Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: Can you even think at all while an emotion has hold of you? Dr. Yasemin Yazan, Marc, Jürgen and Sonja untangle emotion, feeling, instinct and intuition as four genuinely different things — from the four F’s of freeze, fight, flight and flock to how deliberate training can quietly rewire a firefighter’s or a public speaker’s fastest reactions…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning I wish you all. Today we continue with thinking, emotion and intuition, and want to engage with the question of to what extent emotions and intuitions have an influence on our thinking, or rather, influence our thinking. And so you’re all really, really warmly invited again this morning to join in, bring in various thoughts, impulses, and gladly also open up concrete examples, so we can then look together, in exchange, at what arises from that. Today too a recording is being made again, and everyone who joins is automatically agreeing that the whole thing will also be published. We have three small room rules, first a profile picture where you’re recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in the bio, and anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, would like to stay anonymous, or can’t speak right now, can as always simply use the chat to bring in one thing or another. So: thinking, emotion and intuition, to what extent do emotion and intuition influence our thinking. We want to look at that together today, and accordingly I’ll gladly mute myself now to see who’d like to open the round with me this morning. A very good morning, dear Marc, and your first thoughts on that.
Good morning to the group, and a wonderful start to the week to you all. Yes, I know, dear Yasemin, you announced that under the overarching topic of thinking we’ll also get to acting, and I just can’t help but separate that. So I thought about emotion and intuition, and came to the conclusion for myself, which we’d had several times too, that feelings, so emotions, determine my state, whether I’m happy or sad, and contribute extremely to my quality of life. That already has big effects on me personally. It doesn’t have further effects at first, only once I get into acting. And when I get into acting, when I do something, so when I act out of the emotion or out of the intuition, then I’ve found for myself that it’s important that the rational analysis also comes into it, has to come in for me, and also the critical thinking, ideally also in exchange with others, in case I’m not able in the moment to engage with something critically or rationally, because otherwise the action strands triggered by the emotion or also the intuition can turn out one way or another. There’s also, like with everything in life, no right or wrong, but if I get into acting, so once it has a bigger effect than just on my state of mind — and I don’t want to say with that that the state of mind isn’t important — then I have to think about it differently, as soon as this emotion or intuition leads into an action. As long as I only think about something, the only result is, I feel good or I feel bad.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much, and I just saw that Jürgen would also like to join directly, so let me bring him in already too. Jürgen, a very good morning. What do you say to that?
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Hello, Marc and everyone else in the room. I’d like to try to set an initial with two theses. Right up front, logically, on today’s key terms, intuition and emotion. And if I may start with intuition, then intuition, as a definition, is for me nothing other than a multiple repetition of something experienced, already experienced and lived. And quite crucially, besides the number and frequency of how often I’ve experienced something and it imprints itself, there’s also the corresponding feedback I got for it, and with regard to this intuition, basically reinforced. Basically it’s, how should I put it, from both sides a kind of learning process that internalizes itself, both positively and negatively. And this intuition, for me, sorry if I’m talking a bit choppily now — but this intuition is, for me, therefore not something that floats around in the nebulous, but if you go into reflection, you’ll notice — or I’ve noticed, I don’t want to impute this to anyone — that it really is recruited from experiential knowledge, and through corresponding feedback and mostly positive feedback like praise, internalizes itself as a thinking alternative for us. It’s also often a term that has to serve equally for that, besides intuition, this gut feeling. And so my thesis there, I say, is it’s not a feeling, but a learned and reinforced behavior. And when you’re at the gut feeling, that’s a good bridge to the second term, namely emotion. We talk about gut feeling, but we don’t talk about emotion. That means, for me, we’d already had this topic once, dear Yasemin, in some room, this distinction between differentiating emotion and feeling. And for me both aren’t synonyms, but they differ quite significantly, and also quite significantly take different influence on our thinking. They take influence, I’ll postulate that now, but I’ll repeat myself, especially at different points in time and with different resultant quantities. And now a third position occurs to me. Sorry if I seem a bit confused now, but the third position is, these two terms influence our thinking. But the thinking also influences these two terms, in my view. So now there would be three theses. Sorry, as I said, apologies again that I sound a bit scattered. But I hope I was able to set the initial. Thanks for listening, dear ones.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so, so much. Before we continue, maybe you’d like to briefly — I found that relatively briefly explained with regard to the distinction between emotions and feelings, not using it as a synonym — maybe say a bit more about that, I’d find that wonderful. And then we can gladly also, against the background of the aspects you brought up, pick up something else too, to check as a thesis. Not just looking at the interactions, so to speak, in one direction or the other, what influences what, but also letting something else flow in, like, how is it even possible, for example, to think when emotions are currently in play, or when feelings are currently in play, or when an intuition arises, Jürgen?
