How Do You Process Emotions?

[Meowcat]

You're right. I've been describing extraversion/affective empathy rather simply (as "sentiment-sharing") just because everyone pretty much intuitively understands affective empathy and how it works.

But in fact extraversion/affective empathy is a pretty complex skill. It's the skill that builds elaborate cultures and civilizations. It tames the "human element," neutralizes the negative side of human nature (the selfishness and childishness), builds community spirit, and gets us all working together to build great nations and do things like travel to the moon.

And it's not an easy skill. Introverts who learn to extravert (like myself) find that society has a number of traps for the unwary--abusers, enabling, selfishness, fear of ostracism, etc. It's extraverts who do the work and learn how to maneuver around all those traps, neutralize the worst of it, provide support networks, and keep humanity chugging forward as a whole and doing great things. And extraversion/affective empathy operates "on the fly," in real time, by sheer brains, guts, and instinct.

In Chapter 6 of "Psychological Types," Jung talks about how the world needs both introverts and extraverts. Introverts are good at sitting in solitude and thinking up great inventions or books; meanwhile, extraverts are good at taking the raw material of human nature and creating great civilizations from it. Jung considered introversion and extraversion to be equal in both importance and difficulty and said that both skills are needed if humanity is to move forward and achieve great things.

Hmm ok. Uh, for me the nature of affective empathy was harder to understand, even if it's true that it's intuitively understood by the majority. Just saying. And yah I also don't see it as an easy skill really beyond the automatic workings I did always have on a basic level without noticing even. But yeah, only on a basic level. Otoh I'm not great at sitting in solitude reflecting lol.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Hmm ok. Uh, for me the nature of affective empathy was harder to understand, even if it's true that it's intuitively understood by the majority. Just saying. And yah I also don't see it as an easy skill really beyond the automatic workings I did always have on a basic level without noticing even. But yeah, only on a basic level. Otoh I'm not great at sitting in solitude reflecting lol.

I agree. It's hard to actually spell out what happens in affective empathy. There is actually a very complex dynamic that occurs in even the simplest social exchange. And when it comes to things like pecking order, personal boundaries, conflict management, etc. it may take hundreds of thousands of words to describe what's going on--the underlying emotional processes.

I'm aware of the complexity of affective empathy, because in trying to improve my own extraversion skills I've hunted down books on various subjects like assertiveness, boundaries, etc., and tried to parse it all out for my own use.

So yes, I enthusiastically agree with you that affective empathy is much deeper and more complex than it appears at first glance. In a way, cognitive empathy is a much simpler skill by comparison. Or so it seems to me, since cognitive empathy is my natural tendency.

 

[Meowcat]

I agree. It's hard to actually spell out what happens in affective empathy. There is actually a very complex dynamic that occurs in even the simplest social exchange

I just want to add what I thought of just now randomly. That I think my favourite is trying to tune in and read out other emotions when someone is clearly angry. Read it out from their face, their body language. (Only if the person is close to me)

Like, see not just the anger but see the emotion behind that, and then feel for that. It's solved some conflicts of mine recently / helped avoid getting into bad conflict even. It kind of ... also makes things more intimate. (Yeah even tho I keep reading in some relationship books that anger is anything but good for intimacy LOL)

Thing is anger is the emotion I'm most comfortable with by default so maybe that's why.

 

[Vendrah]

My issue with letting them surface, is that I cannot control them. My main emotion I deal with is anger, and its on a very short leash. Its too much to let lose safely. So I cannot really "face them", but adapt to future expressions.

Theres only 3 things I can say about that...

1) One brazilian you tuber (yep, not exactly a very good source) has a channel to talk partially about emotions. And in one of his videos he mentions that men created in conservative-masculine enviroment (the enviroment which mens are not allowed to display feelings because they are supposed to be weakness) tends to carry inside them, buried, some sort of anger, but there is usually a time where they cant hold it anymore, they end up releasing it and doing terrible things while that. He says that if these men were more open about emotions (but the enviroment wont let them), they would be more resolved about that. I wonder if the case of yours could be the case.
2) Is the anger coming from outside enviroment?
I didnt read much studies about anger, but it can be external even when it doesnt feel to be so. Some places can induce anger, some parents and people which you live with can induce anger in you. That can happen as people yelling at you or behind you by a frequent basis, but can happen on very less obvious ways. I dont really know much details about that, but I pretend to try look for serious readings about that (Google Scholar) on a short future of few weeks and perhaps you should too. Anger can be induced by external conditions, which basically makes it a emotion that sometimes doesnt truly belong to you.
3) There is no way you can extravert this anger alone? I had friends who destroyed one useless thing that was going to trash anyway, I already did throw something very resistent to the wall while alone one time. Another thing, can you find somebody that doesnt anger you and talk about it? Or show it, at least? Could help, i dont know.

I disagree. Your definition of empathy is too narrow. Too exclusive. Personally, I use a much broader definition of empathy:

Speaking in broad terms, empathy is simply the way that we relate to the world. In terms of biology, empathy is based on mirror neurons. Every human has mirror neurons, as do primates and lots of other species. Even most mammals empathize to one degree or another: For example, household pets bond with their masters and reflect their moods. That's empathy as a broad concept: Basically it's simply the ability to interact with, bond with, and mirror the world around you.

From there, humans tend to be divided up into those who use affective empathy versus those who use cognitive empathy. But all people pretty much have to use one or the other. It's difficult to imagine a person who doesn't use either one: They would be unreactive to the world.

Here is how I would define things:

I think Affective empathy (the "emotional" form of empathy) pretty much correlates to Extraversion, whereas Cognitive empathy (the "intellectual" form of empathy) pretty much correlates to Introversion.

