connection and disconnection, with myself and others. It’s still not “easy”, but with more frequent and mindful practice, I believe I can achieve greater emotional awareness and choice, which will allow me to communicate more compassionately with myself and others.
What knowledge or insights are helping me work towards that?
Emotions in research: 4 insights
#1 “Emotions are data, not directives.”3
According to Susan David, psychologist and author of Emotional Agility4, our emotions exist to inform us that something is important to us. Emotional Agility involves the acceptance that we experience a full range of emotions, and being able to practice flexibility in our thoughts and feelings so we can respond more optimally (or in a more values-aligned manner).
Susan David says: “When we're emotionally rigid, we get hooked by feelings and behaviors that don't serve us. When we're emotionally agile, we're flexible with our emotions in order to respond optimally to everyday situations.”
So, rather than being locked into an emotionally rigid response when some triggering emotions arise, practicing emotional agility allows more options to respond in a way that aligns with how we really want to show up in the world.
Furthermore, emerging evidence reveals that “affect labeling”, or putting feelings into words, is a form of implicit emotion regulation.5 Verbalizing an emotional experience was found to elicit lower levels of emotion rather than factual recollection of the stimulus (i.e. the experience or other person). It also creates a space where we are not fully engaged in the processing of the stimulus that triggered the emotions in the first place.
#2 “What others say and do may be the trigger, but are never the cause of our feelings.”
I’d also heard of Non-Violent Communication (NVC)6 before, but only recently got more exposed to the work of Marshall Rosenberg, psychologist and educator who developed NVC as a practice and movement. It also talks about three stages of relating with others:
Stage 1: Emotional Slavery.
We see ourselves responsible for others’ feelings.
Stage 2: The Obnoxious Stage.
Hehe yes, this is actually what it’s called. While we may feel anger here, and no longer want to be responsible for others’ feelings, we have yet to learn how to be responsible to others in a way that is not emotionally enslaving.
Stage 3: Emotional Liberation.
More than just asserting our own needs, we are able to be with people when they are upset, without taking responsibility for their feelings.
“We respond to the needs of others out of compassion, never out of fear, guilt or shame.” We accept full responsibility for our own intentions and actions, but not the feelings of others.
“We can never meet our own needs at the expense of others.” We clearly state our feelings and needs in a way that communicates that we are equally concerned that the needs of others be fulfilled.
In one Instagram post, organizational psychologist Adam Grant also wrote: “We should hold others accountable for their actions, not the feelings they evoke.”
These thoughts emphasize that when we blame others for our feelings, we give away power. When we take responsibility for our feelings, we claim our power over our feelings. I’ll be writing more about this idea and NVC in a future post, suffice it to say that the above statement is a earth-shaking reminder for me. It connects to the next idea.
#3 “Emotions are built, not built in”.7
Lisa Feldman Barrett, neuroscientist and author of the book How Emotions Are Made8, talks about expressions of emotion are not necessarily as universal as we think they are, and how emotions are predictions. Wait, what? Stick with me for a sec. We experience emotions through associative learning, or making connections from the past. We learn to feel certain feelings depending on associations or patterns we’ve developed through our life experiences.
How? First, we’ll receive some sort of sensory stimuli which can come in two forms:
Interoceptive (derived within the body) - This would include physiological sensations like the tightening of the chest, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, butterflies in the stomach.
Exteroceptive (derived from outside the body) - This might include the sight of your crush (or ex), the smell of rain on freshly cut grass, the taste of your favorite childhood food, the warm summer breeze, your favorite 90’s song coming up on Spotify
And depending on our prior experiences, these stimuli may serve as reinforcers, either as:
Rewards (if we associate them with a desirable, pleasant experience)
Punishers (if we associate them with pain or an unpleasant experience)
Our amygdala processes that stimuli or information by bringing the stimuli to our perceptual awareness, and then connects it to our memories of emotional events. From there, it moves to the orbital medial prefrontal cortex to make sense of emotional learning, interpret social cues, plan appropriate behavior, make a decision on a course of action, and even do some emotional re-learning if the outcome was not to our liking.9
So yes, we are more in control of our emotions than we might think. As she says powerfully in her TED talk: “Sometimes we are responsible for something not because we're to blame but because we're the only ones who can change it.”
#4 Ang pakikiramdam o "shared inner perception" ay ang pagtatangkang maramdaman at maunawaan ang damdamin at intensyon ng kapwa tao.
This is one concept in Sikolohiyang Pilipino, popularized through Filipino psychologist Virgilio Enriquez’s idea of kapwa or an other beyond the self.10 Pakikiramdam comes from combining the words paki and ramdam or damdamin, or a request for feelings, roughly translated. It relates to our sensing and attempt to understand the emotions and intentions (or needs or values) of others.
And I suppose there could be different interpretations of pakikiramdam, with one such interpretation being an overly conscious self in relation to our perception of an overly sensitive other (i.e. the common Filipino concern with what others might say, “Ay nakakahiya, baka kung ano pang isipin o sabihin nila.”; “Hala, baka nagalit siya dahil dun.”; “Kung hindi ko siya i-invite, baka magtampo siya.”; “Nagselos ata siya sa akin kasi ako yung na-promote.”).
And without being academic about what it actually means, I prefer to think of pakikiramdam as a sense of empathy, a desire to understand the feelings and intentions of others, to be able to contribute to fulfilling their needs. I’d like to think that in our more historically collectivist culture, before we became overly preoccupied with the self, we thought more about the other. (i.e. “Ano kaya yung pinagdadaanan niya?”; “Ano kaya yung mahalaga para sa kanya dito kaya niya pinaglalaban?”)
As I come to the end of this post, it feels worth asking myself this question at the end of each day: Did I try my best to interact with others in ways that brought more love and joy rather than pain and suffering?
And by that question, I also ask how much love and joy I’m bringing myself in those interactions as much as I do it for the other person. I don’t enjoy stressful interactions, and I have more power in making them less so.
As evolved as I’d like to think I am in my 38 years on this earth, I am a long way still from being a beacon of compassion and sunshine to all those I meet. This is especially so with family, where I have to emotionally un-learn a lot of predictions I’ve trained my brain to do over the years, and now make new neural pathways for more generous predictions. This heightened knowledge or awareness is power, but more so if I put this pakikiramdam into practice for both myself and others.
Three to four weeks of study, synthesis and reflection has gone into writing this post. I’m feeling relieved to have finally put this out there and hopeful that it has served you in some way if you’re reading until this point. I also have a need for meaning/mattering and connection, and so, I would really appreciate it if you could reach out to let me know that this mattered to you. :)
And if you know someone this might matter to too, feel free to share this post with that person. <3
Susan David authored Emotional Agility, while Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote How Emotions Are Made (available on my favorite e-reader, Perlego). They also have great TED talks online: You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions by Lisa Feldman Barrett, and The gift and power of emotional courage by Susan David, as an easy entry point to their work.
Alluding to the Viktor Frankl quote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
You can check out Susan David’s TED talk in the first footnote.
David, S. (2016). Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. New York: Avery/Penguin Random House.
Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling as Implicit Emotion Regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917742706
Rosenberg, M. B. (2015). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (3rd ed.). PuddleDancer Press.
You can check out Lisa Feldman Barrett’s TED talk in the first footnote too.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
White, L (n.d.) Medical Neuroscience. Duke University: Coursera.org
Pe-Pua, R. and Protacio-Marcelino, E. (2000) Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology) A legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 3(1), 49-71. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-839X.00054