Yes, then let me go to the first sub-area of your question, if I understood it correctly, namely the conceptual distinction, why I make a distinction there. And specifically, emotions are for me, or reduce to reactions, to physical sensations. So a typical emotion for me is this conscious knot in the stomach, when you notice something contracting. I also feel, if you’ve developed the corresponding sensitivity, that suddenly my heart starts racing. Or a spontaneous laugh also belongs to emotion for me. The marker of the essential delimitation then to feeling is, for me, that it’s induced in us, and it’s therefore, I think, worldwide the same and universal, because through jokes people all over the world start to laugh, and in very specific situations of stress, or of fear or dread, everyone in this world starts to have their body think along and switch to emergency mode. And that’s emotions for me. The feeling, the essential difference is, that I consciously analyze these emotions when I notice, now my pump is starting to race, and I conclude this analysis with an interpretation and also an evaluation of the emotion. That I say, this heart racing or heartbeat, that’s not because I’m scared now, but because I’ve physically exerted myself especially, for example. For me, this conscious, in contrast to this more unconsciously, subconsciously laid-out emotional, this conscious — the expression, I have a feeling. We do say, I have such a feeling, we don’t say, I have such an emotion, I have such a feeling, that’s actually the clearest expression for me, because it implies that I’ve definitely already gone within myself, reflected, and noticed, aha, there’s something, and where does that come from now. And what also represents a very essential difference for me — feeling often also has, at least as I see it, an interplay with memories. That I relatively spontaneously reflect on the situation, I notice something that moves me, that I consciously reflect and say, where have I had this before, with which situation does this connect. But I don’t want to elaborate on that any longer now. But the essential thing, if I had to boil it down to one point, I’d say emotion is more or less physically laid out in the unconscious, while feelings require a becoming-conscious and an interpretation. That would be my position on that. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Marc, what do you say to that?
First of all, I’d like to say to Jürgen, there’s absolutely no reason to apologize. This is such a complex topic, and if you could just casually shake that off, and Yasemin too, that would rather worry me, because I also notice while speaking that so many words, terminology, shoot through my head, and that you also stumble a bit, that calms me a lot and also gives me a good feeling, dear Jürgen. I can follow your explanations, where I hooked, I don’t want to repeat everything, but where I hooked was on the topic of intuition, and there it became clear to me again how I get stuck on individual words. For me, intuition, again I’ll repeat with my word, with my understanding, for me intuition is a learned falling-back on experience. You briefly called intuition a learning process. That’s where I started to stop, that’s where I had a knot in my head again, because intuition is much, much faster than thinking about it. It comes straight to the gut. I don’t have time for a learning process. Intuition is for me — I saw a demonstration over the weekend, there was a protest against, these were Iranians who were demonstrating, and I said to my partner, I’d like to look at that, and want to say what’s on the signs, the intuition, my gut feeling was immediately, there’s no danger threatening there. The same demonstration with football fans from two different groups, I wouldn’t have thought about it, I would have immediately taken the other direction. Without thinking about it, without learning anything, I would have immediately fallen back on existing experiences that this can’t end well for me, that it’s not good. And that’s why I’ve distinguished for myself — maybe these are just words you didn’t mean that way, but intuition is for me not a learning process, but a really fast reaching for already-learned or already-experienced things. And emotions, there I currently have the difficulty, and maybe another knot in the head, separating the word “emotion” from feelings, because both words are used simultaneously by people who say, I’m emotionally agitated, or I have strong feelings. There the separation is a bit hard for me right now. I’d just like to gladly answer the question Yasemin asked, can emotions influence our thinking. Of course emotions can influence our thinking, namely the rational. Because emotions distort our perception. And what’s important for me is always, in this room, that it doesn’t sound too scientific, but what can I take away for myself every day, always noticing, when someone speaks, when someone tells us something, especially in politics, emotions are the greatest power to steer our thinking. Because if I manage to address emotions, then the content doesn’t matter as much anymore, but then I have the possibility to consciously guide people with this — if I can master emotions, I can steer people. And they don’t switch on the brain then, but they’re easier to direct in a certain direction.
