Ecker gives the example of social anxiety to illustrate the power of implicit emotional learnings. Such a person carries an expectation of being shamed and rejected by others (particularly, if, for example, they disagree with someone). This non-conscious expectation wordlessly defines ‘how the world is’. But it is not how the world is but how the world has felt to her because her emotional brain carries the implicit model that human beings will respond in this way based on perceptions and experiences in childhood (a critical or inattentive caregiver, perhaps).
This emotional knowledge which such a person holds, this learned construct cannot be seen or experienced in her anxiety – there is nothing to indicate that this is actually a memory (learning) from the past. Constructs do not show up in conscious experience, in the same way, Ecker points out, that a coloured lens in front of the eye is not visible. What feels real, for this person, is not an external reality but rather ‘a vivid illusion or mirage maintained by his own implicit constructs in emotional memory’. The limbic brain’s power to create emotional reality is ‘a kind of magic that immerses one in a potent spell that feels absolutely real’.