The mutuality of emotion, rationality and reason

MayCaesar

It is not very clear what exactly defines what emotions a given entity will cause in you. My understanding is that emotions are mostly linked to your past interpretation of certain events, so when similar events occur in the past, your mind remembers that interpretation and shapes it into a corresponding emotion.

For example, many people experience strong negative emotions whenever they have to do public speaking. Always in such people's history you can find events in which they were shamed in public, so they learned to associate being the center of attention in a large crowd with emotional pain that comes with being shamed by the collective.

Such emotions, in turn, cause our cunning mind to rationalise them, giving them a pseudo-reasonable explanation. Again, logically everybody knows that speaking in public is not in any real way dangerous; even the worst-case scenario, where they mess up royally, everybody laughs at them and they faint at the end, the consequences are very unlikely to be dramatic, and just a few days later everybody will forget about the whole thing. However, their mind tries hard to invent scenarios - and make them look plausible - where subpar performance leads them ultimately to near-death outcome: "My boss will think less of me for speaking so poorly and may fire me. Then I may not be able to find a second job, so I will have no income. With no income, I will starve to death." - I am not even exaggerating; this is something you can find people actually thinking about.

Same goes for positive emotions. When you are strongly infatuated with someone, your mind starts prescribing them qualities which you cannot know if they have. We all had those experiences, where, after a short interaction with someone, we started fantasising about their potential qualities, drawing the picture of a near-ideal match to us, one that also happens to strongly like us... We might even think about the wedding, living together forever, etc. Then we interact with that person a bit more and realise that they are nothing like the image we painted in our minds.

So, the sequence goes like this:
1. You have an experience on the meaning of which you have a very strong and sharp opinion.
2. That meaning causes you to have an intense emotional response, so strong that it leaves a permanent mark on your brain.
3. You have an experience that is similar to that experience in some way.
4. That causes you to experience a similar, although weaker, emotion as the last time.
5. Your brain rationalises that emotion, coming up with a pseudo-logical explanation of it.

To me personally intercepting the 5th step was what made a huge difference in my life. Once I realised that emotions are actually just feelings in our bodies, and our interpretation of them does not have to match the seemingly most "natural" one, I was no longer a slave to them. Nowadays, when I experience a strong emotion and catch myself doing that, I can detach my thinking from this emotion, come up with my own interpretation of the context of that emotion and, in turn, adjust that emotion to the desirable one.

Yesterday, for example, I was having a lunch with colleagues, and the conversation somehow just was not going well on my part - I struggled to find anything to say. The colleagues, in turn, did not respond well to it and mostly seemed to ignore my remarks. I experienced a strong emotion related to abandonment, and my mind started thinking, "I am being non-social today, and people do not like me." Once I caught that, I realised how far-fetched this interpretation was and replaced it with, "I am doing fine, I just feel more like listening than talking right now. The colleagues also may be responding well to me, I just do not say much of anything, so they have nothing to go on - but nobody has made any negative remarks, so it is all in my head." Immediately I felt completely calm and relaxed - and, ironically, that is when I suddenly became an active part of the conversation, and my responses were flying, and I soon became a center of the conversation.

Being able to catch yourself being taken advantage of by your emotions is a very powerful skill in life that opens a lot of doors and overall frees you up from the shackles of your past traumatic experiences, allowing you to choose what to feel under virtually any circumstances.

ZeusAres42

MayCaesar said:

It is not very clear what exactly defines what emotions a given entity will cause in you. My understanding is that emotions are mostly linked to your past interpretation of certain events, so when similar events occur in the past, your mind remembers that interpretation and shapes it into a corresponding emotion.

  @MayCaesar ; Interestingly, there are six major theories emotion and at least one or more of them relate to what you said here:

1. The Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

2. The James-Lange Theory of Emotion

3. Schachter-Singer Theory

4. Evolutionary Theory of Emotion

5. Cognitive Appraisal Theory

6. Facial-Feedback Theory of Emotion

Out of these theories, I think what's more applicable to what you're saying here is the Cognitive Appraisal Theory.