Yes, thank you so, so much. I’ll bring in maybe one or another impulse now too. Then we can also look at how that relates again to the distinctions. We could basically also speak of basic emotions, something like joy or fear as basic emotions, which then ultimately, so to speak, can also be distinguished in that respect. They’re basically innate, they’re “laid out” in us. We’ve said again and again, for example, that it’s ultimately about, for example, securing existence. That means, with the stimuli that arrive, it’s always checked immediately, is this something threatening. If it’s something threatening, then I have the emotion of fear, a child for example doesn’t have to learn that first, but it’s basically already instinctively laid out. And then we have something like — we often describe, for example, various effects that we feel correspondingly in the body. So the feeling of the emotion, so what lies behind it, and emotion is something that lies behind it, basically hard to determine. And the recording is based almost exclusively on mostly verbal reports. Actions accompanying the emotion, like for example flight or attack, so there we have the reactions, and the autonomic reactions, like for example changes in pulse, blood pressure, or skin resistance, that can be measured very, very well. But so far there’s also no clear assignment of the measured values, for example, to the individual emotions. That means, we can, for example, measure something that’s there as a reaction of the body. We can describe what we feel, so verbally, but don’t necessarily know which emotion underlies it, so really being able to assign it causally 100 percent. Would anyone like to add to that?
Gladly, Marc. I just looked something up for help, entered the terms emotion and anger, and now it’s sometimes so clear, the knot has burst. Emotions, as you described perfectly, are anger, fear, and rage, and feelings — Jürgen said that too, I think — feelings are already conscious experience. There I already know why I make something funny. I already know why I’m angry. But emotion is first alone, that’s how I understand it now. If I laugh, that’s an emotion. And if tears run down my face, that’s already an emotion too. And about feelings, that’s already, I’ve already thought about that, I’ve already reflected, why does this make me cry, why does this make me laugh. So the difference for me now, as I’ve newly learned this, feeling is a conscious experience, conscious, so I’m aware of it, and an emotion, which of course can also occur like that, when I suddenly have fear, I don’t think about why I’m afraid now. That’s there as fast as intuition, so within milliseconds I notice that something scares me or that something delights me, and in that moment I’m not thinking about it yet. So conscious, more or less emotions are then unconscious immediate reactions, and feelings conscious reactions, so conscious experience. Yes Jürgen, gladly you can add to that again at this point.
Yes thank you, sorry if I say this a bit flatly now, but I think it’s completely irrelevant which conscious physical status I assign to which emotion, with regard to thinking, mind you. Because I assume that it’s decisive how we, through our past experience, have connected these emotional expressions like laughing, like crying, like heart pounding, or such, with some experience value here up in our control center. Because I think that’s probably scientifically established by now, that exactly these emotions basically represent the brain’s short-term offer to react to a very specific situation. So a very fast, intuitive acting out of the emotion. And that’s what I think I briefly addressed earlier too, the essential distinction toward feeling is simply and plainly the time. Because to think, to become aware, what does this emotion mean now, what kind of feeling is this, where does it come from, have I experienced this before, or however I put it, this whole consciousness process, that takes longer, in order to then get into acting. That’s the starting point for me to say, first explore how an emotion is, do I now classify this — I don’t want to make this ridiculous, but how do I classify that? So from my experiential background it’s definitely not conscious to me that I do something like that, but the big danger I see in myself — I say this consciously now about myself — is that I act very quickly precisely on this emotion, so as not to take the time to check it logically, cognitively, think it through, and then act. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much. I’ll add another impulse, and then we’ll gladly bring in Sonja too. Maybe it helps if I play a bit more with the terms. So we could try again to distinguish between intuitive acting out of feeling, and instinctive acting out of emotion. Sonja, I’ll just leave that standing for now and bring you in first. A very good morning.