If you think about it, the definition for Affective empathy pretty much matches the definition for Extraversion: Jung said that extraverts interact with the world by bonding directly with objects and people in the world around them. And that's what Affective empathy does: It shares the sentiments of the people around you, thus creating supportive bonds and a feeling of community. It's the ability to feel what others are feeling by a mirroring process.

Meantime, the definition for Cognitive empathy pretty much matches the definition for Introversion: Jung said that introverts interact with the world by extracting ideas from the outside world and carrying them down into an internal laboratory. In that laboratory they create "idea complexes" concerning favorite concepts, and they take fresh input from the outside world and see how it matches up with their existing "idea complexes." If you think about it, that's pretty much the definition of "perspective-taking," which is the activity of Cognitive empathy.

In chapter 7 of "Psychological Types," Jung himself said that Extraversion equates to "empathy" and Introversion equates to "abstraction." But the terminology has changed since 1921, when that book was published. A lot of psychologists didn't like Jung's choice of terminology because it implied that introverts couldn't be empathetic and extraverts couldn't abstract. So instead, modern psychologists use the terms "affective empathy" and "cognitive empathy." But I would say that the definitions for "affective empathy" and "cognitive empathy" are pretty much a match for Jung's concepts of Extraversion and Introversion; it's just different terminology from what Jung himself used.

Of course, that raises another question: Does this mean that all extraverts are automatically users of affective empathy and all introverts are automatically users of cognitive empathy? Or is it possible for there to be some crossover: Is it possible for some extraverts to use cognitive empathy and some introverts to use affective empathy?

In answer to that question, personally I would guess that there's a broad correlation between introversion and cognitive empathy, and between extraversion and affective empathy. But I think that there is also plenty of room for crossover as well: After all, everyone has an introverted function and an extraverted function in their top two functions. That means everyone has quick access to both kinds of empathy. So it's entirely possible for introverts to develop their Auxiliary extravert function and start using affective empathy in their dealings with the world outside their heads. Matter of fact, in a previous post I described pretty much this exact thing in my own history: I'm an introvert but I developed my auxiliary Ne and used affective empathy in the past; but I tended to become an enabler in the process; so eventually I gave it up and returned to my natural roots in cognitive empathy.

Similarly, it's also possible for an extravert to work on developing their Auxiliary introverted function and start using cognitive empathy more. If the world is getting them down and pulling them in too many different directions, they may "start looking out for Number 1," sink into their head a bit like an introvert, and start engaging in cognitive perspective-taking to prioritize their needs, instead of bonding to so many people that they end up overcommitting.

Of course, this is all just my own theory based on what I've read about cognitive empathy and affective empathy (and about Jung's definitions of introversion and extraversion). And as always, the standard disclaimers apply: I don't have any background or training in psychology. I'm just passing along what I've read in self-help and popular psychology books.

I havent actually made a definition of empathy at all. I just partially described how I used it.I said there should be more than 2 ways for using it. Not that I can actually build a good definition on that, I could think of, but data seems to say that empathy correlates with Fe, Fi and Ne, meaning that the more Ne and/or Fe and/or Fi, more empathy. I took two topics of people posting their empathy results and I looked at their Dario Nardi keys2cognition test, and from that I had the correlation. My stating isnt conceptual. What cognitive functions correlates depends on how the tests phrased correlates, I could look for them on my messy archive and do the questionaries myself and pay attention to the questions. And from these correlations, if Jung stated that empathy can only come from extraverts, that was a huge mistake. The correlation between empathy with E/I dimension was closer than zero in all 3 topics I took info about that, I dont really see why someone with Introversion would not be able to have empathy, even affective empathy. Empathy, at least for me, is a complex process that passes through Jung extraversion and introversion, since I am projecting somebodys world into my own world.

I totally agree with most of this. I only post bc I want to say that I don't think making an exception for and vilifying anger makes sense. I read a book written by a counsellor recently and it claimed at one point that anger is madness, and anything you say or do when angry is madness and that the reader should believe him on this because he's a qualified therapist .... no shit. Lol. Anger is a very constructive emotion to protect boundaries or to achieve hard things. Etc.

If I misunderstood your comment on anger let me know tho'.

No you didnt, you got it right.
I said that some negative emotions can be good, but I have made an PS that anger has its "pros and cons" and it depends a lot of the context. Some anger are very constructive emotion as you said, some others are like the book you pointed.

 

[Meowcat]

About anger and processing in general...

No you didnt, you got it right.
I said that some negative emotions can be good, but I have made an PS that anger has its "pros and cons" and it depends a lot of the context. Some anger are very constructive emotion as you said, some others are like the book you pointed.

I don't see the PS...?

Agreed btw yeah.

1) One brazilian you tuber (yep, not exactly a very good source) has a channel to talk partially about emotions. And in one of his videos he mentions that men created in conservative-masculine enviroment (the enviroment which mens are not allowed to display feelings because they are supposed to be weakness) tends to carry inside them, buried, some sort of anger, but there is usually a time where they cant hold it anymore, they end up releasing it and doing terrible things while that. He says that if these men were more open about emotions (but the enviroment wont let them), they would be more resolved about that. I wonder if the case of yours could be the case.
2) Is the anger coming from outside enviroment?
I didnt read much studies about anger, but it can be external even when it doesnt feel to be so. Some places can induce anger, some parents and people which you live with can induce anger in you. That can happen as people yelling at you or behind you by a frequent basis, but can happen on very less obvious ways. I dont really know much details about that, but I pretend to try look for serious readings about that (Google Scholar) on a short future of few weeks and perhaps you should too. Anger can be induced by external conditions, which basically makes it a emotion that sometimes doesnt truly belong to you.
3) There is no way you can extravert this anger alone? I had friends who destroyed one useless thing that was going to trash anyway, I already did throw something very resistent to the wall while alone one time. Another thing, can you find somebody that doesnt anger you and talk about it? Or show it, at least? Could help, i dont know.

