Can we control our emotions?
The very reason that we feel our aliveness is the way we can control our thoughts, and concequently, we can make our decisions on our actions and to a long extent, control our own fates. Our emotions are very similar to our thoughts; they are all generated by our mind, aren't they? So not suprisingly, the ansewers from many is "yes", we can control our emotions.
I held this belief too. However, I am start to question it. It seems very few people are able to really control their emotions, and certainly I have failed in countless occasions. There are some commonly acknowledged bad emotions, the notorious one being angry. I thought I can control my emotion so completely avoid angry, but I think I never managed so. I was able to constrain the actions when I felt angry, but even that is extremely difficult.
What is emotion?
I think, emotion is not really thoughts that we are so confident of being able to control, rather, emotion is our second tier senses. Our first tier senses include our famous five-senses -- sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Not so often mentioned, but our first-tier senses also include our sense of imbalance, hunger, pain, as well as all the strange things we felt when we ingest too much chemicals such as alcohol. And to our mind, I believe all the infomation we received forms our first-tier senses. Besides the physical infomation we received from our physical senses, we also sense abstract information, such as "You are about to get a promotion", or "your boss thinks you are very lazy", or "our soldiers got killed in Iraq".
Most of the time, our mind does not directly operate on the information we received from our first-tier senses. We do not really think about square and red, but rather, we are thinking on buildings and cars; we do not really think about high pitch and low pitch, but rather we are thinking on the source of sound and meaning of the speech. In fact, our body has many reflexes developed, a common being the famous knee-jerk reflex. Those reflexes doesn't really goes through our mind and thus are more of sort-or second tier senses than our concious decision. And emotions are just one of these reflexes, a sort or second tier senses. We can't really control our senses, so I don't think we are able to really control our emotions.
However, since they are second-tier, I guess those reflexes are not entirely uncontrollable if we really put our efforts in and force our mind to intercept them, but it is really, really difficult. It either requires geniouses or long period of dedicated training. There are certain religion put strong emphasis on "endurance", I guess trying to control their second-tier senses are one of their goals.
Emotion, however, somehow is slightly different than other physical second-tier senses. Emotion is a reflex on abstract infomations, and those information is not limited to information from first-tier senses. Emotion reacts on any informations, even those result from our non-sensical thoughts. For example, if we imagine some foes bad mouthing our egos, we can feel angry (the extent of course, depend on the vividness of our imagination).
Therefore, can we control our emotion? Not really. But we do have some level of control over the information that our emotion feeds on. If we are feeling angry, I don't think it is feasible to just tell our mind to "not angry". It doesn't work, or does it? However, we can let our mind think about some images that make us calm and happy, or more directly, we can counter-think the infomation that evoked our emotion in the firstplace. Say you heard your archenemy is badmouthing you, of course you would and should feel angry; but if your mind can think that the gossip may not be true, and in one more step, think about that your archenemy is not bad-mouthing you at all, dependent on how vivid you mind can work, it probably can reduce or change your emotion to certain extent.
Also, rather than counter-think the information we already received -- which is sort of stupid to do so -- we can add more information to it. It works just like we adding suger to coffee, more information in the different direction often can alter our emotion. So if something set you angry, getting more information about the reasons and facts and feelings of the other end that cause you angry, in addition, the consequeces your angriness may bring, often will change your mood a little. However, if after all the infomation we can get, we still feel angry, probably, we should be angry. After, the reflexes built into our body is there for a reason. An emotion that we will not regret is not much a problem. The difficult part is how do we make sure that we have received all the necessary information.
I held this belief too. However, I am start to question it. It seems very few people are able to really control their emotions, and certainly I have failed in countless occasions. There are some commonly acknowledged bad emotions, the notorious one being angry. I thought I can control my emotion so completely avoid angry, but I think I never managed so. I was able to constrain the actions when I felt angry, but even that is extremely difficult.
What is emotion?
I think, emotion is not really thoughts that we are so confident of being able to control, rather, emotion is our second tier senses. Our first tier senses include our famous five-senses -- sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Not so often mentioned, but our first-tier senses also include our sense of imbalance, hunger, pain, as well as all the strange things we felt when we ingest too much chemicals such as alcohol. And to our mind, I believe all the infomation we received forms our first-tier senses. Besides the physical infomation we received from our physical senses, we also sense abstract information, such as "You are about to get a promotion", or "your boss thinks you are very lazy", or "our soldiers got killed in Iraq".
Most of the time, our mind does not directly operate on the information we received from our first-tier senses. We do not really think about square and red, but rather, we are thinking on buildings and cars; we do not really think about high pitch and low pitch, but rather we are thinking on the source of sound and meaning of the speech. In fact, our body has many reflexes developed, a common being the famous knee-jerk reflex. Those reflexes doesn't really goes through our mind and thus are more of sort-or second tier senses than our concious decision. And emotions are just one of these reflexes, a sort or second tier senses. We can't really control our senses, so I don't think we are able to really control our emotions.
However, since they are second-tier, I guess those reflexes are not entirely uncontrollable if we really put our efforts in and force our mind to intercept them, but it is really, really difficult. It either requires geniouses or long period of dedicated training. There are certain religion put strong emphasis on "endurance", I guess trying to control their second-tier senses are one of their goals.
Emotion, however, somehow is slightly different than other physical second-tier senses. Emotion is a reflex on abstract infomations, and those information is not limited to information from first-tier senses. Emotion reacts on any informations, even those result from our non-sensical thoughts. For example, if we imagine some foes bad mouthing our egos, we can feel angry (the extent of course, depend on the vividness of our imagination).
Therefore, can we control our emotion? Not really. But we do have some level of control over the information that our emotion feeds on. If we are feeling angry, I don't think it is feasible to just tell our mind to "not angry". It doesn't work, or does it? However, we can let our mind think about some images that make us calm and happy, or more directly, we can counter-think the infomation that evoked our emotion in the firstplace. Say you heard your archenemy is badmouthing you, of course you would and should feel angry; but if your mind can think that the gossip may not be true, and in one more step, think about that your archenemy is not bad-mouthing you at all, dependent on how vivid you mind can work, it probably can reduce or change your emotion to certain extent.
Also, rather than counter-think the information we already received -- which is sort of stupid to do so -- we can add more information to it. It works just like we adding suger to coffee, more information in the different direction often can alter our emotion. So if something set you angry, getting more information about the reasons and facts and feelings of the other end that cause you angry, in addition, the consequeces your angriness may bring, often will change your mood a little. However, if after all the infomation we can get, we still feel angry, probably, we should be angry. After, the reflexes built into our body is there for a reason. An emotion that we will not regret is not much a problem. The difficult part is how do we make sure that we have received all the necessary information.
posted by Hui Zhou at 5:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home