A very good morning. It’s really exciting that you now bring up the term instinct again,
because that also triggered something in me earlier. But I’ll still try to push it aside for a moment and put another thought in the foreground. Because I noticed that the term feeling is often picked up by you all. But it doesn’t appear at all in the title of the room. The title of the room is “Thinking, Emotion and Intuition,” and yet you’re trying to distinguish between emotion and feeling, probably because it’s also easier to philosophize a bit about that. I don’t know why that is, but I noticed it. And then I thought about, what are my thoughts on emotion and intuition. And there I first come to the distinction between our autonomic nervous system and our somatic nervous system. And briefly for the terminology: the autonomic nervous system is something we can’t voluntarily steer. Those are automatic reactions and processes that our body handles for us. And we usually, no, not just usually, we have no direct influence on the autonomic nervous system. Indirectly yes, but directly no. And that’s exactly where I’d place emotion, in the autonomic nervous system. And it makes use of the somatic nervous system. And the somatic nervous system — soma is the body — is everything we feel. So the sensory, those are sensitive nerve fibers that send information to our brain, or to the central nervous system, that we do something with. But before the body doesn’t come into play, we have no chance at all to understand anything from outside. And I find that really exciting. When I think of emotions, then I assume that we have an autonomic reaction to a physical sensation that we can’t steer. And intuition, for me, is the sum of all these repeated experiences we have both with these physical reactions, and also — and now the thinking comes in — also what we’ve cognitively done with it, the thinking. And that’s this interplay between the automatic and the conscious, or the interpreted. There the thinking builds the bridge between emotion and intuition. And through thinking we also have the possibility to change intuition and give it a different character, by looking at previous experiences from a different perspective. And that’s something I find unique, or at least I find it fantastic. Whether it’s unique, I don’t know. We always say only humans can do this to this extent. So really know — I don’t know if we can really know that. In any case we’re very capable of doing that, and reflecting on all of that, and looking at it from completely different angles. And I find that mega exciting, because through that we have the possibility to influence areas of our physical processes that are actually not accessible at all. But via the bridge of thinking we can still get there. I’ll leave that standing in the room for now. Instinct, I want to briefly pick that up too. That’s something where, from my view, thinking isn’t involved at all. That’s really a reflex-like process chain that also can’t be changed by thinking. That’s an instinct that guides us and is innate. It’s also present when we can’t think yet. Like for example, that a baby automatically seeks and also finds the mother’s nipple, to nourish itself. That’s an instinct. There the baby doesn’t have to think, to go into very early times of our development. So, and now I’ll hand back the stage. I’m curious what’s said.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much also for addressing instinct last, because I actually would have asked this question now too, where you’d ultimately locate instinct in this interplay too, or among the terms. If you say instinct is reflex-like, and certain basic emotions are also, so to speak, laid out in us, so from birth, so to speak, laid in the cradle, then I’d like to ask again, how does that relate to instinct?
Yes, Sonja, gladly. With instinct, I’d say it’s a program we already get delivered with when we come into the world, and with intuition it’s a program we can still keep writing. I think that describes it well in the analogy.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Marc, Jürgen, would you like to add or pick up something here and thereby further spin the original thoughts that arose, and in which direction we can now look at the whole thing in this interplay too. Marc, gladly.
Thank you so, so much, especially for the last word, dear Sonja, that intuition, that’s the experience values, and we can also co-determine those. That occurs to me, because Jürgen called it a learned behavior and a learning process. And since I decide myself what I learn, based on the thinking and the information I make accessible to myself, I can of course at some point also influence my intuition through new experiential processes I’ve made. And instinct, I can absolutely follow that. Instinct is of course also things that help us humans. I can’t think of an example quickly, but I understand the distinction you made there, between intuition — there we still have the possibility to work on it, so we can still change or improve our intuition, because that’s a learning process. And instincts are given, that makes sense to me. And what I also particularly liked, you first said, or started with, about the topic of emotions, effects we can’t steer, but then ended with saying that we’re very much able to steer emotions, or also feelings, namely through rational analysis and critical thinking. And what’s important for me always, when we’re in conversation with other people, when we watch the news and so on, is that emotion is such a strong factor in steering us. And if we’re always aware of that, and then really press a stop button in our head and say, what’s actually happening with me right now — understanding these processes, is my ratio speaking now? Is this really rational? Is this really all objectively and critically clearly thought through, and can I underline all of that, or am I letting emotions take over? And it’s mostly the case, and I can’t exempt myself from that either, that if someone does that skillfully and invites me on a journey where they address my emotions, my feelings, and maybe also my gut feeling, and the rational analysis gets completely switched off, plus the critical thinking, then I might come to decisions that turn out later to not be good for me. Jürgen, would you like to add to that again?
Yes, thank you. If I interpret that correctly, we basically have a consensus, at least on the meta-level, about what the understanding of intuition is, especially, dear Marc, your repeated references to experience values, where I say, yes, to experience values, but with increased frequency in the past and ideally positive feedback, that it settles as an alternative for action. And on the other hand, dear Sonja, yes, that was also the meaning and purpose, that feeling didn’t appear in this title, and that I said, if we talk about emotions, then we also have to talk about feelings. And I see it right now such that we definitely have the essential thing as a common consensus, whether we now subsume the whole thing under the roof of emotion and the terminology. But the essential thing, and I’ll gladly say more about that if necessary, is that both trigger a different way and manner of thinking, especially on the timeline. And that’s, for me, that’s still my position, and that’s why I gladly make this distinction into two terms, because for me they’re two kinds of thinking. Thank you.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Also with the timeline, we can look more closely at that now too. Maybe let’s try with the question to get back into thinking again. Is emotion and thinking even possible at the same time at all? So can we think when emotions are currently in play? What do you say to that? Marc, Jürgen, Sonja. Sonja, gladly.
