[quote]Edgy wrote:
so, Miss EmmyDear…
give me your pop analysis on me.
(waiting)[/quote]
Icelandic, i.e. drunk most of the time and letting the women run the country(, which they do quite well…)
How am I doing;-)?
[quote]TQB wrote:
[quote]Edgy wrote:
so, Miss EmmyDear…
give me your pop analysis on me.
(waiting)[/quote]
Icelandic, i.e. drunk most of the time and letting the women run the country(, which they do quite well…)
How am I doing;-)?[/quote]
wow -
nailed it, first time!
color me impressed!
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]red04 wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
By the way, I put on my long, flowing therapist’s skirt for this.
<
<
<[/quote]
That fan is fired, it’s not blowing your dress up at all![/quote]
Oh, it can’t. It’s a therapist’s dress. It’s nailed to my ankles to prevent it ever blowing up and giving clients thoughts that aren’t relevant to the discussion. [/quote]
Well, what if you clients are discussing pussy?[/quote]
ahem - we are now referring to that part of the woman’s anatomy as Hoo-Haa.
unless, of course, you were referring to the feline variety - if that’s the case, please carry on Pat, my friend.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Are there ordeals in your hegemony of processes, rationality and emotion? Or are ordeals considered part of a process? The ordeal I’m thinking of is mourning.
[/quote]
Is what you are asking more along the lines of “Does thinking influence emotion?”- or “Does emotion influence thinking?”?
There is a cart horse relationship there that gets confusing sometimes. I would like to believe that for myself thinking influences emotion, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is emotion which influences thinking.
[/quote]
It’s both. Thought arouses feeling, feeling prompts action or behavior. Or feeling influences thought, thought prompts action or behavior. It can go either way.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
I think that all animals have emotions, just like all animals eat, shit, fuck, and die. Therefore, I don’t rate feelings as very important. Actual reason, on the other hand, is an incredibly rare and precious thing. Rationalizing is probably more closely related to emotion than reason.[/quote]
Isn’t what we’re talking about when we say “processing” the application of thought or reason to feelings?
[/quote]
If I feel like I need to take a shit, how much “processing”, or “the application of thought or reason” does that need, beyond locating a decent toilet?
If I’m angry because someone takes something that’s rightfully mine, I will take into consideration the legal consequences of whatever retaliation I’m considering and whether it’s worth it in the long run. If I’m sad because I’ve lost someone, no amount of “processing” will bring that person back. Beyond that, “the application of thought or reason” to something as trivial as a feeling seems like an incredible waste of mental energy. [/quote]
I wonder if you’ve had the blessing of an incredibly easy life, because that thinking seems very shallow to me and you’ve never struck me as a shallow man.
Let’s say when you need to take a shit, you need to locate the bathroom NOW, or will have an accident. Still no need of applying thought to the feelings of humiliation and isolation a health issue like that might cause?
Let’s say the thing that’s taken from you is your adored fiance, and the taker your best friend. No need to give that hot mess some thought in order to digest the feelings?
Losing people can happen in many ways. A couple of losses I’ve felt required a great deal of processing were the loss of my mother, who left, and the death of my father, which was due to negligence and which I felt in the aftermath that I could have and should have prevented. In the first case I was left with raging abandonment issues. If one does not apply some thought to “my mother did not want me” one is vulnerable to all sorts of self-inflicted drama. In the second case, enough processing needed to be done to stop the nightmares.
Generally speaking, people who have encountered major roadblocks will need to do some thinking if they don’t want a life built on reactivity, because feelings prompt action in many cases, or sometimes crippling inaction.
Children of alcoholics have a lot of thinking to do. Recovering substance abusers. People who’ve witnessed or experienced violence. And so on. [/quote]
I think about events, sure, but to think about feelings is solopsistic and results in nothing but a self feeding loop. When my grandparents died, I thought about them and my relationship with them, but I didn’t reflect on my own sadness, because, of course I was sad. The saddness itself was nothing to think about. If my fiance was taken from me by my best friend, I would probably commit an act of physical retaliation and move on. The obvious conclusion would be that whatever I thought I saw in her was an illusion, and my friendship with him was weaker than I thought.
