Elsa and Victoria analyze the research, including the suggestions that normal people are constantly at war with themselves emotionally and either need to exercise willpower to be the people they want to be or must actively tap into positive emotions like pride to self-regulate their behavior. The group suggests that instead of gratitude or pride, what may be happening is something tied up more with identity or a personal aesthetic for how the world should look and function.
I'll listen to this later. I don't know if "at war with themselves emotionally" is the right angle. We often have a range of emotions about situations, but it's not war.
ReplyDeleteI think people who struggle with their feelings might "fight" themselves. But I think others, particularly those who have developed secure attachments, know how to receive and move through their feelings.
This is something I've learnt more recently in life. Sometimes it takes several days or weeks for feelings to settle and resolve about things and this is a good thing.
Feelings are representatives of our interests, or more specifically, they show us quite clearly what's at stake and they provide impetus for us to bring things to rights. In this respect, they are a homeostatic mechanism.
One thing I see often with my clients is a rush to oversimplify the complex. When people want to push down emotions and just not feel them, it's like not adequately accounting for themselves or the complexity they face. Most people are daunted by complexity, but we all have a toolkit for navigating it.
Add I've said often, I learned to suppress any emotions my father deemed "negative": anger, fear, sadness. But more recently, I've learned to use these feelings to restore balance in life, and in particular with respect to social situations.
The reality is when people don't understand feelings or how to deal with them, they are afraid of them. Or they disparage them.
As I've always written, people are afraid of what they don't understand, be that sociopaths and their lack of emotion, or be it emotion itself.
One style of dealing with the world is not better than any other. What we can all do is use the tools we have at our disposal to best effect, and keep learning to use them more productively.
A cosmic/spiritual perspective:
ReplyDelete"Sadhguru speaks on the nature of memory and how it influences not just our mind and emotion, but also our body and genetic make-up. He also relates memory to the karmic structure in the human system and how to go beyond this."
https://youtu.be/zO8QzMWZbN4
How much of who we are is decided. This is a question that faces us all. The sociopath with lower intensity emotions see the world with a greater clarity of thought. Knowing bad and good are abstracts but over time can come to the realisation that "good" behaviour can be the most useful. At least in the long term. Is being good better for being a choice than an innate behavior.
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