To Which Extent Do We Have Control Over Our Emotions or Feelings?

 

“Conventional wisdom suggests that you don’t really have an emotional reaction unless a thought has crossed your mind. The problem with this view is that some events automatically trigger emotional responses without the need to think.” — Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.

The author is stipulating a contradiction in his statement above. Curiously, I don’t think there is any whatsoever. It is, undoubtedly, tricky and I don’t pretend to be an expert. Rather an avid learner and critical thinking lover.

Thus, what I am about to share with you today is merely my humble and simplistic way of putting it, which is subjected to review when armed with more knowledge and honored by your feedback, dear readers!

It seems to me two factors are eliminating any potential contradiction:

• A “conscious” versus a “subconscious” thought,
• Self-preservation emotions such as fear and anger versus the other shades of emotions contributing to flourishing like joy, excitement, inspiration, etc…

The subconscious thought arena

An anger emotion triggered by an abusive person, let’s say, through the amygdala is sent to another part of the subconscious mind processing system responsible for translating emotions into feelings.

This part is where we have all our stored beliefs and narratives, I suppose, and I still need the education to associate this process with neuroscience discoveries.

Appealingly, that’s when the quality of our subconscious database has all its power, I believe. One may ask, “how come?”, and that would be a legitimate question.

Self-preservation emotion

A friendly program would acknowledge the righteous anger emotion — because the abuse was real, then would translate it into a pity or compassion feeling.

“How is that even possible?” Simply put, we have a healthy narrative about aggression: Their behavior speaks volumes about their inner turmoil; nothing personal!

Interestingly, the action to take is a different story and would depend on the situation, as well as the person we are interacting with.

Here is when our self-awareness magical endowment comes into play. If it is a stranger we can’t access or with much difficulty, if so (i.e. in the traffic jam), then we better smile peacefully and let it go.

If it is a stranger to whom we can easily talk, then we can firmly but gently stand for ourselves not because we need to given that we have enough inner peace not to get offended, but because we can grant voiceless folks a voice by making the abuser think twice next time.

If the person is part of our close circle that we never had to choose — parent, sibling, child, coworker, then the best strategy is to disable them by staying emotionless and completely ignoring them.

Nonetheless, when the abuse is openly violating our healthy emotional boundaries, we need to clearly describe it and calmly warn them it wouldn’t be acceptable in the future.

Undeniably, it takes tons of patience, serious inner-work, and progressively developing our emotional intelligence. And we will fall short many times, in all likelihood, and that’s okay!

 

The emotionally healthy and principled folks are humble enough to admit it and forgive themselves.

An unfriendly program, on the other side, wouldn’t acknowledge the abuse, or be capable of judging it effectively.

Depending on our narratives and the unhealthy chosen general pathway, we can either doubt ourselves reaching the level of thinking we deserved the aggression in the first place or exhibit an uncontrolled rage.

The latter might be induced by drastically exaggerating the incident, a behavior that is, in general, rooted in a CPTSD emotional flashback.

Sometimes, though, one can blow up while what is perceived as abuse is nothing but an innocent comment that challenges the false perfect persona; hence, creating a narcissistic injury that results in narcissistic rage.

In both case scenarios of displayed rage, the experienced feeling translated from anger is a shame.

Other emotions/feelings (apart from the self-preservation ones)

If our program is our friend, that we have been unleashing the true self to some extent, then I think that our joy, excitement, happiness, inspiration, and co. are the result of:

• Who we are,
• What we stand for,
• How we show up consistently and give back to the world, daily, no matter how big or small.

That is, most of the time, those feelings we experience are not a translation from an emotional response to external stimuli. Instead, they are generated from within.

Having said that, there is a credit to give to our healthy and detached relationships — whether with fellow humans or animals — for their contribution in experiencing those feelings.

If our program is still distorted and that our self-awareness is deactivated, then there is no translation either but the source generating them is different.

I think that those feelings are the fruit of our distracting tools whose aim is to trick the system by bypassing the twisted subconscious program full of painful limiting beliefs; consequently, creating temporary highs.

Some exceptions to the rule I can think of, though, are being inspired by:

• A truly principled person modeling virtuous behavior and treating us as decent individuals worthy of genuine love and respect.
• An authentically vulnerable and relatable folk sharing their heart openly,
• A self-deprecating individual whose purpose is to nurture our inner child, as opposed to sarcasm and other forms of toxic humor downgrading someone else or a whole community, which can only feed the unhealthy ego!

I am yet to figure out how this particular scenario is processed by the mind.

The conscious thought arena

A conscious thought only gives birth to emotions that make us feel good about ourselves.

Simply put, our conscious mind is where our desires and dreams exist. They could be twisted, self-centered, success-oriented because of our lifetime of conditioning that biased our Universal Principles Center.

Still, they are supposed to be working for us. As a result, as long as conscious thought is not interrupted by some external event that can activate our limiting beliefs — at least a part of them, it should grant us a good moment.

Also, some elements of our unfriendly subconscious program — you know, that inner voice or bully — may resurface on the conscious mind.

 

They have the power of suddenly interrupting our day-dreaming beautiful bubble by redirecting our attention either to the past — self-ruminating thoughts — or to the future — mainly worrying about the unknown.

Overthinkers tend to be familiar with such a draining cycle, and discovering and practicing mindfulness meditation might be of good help!

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