But the anger and sadness themselves are just natural biological reactions to life events, and I would probably let them run their course, like a virus. Primarily, thoughts would be directed towards minimizing their damage, rather than endless self reflection. For example, I would convince myself to keep going to work, because I need a job. Limit thoughts of revenge, because for most wrongs it’s just not worth it, as they always say.
But I think our main difference is that men and women are just different. Women bond through “talking” and sharing their emotions, where, as a man, I have never felt any bond from talking at all, and when I have actually attempted to share emotions with others, the result is that it makes me feel dirty, and those emotions feel cheap and hollow.
[/quote]
This seems rather naive to me. My grandparents’ deaths caused barely a ripple for me as well, because they were old and their deaths were not horrific. So I thought to myself that I missed (my grandmother, actually, my gf was just sort of there, not a huge loss to me personally) and wove the manner of her death into an entertaining story of feistiness. I doubt I engaged in any self-reflection whatsoever, and certainly no mournful heart-to-hearts. For what purpose?
I started working with a youngish woman this week who is the victim of childhood sex abuse. She hasn’t been intimate with her husband, whom she loves, for several months. Her feelings are quicksand, and she’s drowning in them. As you say, thoughts are directed toward minimizing the damage the feelings do. In this case shame, which is crippling. That’s processing, as I understand it. To process something is to reform or make sense of something; to categorize it.
Feelings can and should be examined for validity if they are causing any difficulty. If not, as in the case of my grandparents and yours, groovy.
I dunno, maybe your emotions ARE cheap and hollow. Some people’s are.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
I think that all animals have emotions, just like all animals eat, shit, fuck, and die. Therefore, I don’t rate feelings as very important. Actual reason, on the other hand, is an incredibly rare and precious thing. Rationalizing is probably more closely related to emotion than reason.[/quote]
Isn’t what we’re talking about when we say “processing” the application of thought or reason to feelings?
[/quote]
If I feel like I need to take a shit, how much “processing”, or “the application of thought or reason” does that need, beyond locating a decent toilet?
If I’m angry because someone takes something that’s rightfully mine, I will take into consideration the legal consequences of whatever retaliation I’m considering and whether it’s worth it in the long run. If I’m sad because I’ve lost someone, no amount of “processing” will bring that person back. Beyond that, “the application of thought or reason” to something as trivial as a feeling seems like an incredible waste of mental energy. [/quote]
I wonder if you’ve had the blessing of an incredibly easy life, because that thinking seems very shallow to me and you’ve never struck me as a shallow man.
Let’s say when you need to take a shit, you need to locate the bathroom NOW, or will have an accident. Still no need of applying thought to the feelings of humiliation and isolation a health issue like that might cause?
Let’s say the thing that’s taken from you is your adored fiance, and the taker your best friend. No need to give that hot mess some thought in order to digest the feelings?
Losing people can happen in many ways. A couple of losses I’ve felt required a great deal of processing were the loss of my mother, who left, and the death of my father, which was due to negligence and which I felt in the aftermath that I could have and should have prevented. In the first case I was left with raging abandonment issues. If one does not apply some thought to “my mother did not want me” one is vulnerable to all sorts of self-inflicted drama. In the second case, enough processing needed to be done to stop the nightmares.
Generally speaking, people who have encountered major roadblocks will need to do some thinking if they don’t want a life built on reactivity, because feelings prompt action in many cases, or sometimes crippling inaction.
Children of alcoholics have a lot of thinking to do. Recovering substance abusers. People who’ve witnessed or experienced violence. And so on. [/quote]
I think about events, sure, but to think about feelings is solopsistic and results in nothing but a self feeding loop. When my grandparents died, I thought about them and my relationship with them, but I didn’t reflect on my own sadness, because, of course I was sad. The saddness itself was nothing to think about. If my fiance was taken from me by my best friend, I would probably commit an act of physical retaliation and move on. The obvious conclusion would be that whatever I thought I saw in her was an illusion, and my friendship with him was weaker than I thought.