With the masculine thingy. It's a brain difference too, and you don't even have to have a dick for that. : p But the way of upbringing ofc makes it even more extreme. So yeah, it's not as simple as "just be more open about your emotions". It's a tiny bit more complex of a task to get better with feelings.

I found your 2nd note interesting, bc I never feel that anger would not be coming from me... I own it fully. Ofc yeah I usually respond to the external environment with it but it still belongs to me. It's still under my control if I want to express the anger or act on it etc. It's all supposed to be my decision yeah. (With trauma, I did have a harder time controlling extra strong rages tho yeah, they got so strong they hurt my own brain lol, that was a really hard period.) If you meant emotional contagion generally that's not a phenomenon specific to anger. But it's possible some people are more sensitive to picking up anger vs other emotions instead. I personally am not sensitive about anger like that, just because someone else is angry, I won't necessarily become angry too. I can ofc, but I can choose not to. With other emotions I mirror more automatically under some circumstances.

About acting out the extra anger (that can't be used for anything else) alone yeah, I think a lot of people do it .... I do too. But I noticed that I have a limit to how much of it I can release that way if we view it as purely emotional energy, because the way I release it by default isn't emotional, and I noticed if I sometimes get emotional along with being angry in my usual way (emotionally more controlled usually), then I can release more of it with less physical energy expenditure. I mean I can try and release it by physical acting out but it would require a lot of destruction physically sometimes where just some emotional expression will take care of it. It's like the conversion of emotional energy into physical energy for release is less efficient (too much overhead or something) lol. Tho' this more efficient emotional release works only sometimes. That part is not under my control whether I do get emotional with it and then express that as an emotion and not just as physical aggression (i.e. emotional anger vs instrumental aggression). But I still do that expressing alone because I feel it would be too much of a punishment for people who do not deserve it, if I'm just being too reactive expressing it at them.

I did not have the opportunity to develop my emotions and how to processing them in a healthy way growing up. I was very neglected emotionally, and had very cold parents. So growing up, my emotions were constantly "not okay" to have. A child's first defense mechanism for this kind of environment, is disassociation/depersonalization. So more often than not, my emotions have always been on back burner and ignored. Sometimes they overfill, and burst out in uncontrollable bouts. There is a slight disconnect between me and them. I often times am very unaware of the emotions I am feeling. I have to really think about it, and take in environmental cues to figure it out. I have this on top of what is known as "Emotional flashbacks", because I have cPTSD. My emotions are what goes back in time to moments of trauma, and it will cause a resurgence of powerful emotions that I think is being caused by current events. Which leads to even more confusion to try to understand them, so I ignore them. When I feel emotions, my first instinct is to recognize if its a good or bad one. I sometimes get confused if an emotion is a good or bad one, because often times I feel multiple emotions at once. Yet I cannot make a distinction. I feel that I do have some strong control on how much I let it affect my thinking, other times I "break" and the dam cuts loose and I tend to become rather hysterical. Sometimes, I do know what I am feeling. The emotion is clear as day sometimes, but I have no idea what to do with it. Other times, I let the "autopilot" take control, and just wing it. Touch and go, and it is honestly exhausting for me. So much of my time is spent simply trying to figure out what to do, how to fix my bad emotions that I become disengaged from reality more often than not. I tend to isolate and become anti-social when I am struck with an emotional flashback or bout of bad emotions. I am not really even sure if I "process" let alone understand.


(...)

My issue with letting them surface, is that I cannot control them. My main emotion I deal with is anger, and its on a very short leash. Its too much to let lose safely. So I cannot really "face them", but adapt to future expressions.

I've had some of this experience. I do think it would help if you learned to be more aware of smaller signs of emotional states being present so they do not have to grow so strong after ignoring them for so long. This isn't done by thinking about what is being felt, but by trying to tune into your actual states. Thinking about what you may feel is just theorising that can easily be off base.

About feeling multiple emotions at once. If you get more practice with feeling them without resistance then you can have patience working through them one by one and figure out what each one says. Figure out more clearly and precisely which parts of the external situation they relate to. But the same for relating them to your internal situation, too.

If you ignore the flashback emotions, you'll not be able to resolve the source causing the flashbacks.

And yes I'm sure you have strong control on not letting your thinking swayed but if you remain unaware of the emotional states and if these are unaligned with what you consciously want to think, they will get too strong again, and if it's bad enough then your thinking gets swayed in various ways, by being less efficient losing some working memory (getting into nitpicking, tunnel vision even), by missing important factors for making conclusions if those factors are unaligned with the emotional motivation, and in general just "wanting" (not consciously) to make the conclusion that the emotional motivation is there for. And that could easily be the wrong conclusion yeah. And if you really have strong control then you get a sense of how you could be swayed if you are not careful but then you can develop a thing similar to reaction formation imo. Like, you cannot arrive to the conclusion that the emotions want to motivate you to get to (even if it somehow happened to be the correct one), and you actually develop a negative bias against it (instead of positive bias i.e. being swayed by bias to make the conclusion too easily).

And how to know what the emotions are saying. How to catch up on the missed knowledge. I would say read up a lot on psychology of emotions, and ask people with high emotional intelligence as much as possible. And apply the knowledge on them.

I really hope you get to move forward with trying to process all that. Sounds like a load.


Also: what do you mean by adapting to "future expressions"?

 

[Maou]

Theres only 3 things I can say about that...