Yes, you already asked that earlier, and I definitely wanted to say something to that, and then it got lost again. So great that you repeat the question. I don’t have a clear answer to that, but I have an idea about it. Just because of the speed, so the speed of signal transmission, I’d say that emotion is definitely always a bit ahead of thinking in time. But since that happens in such small dimensions, or such fast dimensions, it feels like simultaneously. And it very much depends on the kind of emotion, whether it’s possible for us in practice — it’s felt as simultaneous — whether it’s possible for us to still think then. There are very, very much situations where thinking only becomes really possible through feeling. Because if we don’t develop a feeling for something, how are we supposed to be able to make a decision and evaluate a conversation such that we know in which direction we want to continue the conversation, or a situation? In my view it’s even essentially necessary, to be capable of action, that emotions and thinking play together hand in hand. I’m curious what you say to that. Because yes, it’s a mega exciting question. Super.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Yes, Marc, gladly.
Yes, I’d like to answer that with a clear yes. Thinking has nothing to do with right or wrong thinking. And we had that topic — thinking and reflecting are two different processes. And we can think with emotions. And exactly that, I’ll repeat it, is exactly what’s consciously used by the person opposite us. Whoever has understood the power of how we think, whoever has understood the power of how emotions are awakened, they steer people. And the same thing happened with Brexit, where people are told, among other things, they didn’t think, they’re not all stupid. But if I say to someone, if we exit the EU, then we save eight billion into a health system — because what does it matter to me as a Brit whether the Greek is healthy? We can put that money into English, into British hospitals. Then people afterward think, what he’s saying, he’s probably right, then let’s do that too. But that has nothing to do with reflection. With critical thinking, with an analysis, and with critical questioning, he’s right, and that happens in all areas of life. We can observe that everywhere. That’s consciously used, especially right now here in Germany, when money gets tight. We know that very, very many pensioners — I’ll stop with politics too, just as an example, because it’s really so centrally important for me — we know that many pensioners are threatened by poverty, and if I then say, if the money migrates into other channels, for example into some refugees, whether economic or political — if money gets used there, while the German runs, so can’t buy bread, then people think about it and say, yes, he’s right. They think, but they only think about themselves. There’s no critical questioning of what responsibility we have, but we definitely just think, thinking and reflecting, those are two different areas for me. And when we think with emotions, or think with feelings, then this word sets in, which for me is the most important, the most important stop-button — the rational analysis, really getting out of the emotional area again with rational analysis, helicopter perspective. Is what I’m thinking there correct? Is that really completely analyzed? Can I follow every point? Or am I now on the way with great mood, with butterflies in my stomach? Both good butterflies, both good feelings, and bad or bad feelings. But thinking doesn’t imply that the result I have through thinking is really right or wrong, but that gives us first of all a good feeling. And through feelings, everyone gets steered after all.
Yes, gladly, Jürgen, and then Sonja again.
You asked whether you can even think at all when you’re in an emotional position or disposition. And I say, I’m convinced, yes. Because this emotion is one of the stimuli. You can remember, we had this topic, perception as the initial for the thinking process. And I, for myself, define emotion, and especially emotion, as one of the essential trigger points to get into thinking. And then my philosophy is that our thinking apparatus up there falls into two big sub-areas. Namely one that says, look here, I have a solution. You’ve actually experienced this before. And through my connections and links I hand you an alternative in the millisecond range. And the second sub-area, and there we’re at the timeline, requires a certain time delay, namely to think, to question. So not to absorb the information and the initial unchecked, but to question it. And so, for me, I’ll repeat this, especially emotion, this sensory signal, is actually the prototype for me to get into thinking. And we’ve often talked about it, dear Yasemin, you’ve also often really hammered this into us — our brain is separated toward efficiency, toward energy-saving. Thinking, constructive, logical thinking at stage 2 uses considerably more energy than accepting this first offer and saying, yes indeed, I’ve recognized it, I accept the emotion, I act this way and that. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Especially also this downstream thinking on the second level, so to speak. I’d like to, before I give Sonja the floor, set another impulse, to also give the possibility to build on this again here. Flight, attack and freeze, for example, as a certain reaction of the body to acute stress situations. Here we can maybe think again about what actually happens there, and where exactly this thinking is located. Is it the thinking first, or alternatively we could now also say, we’ve also already talked about decisions, for example, where we said there’s already agreement that a very large share is initially made up by emotion, and everything that comes afterward, on the cognitive level, is downstream, so to speak. And there I’m curious what Sonja says to that, regardless of what you already wanted to say anyway, Sonja.
