E N E R G Y
I’ve been thinking a lot about energy over the past weeks, and I’ve come up with a little metaphor that I wanted to share with you. It’s probably not an original idea, so please send any similar ideas my way - I’d love to read up on them. For now, here’s how I’ve been making sense of things in my head.
It’s important to mention from the top that this is only intended as a framework of language, a metaphor to simplify concepts and deepen understanding of ourselves. It’s not how our bodies actually, scientifically work. I have, though, had this piece read and edited by a clinical psychologist to make sure that its contents are essentially accurate and helpful.
W H A T I S E N E R G Y ?
Energy is fuel. When it is transferred from one place to another, from one state to another, it causes things to happen. The constant flow of energy is the cause of all growth, change, activity, and movement in the world. Energy can be stored, but only to be used at some later time.
It makes sense, then, to say that life is not designed to harbour energy, but is a conduit of energy. Humans are vessels through which energy flows, both giving us life and allowing us to do something with the life we have. Our bodies retain energy stores for specific purposes and emergencies, yes, but these supplies are used and replenished over time. It is the energy passing through us that allows us to live as we do.
O U R E N E R G Y S Y S T E M S
In this metaphor there are three types of energy that humans conduct: physical, mental, and emotional. Each of these types of energy has its own system within the body responsible for the efficient flow of its energy through the body. An efficient energy system leads to continuing ability to perform physical, mental, and emotional tasks without injury, burn out, or sickness - in short, they are the most effective way of keeping us healthy.
(Note: for the purposes of this article, I’m referring to daily life - there will always come events in our lives that knock our systems out of whack and require concerted efforts at rebuilding them. We can’t necessarily prevent those events from occurring, but we can maintain our systems to the best of our ability to keep us healthy during our normal lives).
Scientifically, all energy in our bodies comes from food (and a small-but-important amount from sunlight). Once our food intake has been broken down, and the energy from food is directed to various parts of the body, some of it is changed into forms that run through the mental or emotional system. For example, physical energy is used to create and secrete hormones, but the hormones themselves may have a mental or emotional function, thus falling into those respective systems. All the systems and energies are definitely linked - it’s very hard to concentrate mentally whilst physically exhausted - but they also have their unique qualities that make them suitable for different tasks; we all know the feeling of being mentally switched on, or emotionally exhausted.
Physical energy is used by almost every system in the body in unconscious chemical reactions, from digestion, to cell creation, to immune response, to hormone creation and secretion, to powering the musculoskeletal system. Among other things, mental energy is used in our concentration and attention, learning and understanding, and in conjunction with physical energy in things like balance or fine motor skills. Emotional energy is used in dealing with grief and trauma, but also in our dealings with and responses to other people, art, and life. There are also times when we feel something very strongly, but for some reason are required to show or display a contrasting emotional reaction. We might feel angry, but act calm; we might feel hurt, but act indifferent or cheerful. This requires great amounts of emotional energy.
M A I N T A I N I N G T H E S Y S T E M S
An efficient system is one that processes energy to produce results that are conducive to good health. For this it needs a good energy supply, to be in regular use, to have the right kind of outlet, and the chance to recover from its use. These are our three main phases: energy acquisition, energy exertion, and rest. We need enough of each of them to maintain our energy systems.
Energy acquisition activities are those things that provide us with different forms of energy. It’s easy to think about what gives us physical energy - food and sleep. But some activities are the catalyst for our bodies being flooded with mental and emotional energy. I’d argue that consuming art, socialising, and exercising and movement are some of these activities. Things that inspire, motivate, elate, elevate, and propel us mentally or emotionally. Each of us need a good amount of these energising activities in our lives to keep us energised; food, culture, people, movement.
It’s important to note that these lists will be different for different people, depending on interests and passions and circumstances. Also interesting to note is that the quality of an activity can change its effect on you. For instance, disrupted sleep is very different to sleeping soundly. An interesting example is social interaction. Depending on who you are interacting with and at what time, this may be more draining than energising. For this reason it’s helpful to have a good understanding of who in your life provides you with what quality of energy - not to rank people or value some over others, but to know who you can turn to when you’re in need of being uplifted, or nurtured, or motivated. Some people may even find time alone very energising; personally, I find it can be more restful and great for recovery.
