whatâs going on inside youâyour heart rate, your pain sensitivity, your digestion, your transitory emotional states, your temperature, your hormonal shiftsâcan be exhausting! Balance in this dimension is crucial to your ability to focus on others, rather than being uncomfortably hyperfocused on yourself.
Sensitivity to Context is your capacity to understand the usually unspoken and hidden rules of social interaction so that you can respond in a socially sensitive way. This skill is very dependent on all six aspects of your empathic capacity, and itâs a skill I illustrated very intentionally in the empath-cam scene with Joseph and Iris. Almost none of the social rules or signals that Joseph or Iris displayed were openly discussed; instead, their signals primarily existed in undercurrent, subtext, gestural language, and nuance. Reading those signals required Joseph, Iris, and me to have strong Sensitivity to Context. Davidson identifies this skill on a continuum from tuned in to tuned out.I would characterize both Joseph and Iris as being on the tuned-in side of this continuum. However, as all of us know, the skill of tuning out context is invaluable when weâre surrounded by conversations we shouldnât hear, conflicts we donât want to be a part of, and people we donât want to interact with. Davidson also suggests that being too tuned in can mean that people might lose their own sense of self in deference to the multiple inputs that are a part of each social context they encounter.
Attention is your capacity to focus yourself or to screen out unrelated emotional, social, or sensory input. In this dimension, Davidson has identified a continuum that ranges from focused to unfocused. He discusses ways to reduce hyperfocus and to increase focusing capacity in people who are unfocused.
These six dimensions of emotional style are malleableâsome more so than others. Davidson explains each in terms of the neurological structures that underlie each dimension. He also makes specific suggestions for how to manage, reduce, increase, or temper each dimension so that you can live more comfortably. (See Appendix B for a description of Davidsonâs suggestions.) Davidsonâs focus is primarily on Buddhist meditation practices (he developed his theory of the six dimensions after performing extensive functional magnetic resonance imaging observations on mindfulness meditators); on cognitive behavioral therapy; and, in some cases where change isnât currently possible, on creating environments in which specific emotional styles can be accommodated rather than changed.
Davidsonâs work is theoretical. Although he has more raw data to back up his six dimensions of emotional styles than Gardner has to back up his multiple intelligences, I want to be clear that Davidson is working in a new area and is bringing a very specific frame to his observations. Because this work is new, it can and will change over the next few decades. Iâm including it not as a concrete set of facts, but as a useful set of ideas and approaches.
Iâm drawn to the emotional styles frame, as well as to Davidsonâs assertion that the brain can change and that people can modify ingrained patterns, because Iâve experienced this change myselfâand Iâve helped many other people experience it. I didnât have Davidsonâs framework underneath me as I struggled to become more resilient; to ground my outlook in the present, rather than on the horrors of my past; to balance my extreme Social Intuition, Sensitivity to Context, and Self-awareness; and to manage my ADHD-like lack of focus, which I combined with hyperfocus when it suited me. In my work as an empathic healer, however, I created mindfulness practices toaddress each dimension (youâll learn these practices in Chapter 5 ), and Iâve watched thousands of people use these practices to make significant and lasting changes in their
Sensitivity to Context is your capacity to understand the usually unspoken and hidden rules of social interaction so that you can respond in a socially sensitive way. This skill is very dependent on all six aspects of your empathic capacity, and itâs a skill I illustrated very intentionally in the empath-cam scene with Joseph and Iris. Almost none of the social rules or signals that Joseph or Iris displayed were openly discussed; instead, their signals primarily existed in undercurrent, subtext, gestural language, and nuance. Reading those signals required Joseph, Iris, and me to have strong Sensitivity to Context. Davidson identifies this skill on a continuum from tuned in to tuned out.I would characterize both Joseph and Iris as being on the tuned-in side of this continuum. However, as all of us know, the skill of tuning out context is invaluable when weâre surrounded by conversations we shouldnât hear, conflicts we donât want to be a part of, and people we donât want to interact with. Davidson also suggests that being too tuned in can mean that people might lose their own sense of self in deference to the multiple inputs that are a part of each social context they encounter.
Attention is your capacity to focus yourself or to screen out unrelated emotional, social, or sensory input. In this dimension, Davidson has identified a continuum that ranges from focused to unfocused. He discusses ways to reduce hyperfocus and to increase focusing capacity in people who are unfocused.
These six dimensions of emotional style are malleableâsome more so than others. Davidson explains each in terms of the neurological structures that underlie each dimension. He also makes specific suggestions for how to manage, reduce, increase, or temper each dimension so that you can live more comfortably. (See Appendix B for a description of Davidsonâs suggestions.) Davidsonâs focus is primarily on Buddhist meditation practices (he developed his theory of the six dimensions after performing extensive functional magnetic resonance imaging observations on mindfulness meditators); on cognitive behavioral therapy; and, in some cases where change isnât currently possible, on creating environments in which specific emotional styles can be accommodated rather than changed.
Davidsonâs work is theoretical. Although he has more raw data to back up his six dimensions of emotional styles than Gardner has to back up his multiple intelligences, I want to be clear that Davidson is working in a new area and is bringing a very specific frame to his observations. Because this work is new, it can and will change over the next few decades. Iâm including it not as a concrete set of facts, but as a useful set of ideas and approaches.
Iâm drawn to the emotional styles frame, as well as to Davidsonâs assertion that the brain can change and that people can modify ingrained patterns, because Iâve experienced this change myselfâand Iâve helped many other people experience it. I didnât have Davidsonâs framework underneath me as I struggled to become more resilient; to ground my outlook in the present, rather than on the horrors of my past; to balance my extreme Social Intuition, Sensitivity to Context, and Self-awareness; and to manage my ADHD-like lack of focus, which I combined with hyperfocus when it suited me. In my work as an empathic healer, however, I created mindfulness practices toaddress each dimension (youâll learn these practices in Chapter 5 ), and Iâve watched thousands of people use these practices to make significant and lasting changes in their
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