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Suppressing Emotional Responses

Melllvar

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I know this sort of thing is already a common topic around here, so consider this the solution-oriented thread:
What are the best methods of suppressing emotional responses totally and completely? How do you deal with them? What are your solutions? Do they help?

If you disagree with this goal then please take it to this thread instead.
Sorry, I'm just more interested in solutions than rehashing the same debate between the two sides.

I consider this very important. Emotional responses cause one to act how one wants, not how one should. This is bad. At the very least it would be desirable to control improper impulses with 100% effectiveness, I'm sure at least all could agree to that (although if you don't, take it somewhere else please). Where you wish to draw the line on which impulses are improper and which are not is your own business, I suppose.



A few of my own ideas:

1) Redirection - letting the response out but in a different manner than perhaps it originally demanded. A simple example would be hitting a punching bag when angry instead of taking it out on the source of the anger.

Problem:
This is just sort of a crutch. In fact it feeds and reinforces the tendency by indulging it, so you're essentially training yourself to give in to the impulse. In general it also seems bad to direct things at other sources than their cause. Is it ok to be a dick to people just because you're having a bad day? No.


2) Meditative suppression - Something along the lines of simply closing your eyes and reminding yourself, "Fuck this shit. I'm stronger than this. This thing won't beat me. Just recognize it for what it is, and let it go." Breathing exercises or something. I remember the Bene Gesserit litany against fear from the novel Dune here:

Frank Herbert said:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Ok well that's very grandiose and silly, I don't recommend taking that literally, but it gets the point across. This also seems like true suppression, unlike the previous method.

Problem: It would seem that this just leads to burying stuff inside, where, quote Futurama, "it can fester quietly as a mental illness." I fear this is not a viable long-term solution (personal experience seems to agree), or at least will not work for stronger responses that need to be suppressed.


3) Chemical/physiological solutions - Seems fairly self-explanatory. I'd wager that drug use is actually one of the most common ways that people deal with this problem, whether they even realize it is in fact a problem they're dealing with or not. Ever drink because you're depressed? Congrats, you're relying on a chemical solution. Beyond that we could look at what parts of the nervous or endocrine systems lead to these responses and deal with them directly. Surgery would be an obvious (and extreme) example, although areas of the brain have been able to be suppressed using magnetic fields as well.

Problem: I know of no real medical or chemical procedure for this, and I suspect any that would come close probably has extreme negative side effects (e.g. lobotomy, dissociative drugs, etc.). Particularly on the chemical side of things, you're relying on a crutch. What happens when your precious drugs aren't around to help you?


4) Avoidance - Simply staying away from situations that would lead to such responses and impulses. As soon as you feel it beginning, GTFO.

Problem:
Simply not practical, life demands that you do shit and avoiding all situations like this would just not work. Plus some responses would seem to be innate and not situational - there is no way to avoid it. Most importantly though, this is the opposite of an actual solution. The point is to be able to suppress your natural instincts in order to better deal with yourself and the world around you. This is the exact opposite of what we really want to accomplish here.


5) Miscellaneous - Not really an idea, but I am somewhat curious what input the various religious/spiritual traditions might have on the issue. Thinking somewhat of monks, ascetics, Buddhists, stoics, etc. They seem to attempt the same thing to some degree, although perhaps for very different reasons.




These are just ideas, not necessarily good ones. I was hoping someone out there might provide more valuable input than I can on the subject. I suspect that the best solution is probably some combination of utilizing lesser, imperfect solutions. I doubt there is a silver bullet for this problem.
 

pjoa09

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Avoid and Redirect are my personal favorite. I only know of smoking and drinking as medication and they are the last resort and are only for the more traumatic experiences. Meditative never works I always resort to Redirect anyways unless if driving is meditative but I speed a little.
 

Jordan~

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I used to do that and then it drove me mad, so I stopped.
 

OverCaes

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Thinking, "why am I hear listening to this person or in this place"

Dis-associate yourself from the situation and realize it is happening and that you feel a certain way aobut it. Instead of react, ponder on why you feel that way.
 

Melllvar

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Avoid and Redirect are my personal favorite. I only know of smoking and drinking as medication and they are the last resort and are only for the more traumatic experiences. Meditative never works I always resort to Redirect anyways unless if driving is meditative but I speed a little.