1) One brazilian you tuber (yep, not exactly a very good source) has a channel to talk partially about emotions. And in one of his videos he mentions that men created in conservative-masculine enviroment (the enviroment which mens are not allowed to display feelings because they are supposed to be weakness) tends to carry inside them, buried, some sort of anger, but there is usually a time where they cant hold it anymore, they end up releasing it and doing terrible things while that. He says that if these men were more open about emotions (but the enviroment wont let them), they would be more resolved about that. I wonder if the case of yours could be the case.

2) Is the anger coming from outside enviroment?
I didnt read much studies about anger, but it can be external even when it doesnt feel to be so. Some places can induce anger, some parents and people which you live with can induce anger in you. That can happen as people yelling at you or behind you by a frequent basis, but can happen on very less obvious ways. I dont really know much details about that, but I pretend to try look for serious readings about that (Google Scholar) on a short future of few weeks and perhaps you should too. Anger can be induced by external conditions, which basically makes it a emotion that sometimes doesnt truly belong to you.

Yeah, it would be similar. Weakness was not allowed in my childhood, so I have a very under developed ability in both expression and constructively using emotions. My family wasn't really conservative though, just old school (silent generation). My anger was pronounced since I have a very questioning and skeptical anti-authoritarian orientated nature, and my parents required unquestioning obedience from me. This generated a lot of stubbornness, fighting etc. I was a lot more intelligent than them. But over time, I was beaten into submission and suffered a form of ego death. I spent quite a few years in disassociation and escapism. So I would say mine was induced both internally and externally.

3) There is no way you can extravert this anger alone? I had friends who destroyed one useless thing that was going to trash anyway, I already did throw something very resistent to the wall while alone one time. Another thing, can you find somebody that doesnt anger you and talk about it? Or show it, at least? Could help, i dont know.

I have tried everything from martial arts, to destruction outlets. The only thing that works is harming the source, not surrogates. I am in therapy too, so its not all lost. I have been learning to constructively use it to prevent further build up too.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I think what I'm feeling is something I'm occasionally blind to, so I find it helpful to take a pause and assess how I actually feel.

Emotions sometimes operate on an unconscious level for me. It's not unusual for me to not be aware of where I'm actually at. Gaining awareness is useful, however, because it enables more control. It helps guard against impulsivity in this way.

Although, there are times when I'm aware of something and it's nevertheless strong enough that maintaining control can be difficult. In times like this, it almost feels like a battle raging inside me.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

I think what I'm feeling is something I'm occasionally blind to, so I find it helpful to take a pause and assess how I actually feel.

Emotions sometimes operate on an unconscious level for me. It's not unusual for me to not be aware of where I'm actually at. Gaining awareness is useful, however, because it enables more control. It helps guard against impulsivity in this way. [snipped]

I was just reading something about this. If you don't mind me bloviating on the subject... I like to write up these little essays to get some thoughts on paper, and then put them on file possibly for later polishing and re-use.

Anyway, emotions work at the gut/intuitive level. They tell you something's wrong, but they don't tell you exactly what the trigger is. You have to figure out that second part using logic.

Here's how emotions work:

We each have our own expectations of how the world should operate (our "Sense of life"). When the world validates our expectations, we are happy; when the world invalidates our expectations, it's a cause of consternation and self-doubt.

Evolutionarily speaking, the emotional system goes back to primates on the savannah (and even before that). Primates in Africa were constantly watchful for anything that signaled danger. They had a sense of how the grass and the land and the horizon should look if there was no danger at hand. (Their "Sense of life.") If everything continued to look peaceful, the primates were happy. But if there was a sudden change of any kind, the primates got alarmed and took flight. Stability, regularity, and familiarity were good; change, suddenness, and newness were bad. Emotions operated as an early warning system.

But successful early warning systems depend on speed. Evolution favored the swift, so our gut-level instincts now operate almost instantaneously: Our emotional system operates literally in hundredths of a second. That's way too quick for any kind of analysis.

So now today we have an emotional system that's good at noticing any kind of departure from the norm or from our expectations of how life should operate, but it has no analytical function by itself. All it can do is signal: A negative emotion means that something or someone is operating in a way that's contrary to we want or expect, and it's starting to trigger unease in us, that is, a sense of fight-or-flight. But past that point, we get nothing more from our emotions since it's all happening at gut/intuitive level. Our logical system (our ego, our consciousness) has to step in at that point and pinpoint the cause and figure out what to do about it. But in the modern world we're constantly getting hit with lots of inputs and demands on our attention, so it may be difficult to figure out exactly what is triggering our emotional system. Our emotional system is kind of wide-ranging in terms of constantly monitoring lots of subtle inputs, so it may take a while to figure out why "our spidey sense is tingling."

 

[Vendrah]

With the masculine thingy. It's a brain difference too, and you don't even have to have a dick for that. : p But the way of upbringing ofc makes it even more extreme. So yeah, it's not as simple as "just be more open about your emotions". It's a tiny bit more complex of a task to get better with feelings.

I found your 2nd note interesting, bc I never feel that anger would not be coming from me... I own it fully. Ofc yeah I usually respond to the external environment with it but it still belongs to me. It's still under my control if I want to express the anger or act on it etc. It's all supposed to be my decision yeah. (With trauma, I did have a harder time controlling extra strong rages tho yeah, they got so strong they hurt my own brain lol, that was a really hard period.) If you meant emotional contagion generally that's not a phenomenon specific to anger. But it's possible some people are more sensitive to picking up anger vs other emotions instead. I personally am not sensitive about anger like that, just because someone else is angry, I won't necessarily become angry too. I can ofc, but I can choose not to. With other emotions I mirror more automatically under some circumstances.