Yes, basically my contribution has almost already resolved itself, because Jürgen himself already brought up the keyword “fast thinking, slow thinking.” Because that’s what I wanted to come back to. That thinking does indeed also mean that we already think on a very energetically low level too. That’s the intuitive thinking. So what first comes to mind, of which we say, that’s plausible, that’s a correct answer, I don’t need to dive in extensively there, I already know. Often we don’t know at all then, but we have the feeling of having everything under control and everything in view. And only when we’re ready to really dive deep and question that, does the actual thinking process, the exciting thinking process, only then get set in motion. And in my conviction, emotion is essential for us to be able to get into this deeper state of thinking at all. So if we now bring in the term interoception, the inner perception, the perception of the inside, and the evaluation of the perception of the environment together, so if we bring that into play, then we have a brain area that plays very strongly into the area of resilience, and the ability to cope with stress. And also with the possibility that we suppress impulses that come up, that we don’t react directly to them. And for this not-reacting-directly, our ratio, our frontal lobe, our — well, it doesn’t matter, the area we connect with the ratio, that just has to be very active. And if we don’t train that, then the impulses come through, and we only make use of this slow thinking. From the definition, we then think, but it’s actually a reacting to the emotions, that’s little controlled, little steered. And real control doesn’t exist at all, in my conviction, anyway. There’s only the possibility to take influence, but we really can’t control it, because the emotion is there whether we want it or not.
Yes, thank you so, so much, and maybe it also makes a difference what kind of emotions those are, for example. So maybe we switch on thinking differently and distinctly here too, also in speed and in the possibilities we have, whether it’s about something like joy, or whether it’s a threatening situation that comes with fear, where it’s about survival. That’s why I’d picked up acute stress situations again. There we possibly also get into the area of thinking blocks. We also have, I’d like to mention that here again, a room where we’ll also look at thinking blocks again for deepening. But maybe we can
also include this distinction here again. Maybe it’s not a general sentence we can formulate here. Marc, Jürgen, you also wanted to say something about that. You first, and then gladly Jürgen.
You just used the word attack. I can’t remember the connection anymore, but defense immediately occurred to me. And now I’m coming again with a practical example from partnership. When our partner says to us, you never listen to me, we only do what you want, just as an example, you never listen to me — then I’ve also caught myself immediately going into attack, into defense. That’s not even true. Or with something else. We automatically go into a defensive mode, and it’s quite interesting when we think about it, or when in certain situations — that would then be the intuition, experience values that Jürgen also hinted at — how we then deal with such situations in the future, by saying, how do you get to that, and that’s exciting, and I do that for example, to take the entrepreneur’s standpoint, when a customer says, that didn’t go well, I’m totally annoyed now, that you then first say to the customer, yes, I feel exactly the same way. The person opposite isn’t used to this reaction, because we’ve constantly learned, to save our face, that we have apologies. The goods arrive late because the shipping company is at fault, because Covid is at fault. But the customer isn’t interested in that. If he calls me, he’s annoyed, then he wants to let off his anger, then he doesn’t want to hear an apology. All my apologies, they’re plausible, they’re rational, but that’s not why the person is calling me. He’s just really angry, because he’s waiting for his things. And if I then behave completely differently and say, yes, I would too, I feel exactly the same way, then the balloon has burst. And then afterward, once the balloon has burst, so once you manage to find a valve so the other person can also let their emotions run free, also not say they’re not correct, but that they’re exactly right, as you have them — and once the other person’s emotions have somewhat subsided, then you can continue the conversation quite normally, and achieve very, very different results, both professionally and in partnership.
A nice example you brought up. Thank you so, so much. Jürgen.
Yes, I wanted to go back once more to these famous 4 F’s laid out in us since ancient times, and hold a brief speech for, or against, devaluing this — I don’t want to impute this to anyone here in the room, but it’s also important for me to not underestimate the value of this thinking on an emotional basis, or even doubt that this is thinking. And now comes a topic we’ve already had more often — from the initial to trigger this perception that triggers thinking, a decision follows, namely “flock” — sorry, freeze, fight or flight, so these four famous F’s laid out in us. What happened in between? A thinking process, but not a conscious one, but our body took over the thinking. And we’ve had this topic before, I think two or three times, the body thinks along. And that’s, for me, the essential point, besides some others that come along too, but that’s actually the essential point, this reactive, this associative, fast thinking before a logical and cognitive questioning. That there, for me, in my interpretation, a thinking process takes place. But this thinking process is steered by the body and not by our conscious, cognitive questioning. Thank you.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Would anyone like to add to that here? Gladly Sonja.
Yes, I’d like to question that just a tiny bit, because I do believe that we can also consciously think along, even when we’re only underway with this System 1. We believe we’ve questioned it, and take this first offer as a good answer or a good decision, when we’re not ready to dive deeper. So it’s indeed a bit more than just the body. So I just want to expand it a bit. But otherwise I agree with you, Jürgen, on everything there.
