Have you ever been so upset or excited that you did something wholly foolish or destructive? Like punched a wall, tried something dangerous because of the adrenaline rush, or said something hurtful out of frustration?
In this conversation, Adam J. Salgat sits down with Sarah Weisbarth to discuss the logic and emotion bubbles from class and how one directly affects the other.
Sarah shares a personal story about an outburst on a golf course while with family and that it had nothing to do with how she was striking the ball that day.
Lastly, we discuss why the absolute best thing someone can do for another person when their stress is high and their logic is compressed is to just LISTEN.
AI-generated dictation of the podcast audio
Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Salgat:
Hello and welcome to the, Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam Salgat and with me today is Sarah Weisbarth, Lead of Alumni Enrichment for Our Community Listens. Hey Sarah, how you doing today?
Sarah Weisbarth:
I’m doing great, Adam. It’s always fun to come on these podcasts with you.
Adam Salgat:
So today’s podcast is focused around logic and emotion. In our pre-discussion, you brought up two core concepts around logic and emotion, and the first one you wanted to tackle was teaching it and talking about the logic and emotion bubbles.
Sarah Weisbarth:
That’s definitely a great place to start. Logic and emotion for all of our alumni I’m just going to help you remember is a concept that we teach in the reflective listening section. And we get down to the point of really realizing that it ties into it’s the most helpful thing a person can do, is to listen to another. If we remember the logic and emotion bubble slide that you have three circles on the slide and the circles are divided. And the first circle has logic and emotion in balance. So there’s a line in the middle and if you think about like logic and emotion being our brains, I’m literally like pointing to my forehead right now, guys. Like logic is in the front of our brains. This is our prefrontal cortex. It’s where all of our high-level thinking happens and that’s where logic lives.
But then if we like point to the back half of our brain and maybe the bottom of the circle on the slide, that’s where emotion lives and that’s our amygdala. In a normal day, our logic and emotion are in balance. Everything is just kind of equal. All of the stimulus, all of the information that we gather throughout the day comes in through the bottom half of that circle. It comes in through the emotion center of our brain. That’s how we always first process information. So if I’m just cruising along in a great normal day, everything’s fine and in balance my ability to think about things and be rational and have everything make sense is in balance with how I’m feeling about everything. So that’s the first circle on the slide. Logic and emotion are in balance.
Adam Salgat:
So what happens when something emotional takes place in our life? Maybe we get news that a loved one has passed. Maybe someone gives us news at work that we’re just not happy about. What happens to those bubbles at that point?
Sarah Weisbarth:
They become unbalanced and this can actually happen a variety of ways. So it could be, we see this in kids a lot, it could be fun and exciting. It could be things that are even positive emotions. It’s just that the emotion goes high and then all of a sudden they make a decision that as parents were looking at them going, “Why did you do that? What were you thinking?”
Adam Salgat:
Right. So like jumping off the bench and then all of a sudden it’s now off the top of the picnic table and it kind of makes you go, “Okay, you’re going to hurt something.” But the excitement, the fun kind of takes over?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely. And so they’re not thinking logically, they’re not realizing that, Oh, I could hurt myself because they’re having so much fun. Often when we talk about this concept, we generally talk about the negative emotions, but the positive emotions can unbalance our logic as well.
Adam Salgat:
That makes sense. Yeah. I’ve been through those kinds of situations when you’re having so much fun with friends and you’re maybe on a dirt bike or we’re on bicycles and you think, “Oh no, what was I really thinking? That was not a smart idea, but I thought it was fun at the time. You know, I ended up with a sore shoulder.”
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. There’s also… It’s not just a one event emotional moment. It can be like progressive where like I’m doing fine, but maybe I got a small stressor and then maybe I had to shift gears with my work for the day. And then that increased my emotion. And then maybe I’m talking with a friend who’s emotional and I’m taking on their emotions. And then it just starts to pile up and creep up.
Again, when I talk to youth about this, I put it on the dry-erase board and I create logic and emotion out of balance. And I ask them like, “What are all of the feelings that you might feel throughout the day?” And we just start to write them into that emotion section of the bubble, which is now quite large. So if like we had to generate feelings it could be excitement, stress, anxiety, misunderstanding, overwhelmed, exhausted anticipation. There are all kinds of feeling words that can fill up the emotion part of that bubble. And if we’re filling up the emotion side of the bubble, what do we think might be happening to the logic?
Adam Salgat:
Well, if you’re only have so much space, if you’re in a limited capacity, if you start filling up something else, the other portion is going to become much smaller.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. Yep. So on the slide, the bubble starts to happen where the emotion has increased in the circle and logic has itty-bitty section on the top of that circle. And I’m using my finger and my thumb to like show compression. And I use that phrase when we teach it, like logic becomes compressed. And so if going back to like my forehead, all of my prefrontal cortex high-level thinking gets squished. And so I don’t have the ability to rationalize or think clearly when emotion, however, the emotion has gotten there but when emotion is high, my ability to think logically is compressed.