Well, my personal preference is generally meditative, although they all have their problems. That one seems to fail miserably for very strong responses. It's fine for stuff like, "Dammit the waiter got my order wrong," less good for stuff like, "My life is miserable and I want to kill myself."

I used to do that and then it drove me mad, so I stopped.

Yeah, it's never easy, hence the reason I'd make a huge thread on it. Personally though I find giving into them to be a far greater evil, often with worse consequences. The madness comes from the difficulty and inability to suppress them successfully. Although people are different, what works for one might not work for another.

If you don't mind my asking, how did things change when you stopped?

Thinking, "why am I hear listening to this person or in this place"

Dis-associate yourself from the situation and realize it is happening and that you feel a certain way aobut it. Instead of react, ponder on why you feel that way.

So, are you saying that understanding the source of the response negates it's control over you? Power through truth or something like that? This doesn't really fit with my personal experience, but I'll run with it for now. You may have something here. (Although the disassociation part sounds pretty much like just avoiding/meditative, to use the terminology I pulled out of my ass at random as I was writing that.)


@No one in particular:
In general all these methods work somewhat, sometimes, they just fail when they seem to be needed the most. Again, it's easy to suppress a mild and unimportant response. But those are the least important ones, it's the bigger issues that are more dangerous.
 

OverCaes

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What I mean is to let go of all of the past experiences that one thinks makes up who they are. I am not a collection of my experience. I am something deeper than that. I was something before I had experience. The mind reacts to experiences, and so the mind deduces "this is how I react, this is who I am."

I'm not saying it's easy, and it does require a level of meditation (though not in the traditional sense) but you'll realize you no longer contribute to negative experiences; you observe them and, subsequently, grow from them. After that, you can only create or magnify positive experiences for you or others.
 

Jordan~

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Yeah, it's never easy, hence the reason I'd make a huge thread on it. Personally though I find giving into them to be a far greater evil, often with worse consequences. The madness comes from the difficulty and inability to suppress them successfully. Although people are different, what works for one might not work for another.

If you don't mind my asking, how did things change when you stopped?

Well, I say "mad". It was just dysthymia. It's hard to say how things changed when I stopped, because the circumstances of my stopping were exceptional: first love. As it developed it was an exciting, overpowering emotion, and not one I wanted to suppress. I tried to be hyperrational before that, and it led me into existential depression - the further I got the worse the world seemed - no free will, no purpose, no meaning, no knowledge, nothing - and it sort of drained me of the will to live. I didn't want to die either, I just wasn't all that bothered about carrying on living, there didn't seem to be any point to it. The love gave me a reason to live and a mental state in which I was happy to construct meaning and purpose withour logic interfering. It was dangerous, though, in that it grew far beyond my control, occupied the whole of my mind, and became the only important thing in the world to me. Thus when it was withdrawn, the result was more than a year of depression - I had absolutely nothing left, neither reason, which had been self-defeating and in which I'd lost confidence, given how easily it crumbled as I fell in love and how easy love subdued the uncomfortable observations it made, nor the thing that replaced it, and I'd lost hope in ever finding an alternative.

I got better, though. Emerging from the medication-induced numbness, I found that I could be very emotional and very rational at the same time. Each had their roles, neither had to suppress the other. As the chemical balance in my brain returned to normal, I was ridiculously emotional - pretty much any feeling I had was strong enough to reduce me to tears for a couple of weeks. It wasn't unpleasant at all, though; after a year and a bit of feeling only crippled emotions that didn't make any sense, it was invigorating. That initial storm of emotion died down, and in rediscovering myself in the aftermath of what I believe they used to call a nervous breakdown and the damage to my personality the medication had done, I found a comfortable balance. I'm much happier now than I was before. Feeling things is nice, and emotion provides guidance in those tough-to-reach areas that logic just can't get to. Plus I'm not exactly a whirlwind of irrational chaos, now. If I feel something like inappropriate anger ("WHY DID YOU PUT THE TOWEL IN THE SINK, YOU AWFUL MORON!? THAT'S A STUPID PLACE TO PUT THE TOWEL, I'LL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP FOR THIS!") I can just balance it with another emotion. I don't need to crush it with reason, a simple, "Don't be silly, you love the idiot who put the towel in the sink" will suffice.