I’d like to ask again about that. If you’re in an acute, threatening situation, thinking — because you say there, that’s more than the body, in quotation marks. It’s clear that these processes are of course again steered via our brain. That means, but the question is, whether that’s cognitive thinking at that point? Sonja, gladly.
So in the emergency situation, there I think it’s not cognitive thinking. That would be very hindering if we first analyze, do we run left, do we run right, but then we simply have to run and not think about it. But there are also areas that don’t necessarily mean life and death, but are indeed perceived as threatening, or simply as too exhausting if we engage with it more deeply. These situations too basically set, or use, System 1, this quite flat, first, intuitive thinking. And there we already believe we have the feeling of reflecting a bit, but don’t really do it. And we often notice that from the fact that in the moment someone questions it, we feel totally stressed that this person is questioning it, because then we’re forced to also involve System 2, then we have to really think and consider, and no longer just so reflex-like. That’s the small area where I do believe that thinking and the illusion of conscious thinking also takes place, but it’s basically a reaching for a repertoire we’ve laid out for ourselves for such cases, and that’s not a deep dive.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so, so much. Jürgen wanted to add to that again too.
Yes, especially now through the last expression you used, dear Sonja, the repertoire. I’ll repeat again, I’d mentioned that, I think, at the beginning, that the decision, or the distinction, whatever we now call the baby, is actually irrelevant for me. For me, what’s decisive is how this emotional reaction to, or the effect it shows based on this trigger, emotionally, with which prior experiences it’s connected. And everyone knows that. There are people who react absolutely coolly in panic situations, and others who totally lose their composure. With both, I’ll claim now, in the first moment, in the millisecond range, exactly these 4 F’s take effect as alternatives, how do I behave now. But the situation that was the trigger, which both people are now facing, gets considered by one of them, based on experience values, as relatively trivial and masterable, controllable. And with the other, who maybe has never experienced such a situation, they react immediately in a completely different way. But what I think, what my position is, is that both, both manifestations, are first offered to us in an ultra-short offer from this fast, this associative system, to then only afterward, in the so-called System 2, get objectified, evaluated, and then brought to a decision. Thanks again for letting me say that again.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much, and actually at this point with the repertoire there would have been something else I wanted to pick up too, and specifically not just in the direction of experience maybe, so that as experience, because experience can also be very different, but also to bring in the term of training here too, maybe even quite conscious training, and as an example I’d like to take the firefighter. So each of us would probably react to fire in different ways, precisely with the 4 F’s that were also named here for example. And in the sense of survival, maybe a flight reaction would be appropriate, possibly, also not always — it always depends on the constellation, the context, and so on, that also has to be considered. We can’t now always say fire equals flight, but yes, that also depends on how big, and so on and so forth. But if we have a threatening situation, the firefighter will handle the situation quite differently, and not just against the background of experience as a term, but because he’s also undergone a certain training here to lay out certain things as a repertoire, so to speak, to even quite deliberately, even though his body might tell him, now you’d have to flee, weigh in the situation how far he still goes further into the fire source, so to speak, whether the threat is already so big that he really has to flee now, or whether he can still help someone who’s maybe in a room, further, etc. That’s why I’d like to bring in the term of training here too, in this context of the repertoire, and see what you say to that, before I’d then gladly like to wrap up together with you. I’ll gladly give you all the opportunity again. I’ve now definitely seen that Jürgen has raised his hand again, Sonja and Marc can then gladly also say something again, and then we’ll go into the closing round for today. Jürgen.
Thank you for your remarks. I had a flashback, if I remember correctly. I don’t have access to my mind map at the moment, but I think it was at our topic thinking and understanding, where I brought in this facet of blocking, if I remember correctly, and as an example — I’m not sure, the firefighter wasn’t the topic for me, I think, what occurs to me now was definitely the emergency paramedic and the soldier, who, through this training effect, quite deliberately for their job, not the arising, but this emotional reacting to a highly emotional situation, so to speak, un-trains themselves out of. And that’s a really essential point you addressed there again, dear Yasemin, which in my view affects our behavior much more profoundly. Because training doesn’t have to be conscious. Training can also come about through the fact that out of habit I always do something like that, or always deal with an emotion the same way again and again. That’s also a training. Thanks again.
Thank you so, so much. Sonja.