Adam Salgat:
So if you’re in that state, let’s use a teenager for example, and they come home from school and they’re high emotion and their logic is compressed and their parents ask them, “Hey, did you take care of your clothes yet out of the dryer?” And they get lashed back from that teenager, they start yelling or screaming or upset many times it might not have anything to do obviously with the fact that they were asked about those clothes or that the clothes themselves were an issue?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes.
Adam Salgat:
They’re in a state where it’s hard for them to logically answer or deal with that even small requests.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yep. And this is something, this is where it starts to really like impact how we connect and we relate with others is the realization that we are all dealing with some sort of emotion all the time, all day long. That’s where all of the information and stimulus comes in through our brain is our amygdala, our emotional center. Good, bad, or otherwise. When someone, for example, lashes out about switching the laundry over chances are they’re not really angry about that. And that they’re angry about something we term as a root cause. Like there’s something else happening behind the scenes. Something that you’re completely unaware of. And the teenager example is usually a great one because they’re in that emotional and brain development of not being able to manage their emotions and rationalize them like we start to learn to do as we mature into adults. And so, yeah, we might not have any idea what’s going on with someone else when we see the emotion side of things.
Adam Salgat:
I know that you shared a personal story prior to and I’d like to kind of bring it up and preface it in the idea that I really personally connected with it because I’m a big sports fan. So when you mentioned you wanted to talk a little bit about a golf experience you went through, I connected right away. Because I kind of knew where you might be going with this golf experience, but there’s a quote from Arnold Palmer that talks about, “Golf is a game of inches. The most important are the six inches between your ears.”
Essentially saying it’s up to the individual to stay within themselves to perform the best that they possibly can. Because as many golfers or many athletes head out onto the court or onto the golf course, they are equal in many ways. It’s the ones that can handle the pressure that differentiate them, that can keep that emotion and that logic at an even keel. Your story about golf isn’t necessarily about being overly-competitive and competing at a high-level. But it is good one talking about how things have a root cause.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m going to take this a couple of different ways. I’ll start with almost the more light-hearted one. Although, I am certainly not a competitive golfer I’m highly competitive with myself. And so when the swing doesn’t work right, or I top the ball and it dribbles off the tee box and my emotion goes high. My ability, my six inches between my ears as Arnold Palmer is trying to help us out with is immediately compressed. And so then I have to figure out in myself like how do I like take that deep breath? And for me, it’s kind of funny if you follow me on the golf course, I actually talk to myself like in the third person. I’m like, “All right, Sarah, you know, you always pull your head, you like stay over the ball, keep your eye on the ball.” That’s my logic trying to come back into play.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah. You got to find certain ways to just kind of keep yourself in check. And that could be on the golf course or in anything, but continue with your story.
Sarah Weisbarth:
So my husband, who is just excelling in golf, hopes to be helpful in some of these situations, as I’m hacking down the fairway. And he says things just like I’m saying to myself, he’ll say things like, “Hey, you know, keep your head down or, Oh, you pulled your head up that time or, just swing through or slow down your back swing.” And a couple of weeks ago on the golf course, I literally had to look at him and say, “I hear you trying to be helpful. I really know your intentions are pure, but it is taking me almost more energy to not get irritated, cue the emotion, about you trying to help me that I can’t even get my own irritation about myself, also emotion, back in check to where then I can figure out how to keep my stinking head down and not top the dang ball.”
Adam Salgat:
Right. So in many respects, even though he is trying to help, it’s difficult for you to take that in at that time because your logic has already compressed?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. And it really goes back to, I said there was two concepts we wanted to talk about because it kind of ties into this deeper idea of why listening is the most helpful thing a person can do. We encourage people to avoid when someone has come to them with a problem. And if we’re going to stick with my problem of golf and I can’t keep my head down, if that’s my problem, the advice that my husband’s giving or even the encouragement or reassurance, or even him asking me like, “Well, what do you think you did wrong that time?” Or even telling me stories about, “Yeah, you know, I dribbled off the tee box three weeks ago.” That’s not going to help me get rid of all of that emotion and let my brain be able to function in balance again.
What’s helpful is for him to just support and listen to me. And we teach that with the logic and emotion bubbles. So let’s come back to that like concrete teaching moment. So we last left it where emotion was high and logic was compressed. Well, if we listen to someone, so like you’re listening to me about my golf game, then the emotion of that moment vents and it’s allowed to release. And so if we look at it from a bubble and all of this high-level emotion has pushed all of logic out and someone listens to me and helps it all release, what do you think’s going to happen to my logic?