I also 'have ADHD', whatever that means, which makes me very irritable sometimes, but I get round that by smoking. Meds help a bit, too.
 

The Gopher

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Well, forcing depression and anger is an unsual way to do it. But I find depression fun to explore (after the fact), so if I get depressed about nothing then I can't stay angry or unhappy. I can't really explain it. I also have ADHD but More ADD than anything else so i am not on the planet long enough to be irritable.
 

EditorOne

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Disassociate, if you are sure you want to go this route. I would disagree that emotions deal with what you "want to do" rather than "should do," however. That's only if you are dealing with emotions as they apply to you. You can think your way to what you want to do just as easily as you can feel your way there. Whether it's morally better or worse to do the "want" or the "should" depends entirely on other things: They are not by definition mutually exclusive. I offer that as a potential "reset" button for you. :D

Disassociate: by diversion. If your mind is dwelling emotionally on an infected sore point, go do something, whether it is a book, television, playing music, going to a party, whatever. A brooding mind unhappily locked into an emotional stance is like a car seriously rammed up on a snow drift. It has to be pried, lifted and jolted loose with outside stimuli; otherwise you'll almost literally sit there and spin until you tear the transmission loose. Oddly enough the thing we avoid, people, seems to be a pretty good jack to lift things up so you can put some boards under the wheels and move forward. Just don't believe you can actually think your way past an obsessing emotion; it requires additional resources.
 

CLOfriendOSE

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I would say that it depends on the emotion. Try your best to deal away with naive notions like "positive" and "negative". Embrace "difference".

Allow yourself to sperate the physical impulse from the mental emotion. Do not supress, but perhaps allow yourself to feel and explore the impetus of the feeling. Emotions are not so mysterious, they are a lot like a belief. They have foundations somewhere, but not in your immediate consiousness. If you simply supress the emotion you will never understand it ; it will dominate you forever while you live in the delusion that you've "dealt with it".

In short:
If you live in fear of emotions, and fear is an emotion, you will be ruled by that which you despise.
 

thoumyvision

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I consider this very important. Emotional responses cause one to act how one wants, not how one should. This is bad. At the very least it would be desirable to control improper impulses with 100% effectiveness, I'm sure at least all could agree to that (although if you don't, take it somewhere else please). Where you wish to draw the line on which impulses are improper and which are not is your own business, I suppose.

You've got a bit of a false dilemma going on here. Emotional responses can cause one to act how one wants, but it's only bad when what you want is different than what you should do. The problem with always curtailing emotional responses is that you have the potential of squashing the desire to do something that you should do.

Emotional awareness is important. The idea of squashing these impulses out of hand is dangerous, because it leads to never acting. Why act if you've killed any desire to act in the first place? I agree that some method of dealing with these impulses is important, but eliminating an important part of the psyche is not the solution.

There is potential that who you are is currently at odds with your life circumstances. This is disastrous for an INTP because we so often don't care about other people's values, especially when they come into conflict with our own. Whether it's your work or a relationship or your group of friends/peers, if you find your emotions often at odds with what you're "supposed" to do, then there may be something wrong with where you are and who you're with and a drastic change in that area might be for the best. INTPs have very different desires, needs and duties than other people, and being placed in an environment where things that don't come naturally to us are expected of us can produce disastrous results. Of course, there are always things we don't want to do that we have to anyway, but we should never have to be required to be someone we're not, and when that becomes expected of us we (INTPs in particular) often react with incredibly destructive emotion.
 

Melllvar

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I will try to respond to everyone (I know I'm very bad about this in the threads that I start), although honestly I did not intend this to be about my own personal issues (there was nothing specific that provoked this thread), just that it seems to be a recurring problem in my life, and the lives of others around here. So I figured, screw it, let's figure this out networking.

What I mean is to let go of all of the past experiences that one thinks makes up who they are. I am not a collection of my experience. I am something deeper than that. I was something before I had experience. The mind reacts to experiences, and so the mind deduces "this is how I react, this is who I am."

Uh, so you seem to be implying that connection to past experiences are the root cause of emotional reactions. I doubt this is right, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding. Again, some responses seem innate, not situational. Honestly I just don't think I follow you 100% here (i'm dum, sry). Letting go of stuff does seem the big issue, I'm just skeptical if past experiences are really what that should be.