I found the example with the firefighter great, because it’s usually something we see as a positive activity. We all want to gladly be rescued by firefighters if we’re in a burning building, and are then glad when these people have trained not to follow their first flight impulse, but can run through a program with which they can move safely in these flames and get themselves and us out of there. With the example of the soldiers, I’d see that a bit differently. And I found that super exciting, this term of un-training, un-training yourself out of certain things. I’d see that a bit differently with the firefighter, because there the motivation has, for me, a morally more pleasant evaluation. So for me personally. There I noticed that I react very differently to that. But I actually wanted to bring in a less threatening example, namely public speaking, speaking in front of an audience. That’s similar to the firefighter, just maybe not as threatening. But we often perceive it as very threatening. And there training can help enormously, contribute enormously to us repeatedly having the experience that it’s not a really threatening situation. And that’s only thanks to training. We can’t learn that from a book, we really have to experience it. And that only works through training. So I found it great that you brought in the training example again.
Yes, wonderful example with the speech. Thanks for that too, Marc.
I’d like to thank Sonja. I ask you all for forgiveness that I jump back a little bit and go back into generalization. Dear Sonja, you just said the illusion of conscious thinking. That always shakes me a bit. I find that totally right, illusion, because I always have the feeling I’m not self-determined. And that’s why I say, I’ll add another word, the acting — the illusion of conscious thinking and acting. And I’d like to remain self-determined. And then, through your triggering, it occurred to me again — through the illusion, do I determine my thinking, or does my thinking determine me? I wish you a really great day.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so, so much. With that you’ve already inserted your closing word, I believe. Then let’s gladly go into this closing round, move on, and continue with Jürgen and Sonja. Jürgen?
Yes, I’d have a brief remark before I close for myself, to you, Sonja. Maybe we can agree with the firefighter and the soldiers on the meta level. Basically it’s about surviving for both. But summing up, looking back today on this room, dear ones, I have to say. It really challenged me a lot, to also critically question, especially whether this distinction, this fickle specification, is necessary. So in a brief moment I also felt the suffering that the sensitivity for these differences in terms isn’t given for many people. But I’m healing that now in my understanding, that I say, the essential thing, and now we’re back at a point that’s often been addressed, the essential thing is that we know about the circumstance, about the distinction, however we then name it. That’s, in this case, secondary for me. Heartfelt thanks for all your contributions, and I wish you a wonderful day still.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much, Sonja.
Yes, exactly this knowing-about, that there are differences, I find that’s also the essential thing, and this room, or the rooms you offer here, always contributes to that again and again. And I find it so nice that this room exists, because in real, analog life I extremely rarely have the possibility to exchange with others in such a differentiated way on these neuro-topics that totally fascinate me. And that you give us this possibility here, I find that really, really nice, very enriching, and I’m simply happy about it again and again. Thank you.
Yes wonderful, thank you so much. I really found this a very, very exciting thinking-space, so to speak, with the attempt to really differentiate various things here again. I’m totally with you, whether we then call it this or that, or which terms we use where, so to speak, that remains to be seen, but first really going into these distinctions, creating an awareness that it’s indeed useful to also make and draw distinctions, and to jointly also verbally express what I understand by one or the other, so that we can at least also come into a corresponding exchange together, is a really essential aspect. I found that really, really exciting, because this isn’t final, but in many places also stimulates further thinking, further questioning. And we can leave that standing for now, I think. I found these great intermediate results, at least, for now, intermediate insights for us, which will let us build bridges again and again in the coming rooms too, and continue and go into the various other deepenings again. And then we can also, toward the end, when we think toward the end of the overarching room — that’ll still take a while, we’ve just started — connect and check one thing or another accordingly again, and maybe also bring together one thing or another differently again through further insights gained in the others than we might have it today at the current standpoint of knowledge, so to speak. And I find that quite exciting to observe too. And I don’t know how much that maybe fits with tomorrow’s aspect, but I found — this is intuitive at this point, I’d have to reflect on that afterward — I found it quite exciting that there’s also a contribution in the chat: “whether to be right or to start living, some are so spiritual that they stop thinking and flee into their own thoughts.” And there the impulse was immediately there for me, somehow that fits with tomorrow’s topic, and maybe we can pick that up a bit tomorrow too. You can gladly remind me of that again, or also support me with that, that we maybe bring in this aspect at tomorrow’s topic too. Tomorrow we continue with thinking and beliefs. What influence do beliefs have on our thinking? That’s the question we want to engage with tomorrow, and there we can certainly also build bridges again, for example toward unconscious bias and so on. And so I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s room together with you, and you’re warmly invited to join with your impulses, thoughts, and great contributions tomorrow again in numbers, not just to be there, but to really actually contribute at this point too. Thank you so, so much for this very inspiring, great room with many valuable contributions and thoughts and impulses, and let’s see how it continues tomorrow with thinking and beliefs. In this sense, I wish you well, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Ciao, ciao!