Adam Salgat:
Your logic starts to come back to an even keel.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes.
Adam Salgat:
Back to the middle.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Back to that balance. And then logic and emotion are back in balance. So that is like the science behind why we teach that listening is the most helpful thing a person can do. If someone’s come to me with a problem, asking them questions about it to try to help solve it, telling them my story about a similar problem or giving them advice or even saying, “Oh, it’s going to be okay.” That actually just increases the tension on the emotion and is not helpful.
Adam Salgat:
I completely understand that. Yes. I’ve been through situations like that with my wife oftentimes, and I know that at times I’m doing those things and I try to check myself as much as I can. Because I know for her, especially her, she’s very verbal and she just needs to let it out. She just needs to talk about it and sometimes it might need to be talked about a couple of times before is decompressed.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. And then it’s manageable for her. And you’ve just created that space for her to solve her own problem, which is incredibly empowering.
Adam Salgat:
I try to. I know I jump on and porch monkeys every once in a while. We had someone in her class once say, “I don’t want to porch monkeys I just want to brush their hair.” Essentially, meanings just wants to be there to kind of help them along.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, that just really speaks the truth when someone has come to us and they just want to talk about something, it doesn’t even have to be a huge problem. They just want to talk. We want to respond. We have a natural inclination to create that connection by maybe sharing a similar story and create that connection that way.
Adam Salgat:
Absolutely.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. So I feel like that’s like the stroking of the hair of the monkey because we have that desire in our hearts.
Adam Salgat:
I will say there are times within conversation when that’s okay, correct? I mean, if we’re just having casual conversation with friends and sharing stories, I think that’s sometimes where this idea of always listening gets stuck that people feel they don’t get to share themselves. But that’s not particularly the case when we’re just having casual conversation, a cocktail party or just hanging out, right?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, I have to tell you, because I am facilitated to teach these classes that your first level of listening is always going to be, a reflective listening and avoiding asking questions, giving advice, saying it will be okay and telling a story. We also teach that someone’s coming to you with a problem, which is really getting to the point that you’re getting at. Like if you and I are just having coffee, which we just spent 45 minutes before we started recording today, just talking about life and kids and parenting and work. That’s a bounce back and forth. I haven’t come to you and be like, “I’m so stressed about this.”
Adam Salgat:
Right. That’s a different conversation.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. So there is that bounce back and forth, but I still employ all of my reflective listening skills even in the bounce back and forth, I open doors I reflectively listen. I always feel like the reflective listening skills are like a step one, so that then the logic and emotion can come back and balance. And then it creates a bounce back and forth. Because if I don’t create that space for someone else, they’re not going to have the capacity for me.
Adam Salgat:
Awesome. So we did get a little off track there, but let’s get back on course and see if there’s anything else you want to say about the golf analogy that we were working on.
Sarah Weisbarth:
I’m chuckling right now because that was such a wonderful segue and you teed it up quite well, Adam. But in all seriousness, the first aspect of the golf as it relates to logic and emotion was kind of more just like that light-hearted like that frustration that you have when you’re hacking down the fairway. But a few weeks ago, it really hit home for me this concept of there’s so much more going on beyond the surface and underneath. And I felt this whole logic and emotion and the need to vent and how things get out of balance so quickly, happened for me in a very personal way. And I can actually hear the sound of my voice changing as I go to tell this story.
So we were out of town visiting with family and it’s my son’s grandparents and his aunt and his uncle that we were visiting with. And there’s just a lot of things going on there’s been a death in the family and his other grandparent has in the nursing home for the past couple of years. And it’s getting to the point of like, well, now we need to sell her home and there’s going through things for a rummage sale. And just basically all of the emotion, like all of the emotion of the changes that have happened for our family during this time period. And almost the overwhelm of helping my brother-in-law and sister-in-law tackle all of this and realizing that for my son, this is a huge shift in his relationship with his grandparents.
Anyways, there’s a lot and thank you all for listening to me as I kind of vent this out. So there’s just a lot of emotion going on. And while we were out of town helping we also wanted to create some recreation for our family. So we brought the golf clubs and we booked a golf game the one morning. And so we’re out on the golf course, trying to just take a moment and intentionally, almost like decompress ourselves a little bit through recreation. And I was having a pretty good game for the first hole and a half. And then my husband, the poor man innocently said, “Hey, the guys who was behind us are playing a little faster. Why don’t we let them play through?”