This seems to go back to that meditative/dissociative thing. If this is the kind of thinking that allows you to let go, awesome, but I'm not sure the exact logic could be followed by everyone else. I suppose it just isn't my epiphany yet.

OverCaes said:
I'm not saying it's easy, and it does require a level of meditation (though not in the traditional sense) but you'll realize you no longer contribute to negative experiences; you observe them and, subsequently, grow from them. After that, you can only create or magnify positive experiences for you or others.

Yeah, I didn't mean in the traditional sense at all. Growing from negative experiences is part of the reason to suppress emotions, IMO. You can't just run away from stuff when it happens, you need to be able to deal with it and react in a positive fashion, learn from it, etc. Emotional responses often get in the way of that, cause the opposite to happen.

Well, forcing depression and anger is an unsual way to do it. But I find depression fun to explore (after the fact), so if I get depressed about nothing then I can't stay angry or unhappy. I can't really explain it. I also have ADHD but More ADD than anything else so i am not on the planet long enough to be irritable.

Actually, this reminds of something someone else posted in another thread, about forcing another emotion instead of the one that wants to express itself. I haven't really tried this honestly. I suppose I should add it as a sixth method. Maybe I'll give it a shot sometime, although it still seems to require a high level of will power. If you're capable of making yourself feel one way when the tendency is to be feeling another way, you've pretty much already solved this problem.

I would say that it depends on the emotion. Try your best to deal away with naive notions like "positive" and "negative". Embrace "difference".

Words are limited, so I have to use black and white concepts to explain myself sometimes (practicality). I already argued in another thread that all emotions, even the supposedly "positive" ones, are undesirable (although I realize the concept of desirable and undesirable is a naive, black and white notion in itself). I think I'll probably go into that more when I respond to thoumyvision.

CLOfriendOSE said:
Allow yourself to sperate the physical impulse from the mental emotion. Do not supress, but perhaps allow yourself to feel and explore the impetus of the feeling. Emotions are not so mysterious, they are a lot like a belief. They have foundations somewhere, but not in your immediate consiousness. If you simply supress the emotion you will never understand it ; it will dominate you forever while you live in the delusion that you've "dealt with it".

In short:
If you live in fear of emotions, and fear is an emotion, you will be ruled by that which you despise.

Yeah, sounds like another 'meditative response' - willing yourself to not be affected by it. It is perhaps good to experience emotions at some point, so you can understand them and their causes, etc. I feel I'm fairly introspective though, this is not much of a problem for me (IMHO). Been there, done that, try not to lie to myself anymore. Problem is that it still has the same trouble as I listed for other meditative solutions - you bury stuff, if it's bad enough it tends to eat away at you inside, and eventually it may find some way to break free. Also even buried stuff can affect you over time, seriously change you as a person. That happens on a subconscious level, you may not even realize it until you look back years later and see the downward spiral into what you've become.

Will try to get to Jordan, EditorOne and thoumyvision soon. Tackled the shorter ones first.
 

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When you feel an emotion, analyze it logically and determine whether or not it's beneficial to sustain. If it's not, discard it.
 

Melllvar

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You've got a bit of a false dilemma going on here. Emotional responses can cause one to act how one wants, but it's only bad when what you want is different than what you should do. The problem with always curtailing emotional responses is that you have the potential of squashing the desire to do something that you should do.

Emotional awareness is important. The idea of squashing these impulses out of hand is dangerous, because it leads to never acting. Why act if you've killed any desire to act in the first place? I agree that some method of dealing with these impulses is important, but eliminating an important part of the psyche is not the solution.

I don't think so, I disagree with the idea that emotions are needed as some kind of motivator in life. I hear this from typology people sometimes, how Ti solves problems and Fe determines what problems are worth solving, couldn't have one without the other. Shenanigans I say! Necessary actions that could be the result of an emotional impulse can also be reached through rational means (I'm agreeing with EditorOne here). This is slightly tangential (and I really, REALLY don't want to start a religious debate), but it's like the idea that morality can't exist without God or emotional impulses. It can be fully derived as a rational course of action (this is another thread I've considered starting before). We don't need emotions as a positive driving force in our lives, I'm far more capable of being my own positive driving force when they have the good sense to stay out of the fucking way.

thoumyvision said:
There is potential that who you are is currently at odds with your life circumstances. This is disastrous for an INTP because we so often don't care about other people's values, especially when they come into conflict with our own. Whether it's your work or a relationship or your group of friends/peers, if you find your emotions often at odds with what you're "supposed" to do, then there may be something wrong with where you are and who you're with and a drastic change in that area might be for the best. INTPs have very different desires, needs and duties than other people, and being placed in an environment where things that don't come naturally to us are expected of us can produce disastrous results. Of course, there are always things we don't want to do that we have to anyway, but we should never have to be required to be someone we're not, and when that becomes expected of us we (INTPs in particular) often react with incredibly destructive emotion.