It’s also interesting to note that most - if not all - energy acquisition activities also require some form of energy exertion. If we look at something like exercise, clearly that is an exertion of physical energy (y’all know my HIIT classes are no joke). I believe it’s also key to the acquisition of mental and emotional energy. After a workout, a run, a walk, or a swim, I always feel ready for the day (after I’ve caught my breath and had a shower, of course), whether that be work, problem solving, life admin, or socialising. The exertion of physical energy through an efficient physical system, leads to us acquiring mental and emotional energy for the rest of life.
This is evidenced when we notice how blockages to the physical system affect us. Injuries, soreness, tightness, stiffness can all be mentally and emotionally draining, and are often the result of inefficient movement, or overuse coupled with poor technique. Energy systems become efficient by being trained effectively, so learning efficient and healthy ways of moving to minimise these draining elements becomes incredibly advantageous. Not only does it help minimise the occurrence of pain and injury, but it leaves our mental and emotional systems charged with the energy they need.
T H E M E N T A L A N D E M O T I O N A L S Y S T E M S
So, how do we run an efficient mental and emotional system? We need that energy to move through and leave our bodies in ways that lead to good health. The key here is that we want the energy to leave us; remember, we’re not designed to harbour it. Interacting with other people and animals is fantastic for this. Acts of care, love, empathy, generosity, attention, communication, forgiveness, touch, and affection are all wonderful ways to exert our energy. They allow it to take a clear direction, then move through and leave you in a way that impacts other people in positive ways. Doing these things regularly is also tremendously satisfying, and so as we exert energy in these ways, so do we acquire energy through the exertion. As I very often say - love is not a finite resource! (As long as we take care of our emotional system).
Internally, the healthy processing of grief and sadness, or anger and hate, allows emotional energy to flow instead of building up as blockages inside us. Emotions are not positive or negative; sadness and anger or normal, healthy emotions to experience, and sometimes occur regularly over seemingly long periods of time. But their presence does not mean we have to accept them as a state of being or badge of identity - note the difference between “I am sad” or “I am a sad person”, and then “I am experiencing sadness” or “I feel sad”. Dwelling on them, or holding onto them, allows them to grow and fester, while judging ourselves for their presence within us leads to guilt.
It isn’t always easy to allow emotions to pass through us. Sometimes we need to work harder, it seems, to make this happen. We naturally “hold” grudges, “hang onto” anger, “harbour” hatred, or even “cling to” love for too long. Experiencing these emotions is healthy, but a tight grip on them prevents their movement through us and blocks our emotional energy system. Letting them go is often difficult, but it’s always healthy.
Emotions are not constant; they are always changing. The recurrence of sadness or anger over time can be absolutely fine as long as we react to their presence in helpful ways; it is not our emotions (or thoughts) that define us, but our responses to them. Instead of centring our emotions, thereby giving them power over us, let’s recognise them as normal and healthy experiences and explore the reasons for their presence within us. Then we can make a choice not to let them dictate our actions. There’s a great quote by Viktor Frankl about this: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”
A N X I E T Y
Then we have something like anxiety. Anxiety can take two distinct forms. Firstly, short term and specifically targeted anxiety. For example, if we have an interview, an audition, a performance, or some sort of event coming up in the near future, then nerves and anxious responses are totally normal and manageable. When anxiety becomes chronic and/or generalised is when it can cause us problems. This kind of anxiety lacks two things: a specific event, and a specific time - notice the difference between anxiety about an upcoming review of your work that is to be released on Tuesday, versus anxiety related to the end of a relationship for no particular reason at some indistinct future moment. Once Tuesday passes the performance-review anxiety goes with it, no matter the contents of the review. It may be replaced by glee, anger, distress, or pride, but it is gone. The anxiety around the relationship lacks specificity, which allows it to permeate through the rest of our thoughts and feelings and life, and with no end-date it can become chronic.