About acting out the extra anger (that can't be used for anything else) alone yeah, I think a lot of people do it .... I do too. But I noticed that I have a limit to how much of it I can release that way if we view it as purely emotional energy, because the way I release it by default isn't emotional, and I noticed if I sometimes get emotional along with being angry in my usual way (emotionally more controlled usually), then I can release more of it with less physical energy expenditure. I mean I can try and release it by physical acting out but it would require a lot of destruction physically sometimes where just some emotional expression will take care of it. It's like the conversion of emotional energy into physical energy for release is less efficient (too much overhead or something) lol. Tho' this more efficient emotional release works only sometimes. That part is not under my control whether I do get emotional with it and then express that as an emotion and not just as physical aggression (i.e. emotional anger vs instrumental aggression). But I still do that expressing alone because I feel it would be too much of a punishment for people who do not deserve it, if I'm just being too reactive expressing it at them.

I think the you tuber guy oversimple things, but he got some good points and thats one of them. I agree that his solution isnt the best, but what I resumed on that point is a common and unhealthy.

About the "I dont own some of emotions", actually I had been shifting that on recently. Last month. From november and before november, I thought I did fully owned them either. Acknowledging that an anger isnt mine and it was induced by the enviroment and even by people which I dont see but distort the enviroment in ways of creating general annoyance made me a lot less angry. It still didnt stop the anger, but it was easier to control. I guess it didnt stopped because some part is still mine, but a good portion on it wasnt.

Yeah, it would be similar. Weakness was not allowed in my childhood, so I have a very under developed ability in both expression and constructively using emotions. My family wasn't really conservative though, just old school (silent generation). My anger was pronounced since I have a very questioning and skeptical anti-authoritarian orientated nature, and my parents required unquestioning obedience from me. This generated a lot of stubbornness, fighting etc. I was a lot more intelligent than them. But over time, I was beaten into submission and suffered a form of ego death. I spent quite a few years in disassociation and escapism. So I would say mine was induced both internally and externally.

I have tried everything from martial arts, to destruction outlets. The only thing that works is harming the source, not surrogates. I am in therapy too, so its not all lost. I have been learning to constructively use it to prevent further build up too.

I partially had the experience and I still have, but its different, perhaps too different.

Giving your context I agree on that its you and the enviroment. The enviroment plays its part on the submission thing that can lead and spread anger. However, keep try to separate what it is/was you and what is/was them and what is/was the enviroment, it is hard but at least give it a try. And try to see if you did actually absorb the characteristics that made you anger inside yourself, that can lead to more anger and even self-hate, but it is possible to change and stop that cycle.

 

[Meowcat]

I think the you tuber guy oversimple things, but he got some good points and thats one of them. I agree that his solution isnt the best, but what I resumed on that point is a common and unhealthy.

It really isn't as simple as be more open about emotions. You're a Feeling type so maybe that is why it's hard for you to imagine that but yeah. Like I mean, you don't have personal experience of it so it's harder to imagine.

But totally agreed that you can't let yourself get that unskilled with emotion to the point that finally releasing them causes terrible consequences.

About the "I dont own some of emotions", actually I had been shifting that on recently. Last month. From november and before november, I thought I did fully owned them either. Acknowledging that an anger isnt mine and it was induced by the enviroment and even by people which I dont see but distort the enviroment in ways of creating general annoyance made me a lot less angry. It still didnt stop the anger, but it was easier to control. I guess it didnt stopped because some part is still mine, but a good portion on it wasnt.

OK I see, I guess for you it works differently than for me. Of course I can get more irritable too if I spend too much time around someone who's angry a lot, but I'm instantly aware of why I'm more irritable. I agree it makes it easier to control it. So I don't end up really angry myself. Ofc I can imagine that under some extreme circumstance where I can't get away I'd have a harder time controlling mine in response. I'd still feel I own the anger though, i.e. it's mine and not the other person's, bc I just would not be very accepting of that very angry person constantly doing a lot of angry shit, lol.

And if you just mean spending time around people who have issues so there is more often bad drama... I understand what you mean, but to me it's still not direct emotional contagion for picking up anger. So I still would not blame my feeling angry on the environment. It's my own emotion and I can and should control and channel it enough sensibly.

I was just reading something about this. If you don't mind me bloviating on the subject... I like to write up these little essays to get some thoughts on paper, and then put them on file possibly for later polishing and re-use.

Please feel free to write more of these essays. I always find these from you very interesting in the thread.

Anyway, emotions work at the gut/intuitive level. They tell you something's wrong, but they don't tell you exactly what the trigger is. You have to figure out that second part using logic.

(...)

But in the modern world we're constantly getting hit with lots of inputs and demands on our attention, so it may be difficult to figure out exactly what is triggering our emotional system. Our emotional system is kind of wide-ranging in terms of constantly monitoring lots of subtle inputs, so it may take a while to figure out why "our spidey sense is tingling."

Right, I noticed this thing. That if the emotional flow is uninterrupted for me because I feel in control, which for me usually means I can keep the situation impersonal enough (I don't know if this sounds sad or wrong to a Feeler lol), then for the emotional reactions/bits that do get conscious enough - not all of them do but they are not truly blocked, I just don't have time to stop for all of them - it's in sync with the objective picture I perceive of the external world, i.e. there is no delay in registering the reactions and so I can easily match them to the perceived objective picture immediately. That's what I call them being in sync, the system with the emotional reactions and the one with the objective perception. And yeah then I instantly figure out the reason for the emotional reaction. I mean: because there is no time delay in registering the emotional reaction, it's as if I can "overlay" the emotional reaction on the objective picture that's also in the working memory at the same time, so I see which parts it relates to directly and then the conclusion can be immediately made.

Now for personal situations or just situations where my person is too involved, that flow can get blocked if I didn't sort out that type of situation before. If I did sort it out before by analysing a lot in retrospect or just having insight come up in retrospect, then I feel in control so it's a bit impersonal a situation though I can also keep connected emotionally either internally with myself (internal emotional flow) or with someone else (more externally manifested emotional connection and flow). Keeping connected emotionally though, this is tricky when it truly is a personal situation with someone or even when it comes to my own person sometimes; again it's the case until I truly figured out the situation. This is my point essentially. And I guess for Feeling types more situations involve their own person and other people so that can complicate things even more I guess.

Oh and... with my learning to do more emotional processing and all that lol, it feels like I def have more of the unbroken flow, or that the emotional reactions get conscious faster where there was a lot more delay previously.

Here's how emotions work:

We each have our own expectations of how the world should operate (our "Sense of life"). When the world validates our expectations, we are happy; when the world invalidates our expectations, it's a cause of consternation and self-doubt.

Evolutionarily speaking, the emotional system goes back to primates on the savannah (and even before that). Primates in Africa were constantly watchful for anything that signaled danger. They had a sense of how the grass and the land and the horizon should look if there was no danger at hand. (Their "Sense of life.") If everything continued to look peaceful, the primates were happy. But if there was a sudden change of any kind, the primates got alarmed and took flight. Stability, regularity, and familiarity were good; change, suddenness, and newness were bad. Emotions operated as an early warning system.

But successful early warning systems depend on speed. Evolution favored the swift, so our gut-level instincts now operate almost instantaneously: Our emotional system operates literally in hundredths of a second. That's way too quick for any kind of analysis.

So now today we have an emotional system that's good at noticing any kind of departure from the norm or from our expectations of how life should operate, but it has no analytical function by itself. All it can do is signal: A negative emotion means that something or someone is operating in a way that's contrary to we want or expect, and it's starting to trigger unease in us, that is, a sense of fight-or-flight. But past that point, we get nothing more from our emotions since it's all happening at gut/intuitive level. Our logical system (our ego, our consciousness) has to step in at that point and pinpoint the cause and figure out what to do about it.

I'm not really sure if that explanation entirely makes sense to me. It's interesting and I've seen some of this before but... I don't know, it doesn't entirely match my own experiences. It doesn't make sense that emotions are always about the sudden changes and newness. It also doesn't make complete sense that having the need for a quick system is why emotions aren't analytical. Maybe that's part of the reason but to me it feels like this explanation is missing something.

I don't really get the idea that logic = ego/consciousness. Why would it be? If you just mean that a certain mental effort and focus is required to do detailed logical analysis for new details, sure ... my experience would match that. But I don't experience all logical analysis to be very conscious and effortful or slow. Some types of analysis are quick and not effortful, I find. I don't know what that depends on.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I was just reading something about this. If you don't mind me bloviating on the subject... I like to write up these little essays to get some thoughts on paper, and then put them on file possibly for later polishing and re-use.

Anyway, emotions work at the gut/intuitive level. They tell you something's wrong, but they don't tell you exactly what the trigger is. You have to figure out that second part using logic.

Hmm, well, I've noticed in the past that sometimes when I try to think about why a particular situation angered me, I find it hard to settle on a single reason. I often had a reason that seemed like it fit, but then I think about it more and I decided it must be something else, and so on.

Here's how emotions work:

We each have our own expectations of how the world should operate (our "Sense of life"). When the world validates our expectations, we are happy; when the world invalidates our expectations, it's a cause of consternation and self-doubt.

I don't think it's that simple. I can be prone to nervousness (which can sometimes also manifest as irritability) even when something meets my expectation exactly. Like, for instance, the kind of nervousness I feel on a day when I have an important job interview. I know that the interview is coming. The interview is not a surprise, and I am anticipating it.

I suppose you could make the case that the nervousness is because of uncertainty; t's true that I don't know entirely what to expect on the interview itself.

Evolutionarily speaking, the emotional system goes back to primates on the savannah (and even before that). Primates in Africa were constantly watchful for anything that signaled danger. They had a sense of how the grass and the land and the horizon should look if there was no danger at hand. (Their "Sense of life.") If everything continued to look peaceful, the primates were happy. But if there was a sudden change of any kind, the primates got alarmed and took flight. Stability, regularity, and familiarity were good; change, suddenness, and newness were bad. Emotions operated as an early warning system.

Can't familiarity breed boredom, though? Can't challenges breed exhilaration?

So now today we have an emotional system that's good a[t noticing any kind of departure from the norm or from our expectations of how life should operate, but it has no analytical function by itself. All it can do is signal: A negative emotion means that something or someone is operating in a way that's contrary to we want or expect, and it's starting to trigger unease in us, that is, a sense of fight-or-flight. But past that point, we get nothing more from our emotions since it's all happening at gut/intuitive level. Our logical system (our ego, our consciousness) has to step in at that point and pinpoint the cause and figure out what to do about it. But in the modern world we're constantly getting hit with lots of inputs and demands on our attention, so it may be difficult to figure out exactly what is triggering our emotional system. Our emotional system is kind of wide-ranging in terms of constantly monitoring lots of subtle inputs, so it may take a while to figure out why "our spidey sense is tingling."

I think you are spot on with your analysis of emotions as purely signals that we can then use to decide how to act. However, the signals can also guide our actions in ways we might not realize if we are not aware of them. In my case, it might actually be my behavior that alerts me to the emotion, and it might precede any awareness of internal feelings.

 

[Meowcat]

Hmm, well, I've noticed in the past that sometimes when I try to think about why a particular situation angered me, I find it hard to settle on a single reason. I often had a reason that seemed like it fit, but then I think about it more and I decided it must be something else, and so on.

You need to find your gut feeling connecting things there, I think. Intellectual theorising about what would make sense for the feeling will often provide a bogus reason only.

 

[Tilt]

Repress and vomit.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

You need to find your gut feeling connecting things there, I think. Intellectual theorising about what would make sense for the feeling will often provide a bogus reason only.

Probably.

Repress and vomit.

Real vomit or metaphorical?

 

[Tilt]

Real vomit or metaphorical?

Ha I wish I could give you a more adventurous answer.... but metaphorical.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Ha I wish I could give you a more adventurous answer.... but metaphorical.

I had a period (2015-2016) where I was vomiting frequently due to stress. The doctors weren't able to find anything. Chest x-rays turned up nothing. It just went away when I started feeling better about things. The body's a weird thing.

 

[Tilt]

I had a period (2015-2016) where I was vomiting frequently due to stress. The doctors weren't able to find anything. Chest x-rays turned up nothing. It just went away when I started feeling better about things. The body's a weird thing.

Agreed. The body is strange. But I am glad to hear that it eventually cleared up.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Please feel free to write more of these essays. I always find these from you very interesting in the thread.

Thanks!

It also doesn't make complete sense that having the need for a quick system is why emotions aren't analytical. Maybe that's part of the reason but to me it feels like this explanation is missing something.

Our emotional system is centered in one specific part of our brain, whereas our consciousness/ego/logic is centered in a different, separate part of our brain. The two systems operate independently of each other:
1) Our emotional system is centered in our amygdala and limbic system, a very primitive part of our brain that developed early in the evolutionary chain. The amygdala and limbic system are lightning-fast because they are simple: Fight or flight.
2) Meantime, our consciousness, ego, and logic belong to the prefrontal cortex, which developed much later in the evolutionary chain. The prefrontal cortex is much slower, because it involves more complex operations: Reasoning and logic.

The amygdala/limbic system (the emotional system) does, in fact, make some simple analyses and come up with simple narratives and explanations for what's going on. But it all happens lightning-fast and in a different part of our brain from our conscious mind, so our conscious mind doesn't register any of that. Being in a separate part of the brain and operating more slowly, our conscious mind only registers the end result: A gut-level emotional feeling about things.

Again, the two systems operate independently of each other. So when I say that emotions are too fast for analysis, I mean that the operations of the amygdala/limbic system are so instantaneous that the much slower prefrontal cortex (consciousness/ego/logic) can't keep up and provide explanations and commentary at the same time. So the prefrontal cortex ends up bringing up the rear and has to play catch-up.

If the amygdala/limbic system is triggered by something subtle, the prefrontal cortex may find itself in a situation like a cop stumbling upon a crime scene: The prefrontal cortex finds the limbic system all riled-up and in shock but unable to communicate what happened; and the prefrontal cortex has to puzzle out after-the-fact what got the limbic system into that state.

It doesn't make sense that emotions are always about the sudden changes and newness.

Well, "change and newness" describes the base function of the amygdala/limbic system. The amygdala/limbic system developed in the first place as a fight-or-flight mechanism that largely focused on registering change in our surroundings. And it still retains that original functionality. But with evolution, it has gotten a bit more subtle and complex in its operations.

For example, it's important to remember that the starting point for emotions is your expectations/Sense of life. Primates are worried about getting eaten alive, so they focus on any change in the environment that might signal the approach of predators. Whereas modern people have a different set of expectations/Sense of life: Modern man is concerned about more subtle things than simply staying alive until nightfall. For modern man, "change and newness" might mean something like your boss frowning at you, your kid giving you attitude, or a stranger cutting you off in traffic. Something that represents a departure (negative or positive) from how you *expect* those particular people to treat you.

Also, as I mentioned above, the amygdala/limbic system actually does make some simple analyses and come up with simple narratives and explanations for what's going on. Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel-prize-winning psychologist who has spent his life analyzing the workings of the amygdala/limbic system. He wrote a 500-page book that is mostly about how the amygdala/limbic system operates. It's actually quite complex and interesting. The book is called "Thinking, Fast and Slow." The fast-thinking system is the amygdala/limbic system (emotional system), and the slow-thinking system is the prefrontal cortex (consciousness/ego/logic).

I don't really get the idea that logic = ego/consciousness. Why would it be? If you just mean that a certain mental effort and focus is required to do detailed logical analysis for new details, sure ... my experience would match that. But I don't experience all logical analysis to be very conscious and effortful or slow. Some types of analysis are quick and not effortful, I find. I don't know what that depends on.

Non-human animals are mostly just walking limbic systems. They see something, and they react to it emotionally: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? etc.

Meantime, human consciousness arose with the development of the prefrontal cortex and the development of reason and logic. So the conscious ego tends to identify with rationality as its main driver. After all, the emotional system is in a totally different part of the brain and operates on a whole different time scale.

But people may get into playing with (and identifying with) their emotional system. Emotions involve adrenaline and drama; Feelers often like to deliberately trigger that system so that they can experience and analyze the altered states of consciousness that arise from that. Emotions outrun logic and provide a sense of immediacy; and Feelers may see emotions as way of analyzing and reacting to the world in a very personal fashion.

So different people may regard their emotions differently. Feelers may feel kind of enamored with their emotional system; whereas Thinkers may see their emotional system as just static coming from some remote corner of their brain and focus their attention on honing the logical tools of the prefrontal cortex. But either way, the prefrontal cortex and ego/consciousness are the starting point for both.

