Emotion, Change, and Other Verbs

Over the years, I’ve written with and interviewed many relationship counselors. One of them just told me a story that broke my heart—and then unbroke it. I will tell you upfront that a few of the details have been changed to protect the families involved, but the soul of the story carries through.

A wealthy co-owner of a business died instantly when a truck slid into his car in a rainstorm. His wife and children had no injuries, other than the sharp pain of loss. They grieved, but they had each other and kept moving forward with family and friends.

It wasn’t so easy for the man’s business partner. They made deals together. They golfed together. They drank a little too much bourbon together at times. They were best friends and confidantes.

The business partner I’ll call Will sought counseling with my therapist colleague—but not until he experienced his own kind of death. His relationship with his wife deteriorated rapidly after the tragic accident. His touches and kisses had no heat; they were part of a routine rather than expressions of love and devotion. His employees found him distant. His golfing buddies wanted a different fourth because he just didn’t care where his ball landed.

But it was his concern over the state of his marriage that troubled him most and ultimately drove him to a therapist.

His core issue was that he felt he didn’t deserve love. The one person who had consistently made him feel competent and deserving of reward was his business partner. When he died, Will looked around at his family, friends, and employees, and felt overwhelmed by their displays of affection he felt he was unworthy of.

Will was a man of action and his therapist recognized that and used it to help him reconnect with his wife and other loved ones. He needed to experience his interaction with people as something more than a passive acceptance of their caring.

Will’s “love muscles” needed to wake up and get moving.

Emotionally-focused therapist (EFT) Trevor Mullineau and I shared an important thought related to this with readers in Forging Healthy Connections:

Emotion originates and is experienced throughout the body. In contrast, it’s common to think of emotion as something that emanates from one portion of the brain and then affects the body. That view limits a person’s ability to understand why attachments are truly a full-bodied experience. (Forging Healthy Connections, pg. 25)

Psychiatrist Daniel Siegel suggests that we should think of emotion as a verb—not a noun—in his essay “Emotion as Integration: A Possible Answer to the Question, What is Emotion?” Here is what he said that helped the therapist communicate with Will:

Emotion is not a noun, but rather a verb. It may be useful to sit with this thought that emotion is a verb for a moment. Emotion-related words and concepts are active processes, not fixed entities. Seeing emotion as a verb opens our mind to a fluid, moving mechanism that acts, changes, transforms. (The Healing Power of Emotion, 148-249)

Will practiced absorbing and assimilating the love his wife and others showed him instead of just responding to it. He integrated it into physical being, allowing himself to feel good—literally. The ultimate result meant deepened connections with the people around him, most importantly his wife.

For this article, Trevor added:

Relating to emotion as a verb isn’t necessarily an overnight transformation. It’s possible to experience a shift in state in which you take in a feeling, but it doesn’t change you. Ideally, emotion can be seen as the action that takes love in and makes it work inside you—it changes your sense of well-being and even your health for the better. [Trevor Mullineaux is an emotionally-focused therapist based in Connecticut.]

Happily, our brains are neuroplastic, meaning we can rewire or grow safe, healthy, and more satisfying connections in our brains through positive experiences with those around us.

I use the word “experience” explicitly to underline that you can’t change by just talking about change. You have to do something different. When you behave differently, your experience will change, leading to a shift in how you feel—and that is how you rewire your brain.

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Being aware of when things are going well, when you feel safe and connected, stopping and book-marking that experience is important. And to further your progress, tell the person responsible how good your interaction made you feel! That will amplify your positive new neurological pathway.