Hacking Your Emotionhal Firewall 1.0

Firewalls are great, they filter out traffic you don't want from the internet. In this talk I'll take a look at what's inside us, at the connection between our body and mind, and imagine a firewall that sits in between. What if we could use the magic of TCP to find disconnected parts of ourselves and connect to them? We would end up experiencing greater wholeness and increased understanding of our minds, bodies, emotions, and motivations. 

Transcript

1. Hacking Your Emotional Firewall v1.0 8/1/2024
2. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io John Sawers Associate Director of Product Engineering at Privia Health https://emotionalapi.com @emotional_api@hachyderm.io he/his/him
3. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io What’s Coming •Station Wagons •Descartes •Firewalls •TCP Handshakes •This One Weird Trick for Successful Therapy •Algorithms For Emotional Connection
4. “I feel like my body is a station wagon in which I drive my brain around, like a suburban mother taking the kids to hockey practice.”[1] — Douglas Coupland, Microserfs
5. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io A Firewall •Let’s imagine there is a fi rewall between our minds and our bodies •Mind on the inside, body on the outside •The cause of the disconnect
6. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Illustration
7. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How A Firewall Works
8. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How A Firewall Works DENY DENY DENY DENY
9. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Taught To Ignore Our Bodies The signals are blocked
10. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How It Gets Built
11. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How It Gets Built •Cleaning Your Plate
12. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How It Gets Built •Cleaning Your Plate •Going To The Bathroom
13. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How It Gets Built •Cleaning Your Plate •Going To The Bathroom •Hugging a Relative
14. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io •Cleaning Your Plate •Going To The Bathroom •Hugging a Relative •Emotions We Don’t Understand or Can’t Process How It Gets Built
15. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io How It Applies To Adults •Overwork •Exploitative Work •Abusive Relationships
16. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io The Solution Is Connection “You will be able to have increased willpower, stronger rationale, and the ability to respond to the present-day situation with behaviors that are most reasonable.”[2] — Dr. Douglas Tataryn
17. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io A Detour Into TCP
18. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Transmission Control Protocol “TCP is connection-oriented, meaning that sender and receiver fi rstly needs to establish a connection based on agreed parameters; they do this through three-way handshake procedure. The server must be listening (passive open) for connection requests from clients before a connection is established.”[3]
19. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io TCP Handshake SYN SYN-ACK ACK
20. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Your Body “Emotional Response s are activated in the body, in response the the world around you.”[4] — Dr. Douglas Tataryn
21. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Body and Society We didn’t start the fi rewall
22. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Descartes No, that’s not him
23. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io “This is Descartes' error: …the separation of the most re fi ned operations of mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism.”[5] —Antonio Damasio
24. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Serotonin The gut provides approximately 95% of total body serotonin[6]
25. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Gut-Brain Axis The gut-brain axis is a bidirectional communication network that links the enteric and central nervous systems. The … nerves within the gastrointestinal tract, all link the gut and the brain, allowing the brain to in fl uence intestinal activities, including activity of functional immune effector cells; and the gut to in fl uence mood, cognition, and mental health.[6]
26. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io HOWTO Connect To Our Bodies How do we overcome this conditioning that tells us our bodies are separate? How do we overcome the alienation of these parts of ourselves? How do we receive the valuable messages from disconnected parts?
27. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Peeking Around The Firewall
28. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io I found a good algorithm Two, actually.
29. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io NEDERA The Nedera Process is resonance-based emotional processing. Emotional responses are activated in the body, in response to the world around you. You then interpret those emotions through your unique, personal lens of interpretation, and create a story about what it means and how you should react to it.[7] — Dr. Douglas Tataryn
30. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Focusing Created by Dr. Eugene Gendlin, Focusing is a process that integrates feeling and thinking, body and mind.
31. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io The Felt Sense •The determining factor in therapeutic success •Body Based •Compassionate •A Learnable Skill
32. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io My TODO List
33. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Focusing 1. Clear a space 1. Space cleared
34. 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN Focusing
35. 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN Focusing 1. Space cleared 2. Felt Sense appears
36. 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense 3. Finding a handle @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN Focusing
37. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io 1. Space cleared 2. Felt Sense appears 3. Handle: Spikey Iron Ball 4. Worthless, then a shift 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense 3. Finding a handle 4. Resonating 5. Asking 6. Receiving SYN-ACK SYN ACK Focusing
38. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN-ACK SYN 1. Space cleared 2. Felt Sense appears 3. Handle: Spikey Iron Ball 4. Worthless, then a shift 5. Powerless, then a shift 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense 3. Finding a handle 4. Resonating 5. Asking 6. Receiving ACK Focusing
39. 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense 3. Finding a handle 4. Resonating 5. Asking 6. Receiving @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN-ACK SYN ACK 1. Space cleared 2. Felt Sense appears 3. Handle: Spikey Iron Ball 4. Worthless, then a shift 5. Powerless, then a shift 6. Hopeless, then a shift Focusing
40. 1. Clear a space 2. Felt sense 3. Finding a handle 4. Resonating 5. Asking 6. Receiving @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN-ACK SYN ACK 1. Space cleared 2. Felt Sense appears 3. Handle: Spikey Iron Ball 4. Worthless, then a shift 5. Powerless, then a shift 6. Hopeless, then a shift 7.“I can never succeed”, then a shift Focusing
41. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io ACK
42. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io SYN City
43. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io What’s Next There are great things ahead for you when you do this work. Purpose, wholeness, con fi dence The Bodymind, this treatment of the body as an essential part of the self is a part of many different therapeutic approaches, because it works.
44. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Paths Forward: Focusing Focusing is an experiential, embodied and evidence-based practice of self-re fl ection.[8] https://focusing.org/
45. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Paths Forward: Bio-Emotive The Bio-Emotive Framework advocates for the healthy acknowledgement, understanding, and expression of emotions, for all people.[9] https://bioemotiveframework.com/
46. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Paths Forward: Polyvagal Polyvagal Theory emphasizes the role the autonomic nervous system plays in regulating our health and behavior.[10] https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/
47. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Paths Forward: Somatics Somatic Therapy holds that the body is a largely untapped resource for psychotherapy[11] https://somatics.org/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/somatic-therapy
48. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io Internal Family Systems: combines systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities.[12] https://ifs-institute.com/ Paths Forward: IFS
49. @emotional_api@hachyderm.io TCP is connection-oriented
50. Be Like TCP Be Connection-Oriented
51. Hacking Your Emotional Firewall Thank You So Much! https://emotionalapi.com/after-the- fi rewall-talk/ •References •Slides •Videos, including “Hacking Your Emotional API” •Links •Workshops Visit this link for: