If I could humbly offer an addendum, Anger's message is usually 'tell me what's really at issue here, and let's become a master of change'<p>From what I've seen Anger is rarely ever 'justified' (and if it is, it's usually a primal self defense) - so let's call this "Emotional Anger" to remove the murkiness of imminent danger. At a high level, EA usually pairs deep helplessness with an inadequacy.<p>A profound shift in my life has to been to ask questions aimed at the locus of change w.r.t. EA, 'so what exactly is the harm here? what am I trying to defend internally? why am I not calmly moving through the steps as a master who has seen all this before? if it's truly urgent, what are the ways to protect myself from the fallout should the change not arise? if it is truly helpless, why am I not changing my life? Am I addicted to this feeling? ...'
Useful concept. I used to call them 'signals': like alarms going off that I should pay attention as they may be telling me something. Specially when the alarm goes off for no good reason: my mind is trying to tell me something I'm not aware of (anxiety/depression are some of these).<p>Learning about my emotions is the only other thing that has changed my life for the better comparable to learning about computers. 10/10 would recommend trying to understand how to deal with you 'inner monkey'. You've been rooming with it in your mind since the day you were born and how you relate to it shapes every aspect of your life.
I would advise against this kind of "intellectualizing" of emotions, particularly if you are a "brainy" person. Decoding the emotion as an intellectual puzzle can feel comforting, because juggling with concepts and theoretical models is what a brainy person does, but it will necessarily obscure a lot. But an emotion is not a concept, it is physical. You should listen to it, but not in the head: just allow yourself to feel it, to permeate your body, to evoque images... And often an intuitive call to action will emerge. It might just be internal action, or it might be a growing desire to quit your job to go work in another field or do social service or whatever. The thing is that the conviction that comes out of repeteadly listening to the emotions in the body is much stronger than the one that comes from rational thinking alone. And it can often be something you would never have thought about just by pondering.<p>Take the example of grief. What is the rational interpretation? "My mother was there, and now she is not". Or worse, "it shows how much time I lost when she was alive, and now it is gone". Absolutely useless insight, probably just makes the pain worsen. Maybe it makes you feel guilty and intellectually decide to "engage deeper in my relationships with the living", but in the few cases of this decision I witnessed it did not really work, because this was just abstract and filled with guilt and shame.<p>But allowing yourself to feel the grief and be sad can open a sense of devotion and respect to the dead. This intense pain can feel like the universe paying respect to the person that is now gone. And out of it can come a new way of interacting with the world and others, and maybe a newfound perspective on life. But the important part is that this kind of happens by itself, as currents and sensations in the body, over time, bottom-up, rather than as the result of solving an intellectual puzzle and coming eith a top down solution a out how you ought to live your life and feel from now on.<p>Obviously, this is just my own conclusion out of my own journey, and YMMV and all that sort of things.
This reminds me of something I found useful: "Grok" cards[1]. I haven't really played the "games" they're packaged with, just using the cards to identify what's going on in a non-confrontational way.<p>One useful thing is to distinguish between emotions and needs. I believe they're different colors on those cards (red vs. yellow).<p>Also distinguishing emotions from judgements/perceptions is good (eg: "I feel ignored" is not really the feeling so much as a guess about _why_ you feel a certain way).<p>Some other good resources from the same people: <a href="https://groktheworld.com/products/feelings-needs-body-sensations-lists" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://groktheworld.com/products/feelings-needs-body-sensat...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://groktheworld.com/collections/all-grok-products/products/grok-your-world" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://groktheworld.com/collections/all-grok-products/produ...</a>
Not bad. Some thoughts from me, in no way a <i>rebuttal</i> of the author's personal experiences:<p>1. Somatopsychic phenomenon is a thing. In other words some medical conditions have mental/emotional fallout as a side effect. Anxiety can be due to high adrenaline. Causes can include low blood sugar, allergic reaction, withdrawal.<p>2. Jealousy is not about what other people have. It's about what I lack.<p>3. Righteous anger is a force for good in this world. Anger is energy for action and depression is either exhaustion or a response of hunkering down to ride out the storm. Depending on the type of threat, sometimes hunkering down is the best practice and sometimes girding your loins for battle is the best response.
As an aside, the opening disclaimer "get help from a professional" is, in my view, actively harmful. I'm not anti-therapy but I am anti-telling-others-they-need-therapy. The latter is simply a euphamism for "I don't want to talk to you about your problems". The reason can be as petty as the other person finding such talk to be unpleasant. The idea that you should pay someone to talk about your concerns, insights, struggles, degrades the concept of intimate friendship. I just don't buy it that people in the past didn't have the same thoughts, struggles and emotions. It's just that people listened to each other, however imperfectly, and did their best to help each other. Yes, obviously some situations are really out there (like an acute break from reality) but I'm talking about 'normal' stuff like depression, anxiety, guilt, and self-doubt. Our unwillingness to talk about this stuff with each other is bad, and "go see a therapist" is a cop out that degrades the norm of listening to each other.<p>Obviously this is an article, not a friend, so the message should be "go talk to a friend".
Sorry for being harsh but this is pseudoscience. The most researched approach - CBT - says this: we can change our thoughts and it will change our emotions. Something happens, first we experience neutral arousal, our fast automatic thoughts color it and then we experience emotions.<p>For example, we interpret this neutral arousal as anger if we think that another person did something intentionally, not by mistake/accident/because of tiredness... If we think that it was our mistake - we experience sadness.<p>You thoughts are lines of code that cause your emotions and actions. You can rewrite your thoughts. I recommend counseling and reading the primary source - CBT Basics and Beyond by Beck - it’s very readable and simple. It’s like learning another programming language and rewriting your own brain OS.<p>You’ll change your nonadaptive unhelpful thoughts to the adaptive helpful ones.<p>P.S. Please, at least remove the line about suicidal thoughts. You should never say “change” to a suicidal person.
Emotions are not merely messages to trigger actions. Of course they reflect our state but not necessarily in an action imperative context. Sometimes emotion is just passive acceptance. I don’t disagree, and could not either, with a framework to process emotions. Just want to say that sometimes it’s ok to not directly address them in order to process them, to leave that envelope soaking halfway inside your mailbox. It’s ok to do nothing. Accept them not as nudges to become what you want to be but as reminders of who and what you are.
Interesting how you say "geek", because this is definitely the geek approach (this information is "out there" to be learned) vs the nerd approach (building mastery over the subject).<p>Emotions are about other people, and about social positioning. Traditional self-help gets away with murder when it talks about "exploring your emotions" as a personal thing. "Exploring your emotions" really means acting on other people, which you illustrated well.
I assumed this would be a guide to understanding other people's emotional states based on the codes they were expressing (facial expressions, body posture, tone of voice, and so on). Non-verbal (unconscious?) communication seems to be an important feature of human emotional expression. People who never express any emotions at all tend to cause a certain degree of uneasiness in other people, although this is also characteristic of autism - and part of the treatment protocol for autism, I believe, is helping the subject learn how to express their emotional state to others, in a non-intrusive and situationally-appropriate manner.<p>Geek/nerd-wise, the first thing that comes to mind is, what is an emotion? How does it differ from an animal instinct, or from a conscious thought expressed as a symbolic string? Consider, for example, the rather unpleasant emotionally manipulative human type, who first thinks "What emotion should I express now to get what I want" and then deliberately engages in that emotion to trigger a desired response in others. (Young children often have to be gently advised that this is not going to work, some are not taught this and so persist in this behavior as adults). Where does instinct become emotion become thought?<p>Another interesting human behavioral type is the emotional button-pusher, who tries to elicit strong emotions in others, for their own usually unpleasant purposes. The best defense against this dark art is probably meditation, which in part involves learning how to recognize an emotional state at the moment it arises, before one takes any action on it.<p>At the very least, a wise human recognizes that actions are best taken with at least a modicum of rational input, and should never be wholly emotional in nature. And sometimes, having a little cooling off period is the best option of all (particularly with strong emotions). On the other hand, the saying "trust your instincts" should not be disregarded.
This matches with how every other form of feedback works: we get a signal expressed to us with the signals available, but it is up to us to trace back and derive from the signal what actually kicked it off.<p>Think about it this way: when a user gives you some user feedback, you don't build the thing they tell you to build. Instead, you figure out what was frustrating them about the product that they wanted that thing build, and then you consider what the consequences of implementing various solutions to that underlying problem might be before you decide what to do with the feedback you got.<p>I don't do what my emotions tell me to do, but that is no reason to ignore the underlying dynamics that sparked them.
I can't help but feel sceptical about this - correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall psychiatrists/psychologists explaining emotions as a "call" to do something.<p>> Boredom—a call to do something I am avoiding.<p>This is actually an evolutionary mechanism preventing us from expending energy on things with a low probability of success. Only problem is, our brains haven't changed much over the last 200k years and they can't assess relatively recent stuff like doing taxes or filing for divorce, so these things go to the default category of "not worth doing".<p>One way to go around this is to imagine how you will feel when it's done - not guaranteed to help, but at least it's actionable.
Anxiety it says is a call to pay attention to something I am ignoring. Not sure how because anxiety on the other hand makes me focus on something too closely and maybe instead I should step back and say F** it instead?
A counselor told me emotions are another information input about what you value, and you can take them or leave them as far as acting on them, but you can't avoid feeling them for them very long and be healthy.