I agree that sometimes the best solution to major life problems is a complete and total change of situation (maybe most of the time, even). However, my main rebuttal here would be that sometimes you can want separate things, one to satisfy the emotional impulse and the other because it's what you know is best. IMO the best reason to overcome emotional reactions is because it will make you a better person, not a slave to them. A trivial example might be not letting rude customers at work get to me. Instead of being bothered by it, wanting to react in some way, why even give a shit? Giving a shit does nothing for me, them or anyone else. If I could just smile and ignore it and never feel anything about it, such would be the optimal course of action. It'd defuse the situation, I wouldn't carry shit around with me later in the day, etc. I could try and find a job that would bother me less, and that is what I want on an emotional level, but what I really want is to be above them to where I can deal with it instead of running from it.

^specific example not important, it just illustrated the point about "there are always things we don't want to do that we have to anyway." Problem with emotions is that they may or may not incentivize what is best for you. They may incentivize what is worst for you.

Side note: I also disagree with the idea that some emotions are 'positive' things and some are 'negative' (e.g. joy/love/compassion vs. hate/fear/anger). I already explained that here and I'll probably never be able to do it as eloquently again. It's kind of irrelevant to the topic of suppression anyway. Surely we all want to suppress some things sometimes. I'd think a strategy for this would be beneficial to everyone, regardless of their view on the broader issues.
 

pjoa09

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How about articulating your anger to them? I was angry at my mother yesterday and when I told her I was upset at her for whatever reason ( sibling food equality is an issue) I felt a lot better.

Even pretend articulating can help. Meditation and suppression leads to eventual unwanted bursts of anger that happen at the wrong time and sometimes with the wrong people.

That is why you have to be careful. Suppression can also lead to some irrational inner turmoil and self-hatred.

Look at it as INPUT -> FUNCTION -> OUTPUT:
Bad INPUT gets bad OUTPUT.
It is OUTPUT nonetheless and it must be let out.
The sooner the better but we can make some exceptions like you wish to do.

If you don't let it out you can smash your head against a keyboard like I do during work.
Now that doesn't really look healthy anymore.
 

CLOfriendOSE

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I don't think you understood the idea of Meiditation for supression. The idea is to not rid yourself of the emotions, but to live with them and use the experiences to learn from. By letting yourself be emotion, you can then view the situation afterwards to deduce why you behaved emotionally.

You do not will to not be affected by your emotions. Rather you will the physical manifestation not to occur.

" IMO the best reason to overcome emotional reactions is because it will make you a better person, not a slave to them."
You display a fear of emotions as some sort of opressive master. Until you get over this, none of your efforts will be worth anything. Right now, your decision to use only thought is an emotional response in itself.

As for the regards to thought dictating everything:
There is no logical rationale to make any decision. Ultimately, "choice" is determined not by what is most beneficial to you, it is determined by what pleases you. For this reason, simple tasks like going to the supermarket will become more difficult - infinite combinations of items and none of the combinations will ever be able to trigger "I want that" from you. You could buy the most nutritional items...but why? The most delicious item? What IS delicious? The cheapest? Why do you care?

I used to want to do away with all emotions as well, but I literally only could generate lists and had to depend on other people to make decisions for me.
 

xbox

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I first do avoidance and then meditative suppression. Unfortunately since I have done that for 25 years, the process has imploded my insides.
 

Jelly Rev

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What are the best methods of suppressing emotional responses totally and completely? How do you deal with them? What are your solutions? Do they help?

There are 2 main types of dealing with emotion in the world of psychology.