And Adam, I like flipped my lid. I lost my mind and it was like an out of body experience where I saw it happening and literally could not control my emotion in that moment. Because shifting a little bit, again, like my tendency in the sea tendency is like I heard that as criticism. Now, you all listening realize, he’s just saying, let the guys play through and move golf along. But I heard that as you suck at golf and we need to let these guys play through. And I took that all as criticism and I lost my mind. It wasn’t about letting the guys play through.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah. It sounds like from everything that you shared, there was a lot of stress already going on. So you didn’t enter that golf game at even keel in your logic and emotion. It sounds like your emotion was already kind of high. So that filter when he said that to you came through, as you suck at golf.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. And it was actually like, I can’t even explain it. I had to apologize to both my son and my husband the next day, because I was so literally out of control of myself. I tried to continue to golf after I had of course yelled at him, which is not an effective technique anyone should incorporate. I continued to try to golf and it was horrible down the fairway, literally through a club and I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. Because so far out of being able to rationalize what was happening with me, I finally said, “You know what? I’m just going to ride in the cart, forget it.” At one point, I almost said, I’m walking back to the truck. I’m going to sit in the clubhouse. Completely irrational and I felt it all happening in me. Like tears were welling up, half of my brain was telling me I’m being ridiculous, the other half of my brain was just so emotional. I couldn’t get it together.
Adam Salgat:
How did you come back to an even state to finish that golf game and eventually get to the point where you felt like you were ready to apologize?
Sarah Weisbarth:
So, I have a smart husband and a caring, compassionate, tolerant husband. And I had been riding in the cart with my son and so my husband invited me. He’s like, “Just come back here and sit with me, just sit with me.” And for actually a couple of holes like that’s all we did. I just rode around and eventually, so from a teaching moment he employed silence people. Silence is amazing. He just sat with me, sat with me in that moment and employed silence. And then eventually I started to be like, “It’s not about the golf game, it’s about this and all of the stuff. And I’m sure our son is upset about this. And then another thing, and that just goes to this past issue.”
And everything started bubbling up and the tears started coming down my face. And I knew I needed to have a good cry. That was my form of venting in that moment for me personally. I had such a good cry I had to actually get my towel off of my golf bag to wipe my face a little bit. And then eventually I… And he just listened. He just listened. I don’t think he actually even said anything. And eventually I took this deep breath and went, “Oh my gosh, this is what it’s really all about. This is what’s happening for me.”
Adam Salgat:
Right. So listening is the most helpful thing a person can do and that sounds exactly what your husband did there?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s like, I wish I could draw for our listeners right now, how that venting of that emotion is what is the helpful thing. There was no solution to this problem. There really was no solution and the problem wasn’t golf. And there were no solutions to all of the things that had been building up over time around this family crisis and family situation. But imagine if I had been in a conference room in a meeting, imagine if you and I are sitting down and trying to record this podcast and something happened and I still have all of these emotions sitting in me. It’s going to affect my everyday life.
Adam Salgat:
Sarah, tell me about the importance of venting those emotions and why it’s important to do that in our everyday life?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, for one, we’ve clearly talked about people have stuff going on in their lives, Adam. We all have stuff going on and emotion builds up. It just clearly builds up. And in class we teach the logic and emotion bubbles of how I can help someone else. But you’re asking me like, okay, but now you need the help. And that is such a truth like just to even for self-care like my first goal is I need to find a friend. I need to find the person that’s going to listen. In my golf story, it was my husband. Thank goodness for his presence there, but I’ve got my Rolodex, I’ve got my list of people where I’m like, all right, I can feel the emotion I need to talk to somebody. Self-awareness like knowing in the moment, like, all right, I just need to vent. I just need someone to talk to.
It’s probably a topic for another podcast, but there are all kinds of self-care techniques that we can do for ourselves to just help us stay in that healthy balance of managing our emotions. Emotions are good. Emotions are good it’s like part of what makes life colorful. It’s just when they get out of balance with our logic that things go awry.
Adam Salgat:
Is there anything else you would like to add and what are today’s key takeaway?
Sarah Weisbarth:
I would like to I guess the add would be the grace. We talk about grace and space a lot in class. And it felt really good the next day to apologize to my husband and to my son for my behavior that was rooted in a lot of emotion on that golf course that day. And the grace that they gave me and saying, “Yeah, it’s okay. Like it’s okay. We’re not hurt. We see what’s going on.” And the ability to give that space for me to process and vent that.
So I think if there is maybe the keyest of takeaways is that if we can all have that heart for others and give them grace and space and realize that sometimes people are not operating out of logic, that they’re operating out of emotion because there’s something else going on. And when we can see that and live in that grace and space for others, that the most helpful thing we can do is to listen to them.
Adam Salgat:
Well, thanks so much, Sarah. I really did enjoy listening to you today tell me about your golf story. And I’m glad everything worked out in the end. If you’d like more information on Our Community Listens visit our website at ourcommunitylistens.org. And remember alumni, you are the message.