As for the "slowness" of the conscious system, I'm just speaking relatively. IOW, the prefrontal cortex operates slowly relative to the lightning-fast amygdala/limbic system. As a result, the prefrontal cortex is often put in the position of playing catch-up, as described above.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

I don't think it's that simple. I can be prone to nervousness (which can sometimes also manifest as irritability) even when something meets my expectation exactly. Like, for instance, the kind of nervousness I feel on a day when I have an important job interview. I know that the interview is coming. The interview is not a surprise, and I am anticipating it.

I suppose you could make the case that the nervousness is because of uncertainty; t's true that I don't know entirely what to expect on the interview itself.

Of course, I'm oversimplifying things in these quick descriptions. As I described to Meowcat: The amygdala/limbic system developed in the first place as a fight-or-flight mechanism that largely focused on registering change in our surroundings. And it still retains that original functionality. But with evolution, it has gotten a bit more subtle and complex in its operations.

So when I speak of the present-day limbic system and I say "negative emotions," I'm talking about a whole range of negative reactions rather than just fight-or-flight. I'm talking about anger, regret, disappointment, self-doubt, etc.

So yes, there is a whole range of "negative emotions" and feelings that can spring from our limbic system's reactions to the world around us.

Also, emotions can get us caught in stress cycles, which leads to anxiety and depression--our limbic system's way of saying that it's totally freaked out and getting depleted by stress and exhaustion. That's kind of a different subject.

Can't familiarity breed boredom, though? Can't challenges breed exhilaration?

Yes. It's important to remember that the starting point for emotions is your expectations/Sense of life. In the savannah, expectations/Sense of life was rather simple and pretty much the same for the entire tribe of primates: Stay alive and don't get eaten by predators. So emotions were geared toward watching for any change in the surroundings that might indicate that a predator was approaching. Back then, our emotional system was simple and uniform and reflected a tribal lifestyle that was collective and identical for everyone.

But nowadays, each individual human may have expectations/Sense of life that is very different from the expectations/Sense of life of other humans around him. If one child was raised in an environment of change and turmoil, he may come to expect change and turmoil as the norm or starting point for evaluating things. If another child was raised in an environment of peace and stability, then peace and stability may become his norm or starting point for measuring things.

Thus you get the phenomenon of "one man's meat is another man's poison." And their emotional systems will reflect that. What scares one person becomes amusement for another.

I think you are spot on with your analysis of emotions as purely signals that we can then use to decide how to act. However, the signals can also guide our actions in ways we might not realize if we are not aware of them. In my case, it might actually be my behavior that alerts me to the emotion, and it might precede any awareness of internal feelings.

I agree. If you're really dense about your emotions or simply ignore them as white noise, then your consciousness may try to shove them aside. But emotions are a separate system and have a power of their own. The amygdala/limbic system can suck mental energy away from the prefrontal cortex and leave it drained and listless. If emotions keep getting triggered without resolution, they can surface in other ways and places such as stress, irritability, troubled sleep, low energy, breakdowns in executive function leading to unexpected behavior, etc.

Then your prefrontal cortex (ego/consciousness) is put in the position of playing catch-up and trying to figure out why all *that* stuff is happening to you.

 

[Meowcat]

I had a period (2015-2016) where I was vomiting frequently due to stress. The doctors weren't able to find anything. Chest x-rays turned up nothing. It just went away when I started feeling better about things. The body's a weird thing.

Mind me asking what kind of stress was so big as to cause that?

Our emotional system is centered in one specific part of our brain, whereas our consciousness/ego/logic is centered in a different, separate part of our brain. The two systems operate independently of each other:
1) Our emotional system is centered in our amygdala and limbic system, a very primitive part of our brain that developed early in the evolutionary chain. The amygdala and limbic system are lightning-fast because they are simple: Fight or flight.
2) Meantime, our consciousness, ego, and logic belong to the prefrontal cortex, which developed much later in the evolutionary chain. The prefrontal cortex is much slower, because it involves more complex operations: Reasoning and logic.

(...)

So different people may regard their emotions differently. Feelers may feel kind of enamored with their emotional system; whereas Thinkers may see their emotional system as just static coming from some remote corner of their brain and focus their attention on honing the logical tools of the prefrontal cortex. But either way, the prefrontal cortex and ego/consciousness are the starting point for both.

As for the "slowness" of the conscious system, I'm just speaking relatively. IOW, the prefrontal cortex operates slowly relative to the lightning-fast amygdala/limbic system. As a result, the prefrontal cortex is often put in the position of playing catch-up, as described above.

Err, emotions are hardly just done by the limbic system. And the prefrontal cortex doesn't equal logic. The prefrontal cortex processes emotions in the ventromedial parts - yes these are well connected with the limbic system - while the dorsolateral part is responsible for the more task focused / logical / objective processing - and yes this is not well connected with the limbic system, but instead with parietal regions. There are also a few other areas where emotion processing happens beyond that, and there is also a large interconnected network for the logical processing throughout the brain. There are also differences in the two hemispheres regarding the processing. And all this is still kind of oversimplified.

There is a theory of constructed emotion also that goes way way way beyond this idea that emotions = limbic system. Or that emotions = biologically hardwired raw basic quick distinct reactions, either. Nope, emotions are constructed from more complex components according to this theory. It makes sense to me more. Though I think that there are also biologically based simpler emotions too. Why not have both emotional systems, where yes, the biologically hardwired stuff can be responsible for the unconscious quick processing.

As for Kahneman, I never liked the simplification that processing and all the properties of processing have to be divided just into two main systems, though certainly his basic idea has been adopted by many since then and makes sense somewhat, I just again feel something is missing there (mismatch with my experiences).