Cognitive Appraisal Theory

According to appraisal theories of emotion, thinking must occur first before experiencing emotion. Richard Lazarus was a pioneer in this area of emotion, and this theory is often referred to as the Lazarus theory of emotion. According to this theory, the sequence of events first involves a stimulus, followed by thought which then leads to the simultaneous experience of a physiological response and the emotion. For example, if you encounter a bear in the woods, you might immediately begin to think that you are in great danger. This then leads to the emotional experience of fear and the physical reactions associated with the fight-or-flight response.

https://www.verywellmind.com/theories-of-emotion-2795717

I think this bit says a lot about how we interpret past events.

For example, many people experience strong negative emotions whenever they have to do public speaking. Always in such people's history you can find events in which they were shamed in public, so they learned to associate being the center of attention in a large crowd with emotional pain that comes with being shamed by the collective.

Such emotions, in turn, cause our cunning mind to rationalise them, giving them a pseudo-reasonable explanation. Again, logically everybody knows that speaking in public is not in any real way dangerous; even the worst-case scenario, where they mess up royally, everybody laughs at them and they faint at the end, the consequences are very unlikely to be dramatic, and just a few days later everybody will forget about the whole thing. However, their mind tries hard to invent scenarios - and make them look plausible - where subpar performance leads them ultimately to near-death outcome: "My boss will think less of me for speaking so poorly and may fire me. Then I may not be able to find a second job, so I will have no income. With no income, I will starve to death." - I am not even exaggerating; this is something you can find people actually thinking about.

Same goes for positive emotions. When you are strongly infatuated with someone, your mind starts prescribing them qualities which you cannot know if they have. We all had those experiences, where, after a short interaction with someone, we started fantasising about their potential qualities, drawing the picture of a near-ideal match to us, one that also happens to strongly like us... We might even think about the wedding, living together forever, etc. Then we interact with that person a bit more and realise that they are nothing like the image we painted in our minds.

So, the sequence goes like this:
1. You have an experience on the meaning of which you have a very strong and sharp opinion.
2. That meaning causes you to have an intense emotional response, so strong that it leaves a permanent mark on your brain.
3. You have an experience that is similar to that experience in some way.
4. That causes you to experience a similar, although weaker, emotion as the last time.
5. Your brain rationalises that emotion, coming up with a pseudo-logical explanation of it.

To me personally intercepting the 5th step was what made a huge difference in my life. Once I realised that emotions are actually just feelings in our bodies, and our interpretation of them does not have to match the seemingly most "natural" one, I was no longer a slave to them. Nowadays, when I experience a strong emotion and catch myself doing that, I can detach my thinking from this emotion, come up with my own interpretation of the context of that emotion and, in turn, adjust that emotion to the desirable one.

Yesterday, for example, I was having a lunch with colleagues, and the conversation somehow just was not going well on my part - I struggled to find anything to say. The colleagues, in turn, did not respond well to it and mostly seemed to ignore my remarks. I experienced a strong emotion related to abandonment, and my mind started thinking, "I am being non-social today, and people do not like me." Once I caught that, I realised how far-fetched this interpretation was and replaced it with, "I am doing fine, I just feel more like listening than talking right now. The colleagues also may be responding well to me, I just do not say much of anything, so they have nothing to go on - but nobody has made any negative remarks, so it is all in my head." Immediately I felt completely calm and relaxed - and, ironically, that is when I suddenly became an active part of the conversation, and my responses were flying, and I soon became a center of the conversation.

Being able to catch yourself being taken advantage of by your emotions is a very powerful skill in life that opens a lot of doors and overall frees you up from the shackles of your past traumatic experiences, allowing you to choose what to feel under virtually any circumstances.

Just one thing in regard to the bit about rationalization. I am not entirely sure that is the correct term but I know what you're getting at.

Moreover, have you heard of CBT by the way?