1.suppression...all ready well talked about in this thread

2.reappraisal:This is the act of taking a new look at the situation evaluate the negative emotions and replace them with postivie emotion. This is the coping strategy that most psychologist would reccomend as suppresion can lead to increased stress among other things.
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There was a time in my life where I thought emotion was horrible useless and should be completly controlled.
Over time with my INTP abstract thinking and majoring in psychology I decided to make a grand theory of how people function, The theory has been created and is put to great scrutiny by myself everyday imagining new situations where I need to explain how the theory works but that is for another time. think of it as the complete version of the two-factor theory of emotion.

The theory has in fact made me look at emotions as now important. So I now deal with them by evaluating them, pull them apart, spin them, reflect on whether others would have experienced this emotion, and finally explaining why I experienced this emotion. I have learned that emotions can tell us with some accuracy what makes us feel a loss of control and what we desire...but these are not always accurate and must be evaluated objectively

More importantly, logically and rationally, I now deal with emotions to aid in the easement of my external world. As an INTP barely having boundaries or caring what people say I still find that it is rationaly beneficial to get angry at someone when they say something that would cross nearly all others types boundaries bc this will stop them in the future from annoying me and will gain the respect of others which makes external life easier. Respect or domination is not the goal, the goal is to simply make my life easier. Another thing to do is when debating people and you have pretty much won with logic finish it off with some emotional answer.
 

OverCaes

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I'll give a situational example:

My mother and I have rarely ever seen things on the same level. I have more than surpassed her on an intellectual level and can never seem to get her to understand the simplest of things. That being said, she is my mother and we still interact and speak to one another. She asks for advice and/or guidance, but still chooses to disregard said advice and/or guidance and ends up somewhere she didn't want to be.

Obviously, the predicament is upsetting, but I don't give her too much crap for it. I don't think "she didn't listen to me, so she deserves this" I just think "she didn't listen to sound advice" and I remove myself from the equation. I figure out what went through her head and see where it is that she is lacking common sense. After seeing all this, I know my mother is a lost cause. She is stuck in her ways, and all I can do, as her son, is visit her with a smile on my face and make the best of whatever time she has left on this earth.

Now when we talk, I don't get upset, because I don't invest myself unnecessarily into whatever she has going on.

Does that make sense at all?
 

Iuanes

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Yeah, I don' think the litany of fear is to be understood as suppression. "I will face my fear".Rather quite the opposite. If anything its controlled detonation where you use the energy theirein. Letting the fear become part of you after confronting and transform it is not suppression.
 

AlteramPartem

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I agree with Luanes. The part "where it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing" suggests that the litany contains a reminder to cue back into past meditative/contemplative experiences on fear. The conclusions that should have been derived and are to be remembered and put to use being:
1) The noxious effect of fear ("Fear is the mind-killer"), which is supposed to bring about the psychological energy/motivation to resist it ("I must not fear"). Instruction: collect mental ressources.
2) Not to shy away from it but rather let it unfold mindfully, the "controlled detonation" that Luanes mentions ("I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me").
3) Add this experience of fear into the memory, as a reinforcer of that behavior, once the fear has gone ("And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing".). Instruction: notice again the transitive nature of fear.
4) The last line, "Only I will remain" has IMO yet a deeper meaning than the rest of the litany if you consider the transitive nature of emotions that is evoked on the line right before. The "I" remaining is the "I" which feels and YET does not identify with his/her current mental state. It is the enlightened "I" of very many religions and mystiques.
 

snafupants

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When you feel an emotion, analyze it logically and determine whether or not it's beneficial to sustain. If it's not, discard it.

That would fit snugly into a CBT counseling session. Unfortunately, sometimes emotions are beyond our volition. One day we may wake up feeling euphoric and the other may be an unmitigated struggle. There are strategies we can adopt to inflluence our moods, but to wholesale change our moods at will is an untenable premise. While I do agree that folks surrender to their emotions occasionally, I would not say that humans have the kind of omnipotent power you suggest.
 

Jah

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The "punch a pillow" technique is not advisable.

It is likely to enforce the brain's tendency to desire physical violence as a response to anger.

Not a great character trait.



Better to sit down and meditate on the anger,
go through the seams and argue why you are angry (with yourself) try to find good reason for the anger, and attend to that instead.

Go for the source,


Letting the emotions take control is basically forfeiting your body to natural impulses and instinct rather than honing it through self-control and understanding.




No Redirecting,
Control.
 
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