This second kind of anxiety is the directing of too much mental and emotional energy back onto the self, in an unhealthy way. The energy doesn’t leave our bodies. Instead it’s used to fuel thoughts or feelings within ourselves, and creates a cycle - like a short circuit of the emotional energy system, preventing it from operating efficiently. This loop can often result in that energy fueling emotions such as self-judgement, self-hate, self-directed anger - and because the system is short circuited, we’re unable to allow these emotions or thoughts to move on because we’re recycling the energy that gave rise to them. It’s a cycle that can prove very difficult to break. And, like training a system effectively gives rise to an efficient system, training a system to feedback into itself like this makes that feedback loop really strong. In other words, we can get really good at being anxious.
What can we do about this? Well, it’s complicated and difficult. A key element of anxiety is its nature in relation to time - we’re anxious about things in the future. Of course, some ability to reflect on the past and anticipate the future is very important - in fact, the biological and evolutionary purpose of anxiety is to assist us in detecting and avoiding future threats. The difference is in envisioning worst case scenarios and becoming convinced they are unavoidable, versus using your knowledge and experience to plan for likely eventualities, or to make decisions to produce favourable ones. When we come back into the present moment, however, anxiety loses its grip - we’re giving that energy somewhere to go. Strengthening our ability to inhabit the present through mindfulness or meditation means that past and future have less control over our thoughts and emotions - both consciously and unconsciously.
To combat anxiety, then, there are three key things we can do. First, work to train our emotional system to flow outwardly, rather than cycle back into itself. In other words, changing the behavioural response to thoughts or emotions that are distressing or unpleasant. Easier said than done. It means reprogramming our minds after they’ve often had years of operating in a particular way (just like trying to learn how to run more efficiently to prevent injuries associated with poor running technique can take a long time and require daily practice). Seeing a professional for this kind of work is incredibly valuable, as the work can be confronting and difficult, and often things are obscured from us because we are stuck inside our minds.
Secondly, we can also consciously partake in acts of emotional energy leaving the body. Generosity, empathy, contacting others - they all require our energy to flow through us and be directed at another person. Importantly, they also bring us into the present moment; you can’t truly connect with someone if you aren’t present with them.
That leads to the third thing we can do; the aforementioned mindfulness activities and meditation. If we are more often concerned with the here and now, the past and future will have less of a grip on our conscious and subconscious minds. If we constantly replay a distressing memory, for example, an event that lasted minutes can effectively last for years because we are constantly reliving it.
R E S T A N D R E C O V E R Y
The last stage in running an efficient system is rest and recovery. There’s overlap here with energy acquisition sometimes - rest leaves us energised to tackle a new day or a new problem - but it's its own phase because it also prepares our bodies to be energised. Things like active rest, reading fiction, time in nature, meditation, and sleep (the big one!) all leave us prepared for our systems to gear up again. The actions of generosity, empathy, connection also help to recover our emotional energy levels (just as exercise tires us out, but if practiced regularly leads to us feeling energised more often, more easily). This means they are energy acquisition and energy output all at once - so efficient!
Interestingly, anxiety can affect the effectiveness of rest. Inactivity coupled with anxiety does not act in the same way as conscious and active rest, because your mental and emotional systems are operating on overdrive in an inefficient manner. Anxiety - or flight-or-flight - is literally the body preparing itself to either run or fight. Feeling this elevated heart rate and increased breathing, as well as the associated hormonal changes, during a HIIT workout is totally appropriate - but when we feel them while sitting still, that flood of physical energy has nowhere to go. This means that people with anxiety often have really long stretches without any real rest or recovery, resulting in feelings of exhaustion, or being wired and stressed constantly, in turn increasing anxiety and affecting sleep, and so the cycle continues.
W H A T D O I D O W I T H T H I S I N F O R M A T I O N ?
So, what am I saying with all of this? I’m certainly not saying that I’ve cracked the code, or have found the way to avoid or cure anxiety or anxious thinking. I’m also not saying that this is exactly how our bodies and minds work on a cellular, scientific level. I’m just offering a framework of thinking and language that I’ve found has really helped me make sense of thoughts and emotions that I’m experiencing - especially during these prolonged periods of lockdown and isolation - and I’m offering them up as a tool that may also clarify things for you.
With that understanding and awareness, perhaps we can take better care of our systems by making sure we have things in our life that energise us; healthy ways to direct and exert our energy; and ways to rest and recover from that exertion. If you know how a system works, perhaps we can take better care of it - and of yourselves.
x
