Emotional Mechanics
I believe that what's missing from our culture is an understanding of the mechanics of emotion. What I mean by that takes a bit of explaining. So, I will explain the basics of that below, but, going forward, the point of the blog will be to illustrate how an understanding of emotion would change the outcome of different incidents, from personal situations to current events.
When it comes to emotions, most everyone understands how emotions feel. Sadness probably makes you feel like crying. Anger might make you feel like you're going to explode. Most people get that. What most don't get is the mechanics. How they work. The basics look something like this: Emotion-causing event leads to emotion caused, leads to emotion felt, leads to emotion expressed, leads to emotion resolved. Got it, right? Okay, with examples might be better: Emotion-causing event (neighbors drop yard waste in my yard [Really!]) leads to emotion caused (anger), leads to emotion felt (feeling like my head might pop clean off my shoulders), leads to emotion expressed (I pull out a big stick... No, not really. After speaking calmly to my neighbors about not dumping their lawn trash on my yard I express my emotions at home by possibly yelling out loud or maybe crying), leads to emotion resolved (when I have expressed enough by yelling or crying, the energy of the emotion will leave me and I will feel much better). If your emotions follow that pattern on a regular basis, congratulations! You are one of the few people who have some degree of positive emotional health. But most people deviate from that pattern at one point or another. For those of us who do, the way to emotional health is to understand where the deviation occurs and to fix it, because most of those deviations are not one-time occurrences, they're on-going patterns. And those patters cause a lot of suffering.
Through this blog, I hope to illustrate how people handle their emotions incorrectly, how that effects them, how it effects others, and how it can be corrected. If we all understand how emotions work, then we have the ability to choose emotional health if that's what we want.
I think a lot of people have problems when it comes to the expressing emotion to gain emotional resolution part. I see a lot of people who either don't express their emotions (repression), or express a different emotion than the one they're feeling at the time (one that is more comfortable or acceptable) in difficult situations.
ReplyDeleteIt starts with being mindful of exactly what you are feeling in the moment and accepting that feeling in order to allow yourself to express it. Obi-Wan Kenobi has the right idea: "Stretch out with your feelings." "Use the Force, Luke. Let go."
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/what-star-wars-taught-me-about-being-a-mindful-parent-20151217?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20151218
Feelit, thanks for your comment. I'm sorry it took me so long to reply, but I had to read the article first! And it's good, so thank you. I agree with what you said, people do have trouble with expressing. It's hard! Society teaches us not to. But if we can plant the seed of mindfulness in our consciousness, expression will develop over time. There are several good things in the article, too many to respond to here. But I think I'll write a post about one of them. So, thanks again.
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