But the anger and sadness themselves are just natural biological reactions to life events, and I would probably let them run their course, like a virus. Primarily, thoughts would be directed towards minimizing their damage, rather than endless self reflection. For example, I would convince myself to keep going to work, because I need a job. Limit thoughts of revenge, because for most wrongs it’s just not worth it, as they always say.
But I think our main difference is that men and women are just different. Women bond through “talking” and sharing their emotions, where, as a man, I have never felt any bond from talking at all, and when I have actually attempted to share emotions with others, the result is that it makes me feel dirty, and those emotions feel cheap and hollow.
[/quote]
This seems rather naive to me. My grandparents’ deaths caused barely a ripple for me as well, because they were old and their deaths were not horrific. So I thought to myself that I missed (my grandmother, actually, my gf was just sort of there, not a huge loss to me personally) and wove the manner of her death into an entertaining story of feistiness. I doubt I engaged in any self-reflection whatsoever, and certainly no mournful heart-to-hearts. For what purpose?
I started working with a youngish woman this week who is the victim of childhood sex abuse. She hasn’t been intimate with her husband, whom she loves, for several months. Her feelings are quicksand, and she’s drowning in them. As you say, thoughts are directed toward minimizing the damage the feelings do. In this case shame, which is crippling. That’s processing, as I understand it. To process something is to reform or make sense of something; to categorize it.
Feelings can and should be examined for validity if they are causing any difficulty. If not, as in the case of my grandparents and yours, groovy.
I dunno, maybe your emotions ARE cheap and hollow. Some people’s are.
[/quote]
I agree Em.
People who are unable to, or refuse to reflect on their own emotions are destined to be mentally stunted. They will never be able to make the very important connection between their experiences, behaviors, desires and what results from them and it’s role in their lot. They will however sometimes convince themselves that their reasoning is infallible because they lack emotional connections. They believe they are purely logical. The reality is they have plenty of emotional responses but lack self awareness and are ultimately missing a key piece of data to facilitate attempts at successful relationships. Basically it’s an impairment. A blindness even. Few people are actually without emotions or so limited. Most who think they are are just in denial.
That’s my feelings on feelings =)
[quote]debraD wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
I dunno, maybe your emotions ARE cheap and hollow. Some people’s are.
[/quote]
I agree Em.
People who are unable to, or refuse to reflect on their own emotions are destined to be mentally stunted. They will never be able to make the very important connection between their experiences, behaviors, desires and what results from them and it’s role in their lot. They will however sometimes convince themselves that their reasoning is infallible because they lack emotional connections. They believe they are purely logical. The reality is they have plenty of emotional responses but lack self awareness and are ultimately missing a key piece of data to facilitate attempts at successful relationships. Basically it’s an impairment. A blindness even. Few people are actually without emotions or so limited. Most who think they are are just in denial.
That’s my feelings on feelings =)[/quote]
Well shit 
[quote]debraD wrote:
That’s my feelings on feelings =)[/quote]
Agree.
I’m in the software world (too), so I see this all the time. A good friend of mine is starting to see his worldview crack at the edges, finally realizing how much of his logic really isn’t logical at all. His reasoning skills are fine but he’s beginning to notice the emotions underpinning his assumptions and behaviors.
He’s making progress.
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]debraD wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
I dunno, maybe your emotions ARE cheap and hollow. Some people’s are.
[/quote]
I agree Em.
People who are unable to, or refuse to reflect on their own emotions are destined to be mentally stunted. They will never be able to make the very important connection between their experiences, behaviors, desires and what results from them and it’s role in their lot. They will however sometimes convince themselves that their reasoning is infallible because they lack emotional connections. They believe they are purely logical. The reality is they have plenty of emotional responses but lack self awareness and are ultimately missing a key piece of data to facilitate attempts at successful relationships. Basically it’s an impairment. A blindness even. Few people are actually without emotions or so limited. Most who think they are are just in denial.
That’s my feelings on feelings =)[/quote]
Well shit :|[/quote]
Oh, don’t worry. Being in denial shouldn’t significantly affect your wild animal battling abilities.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Are there ordeals in your hegemony of processes, rationality and emotion? Or are ordeals considered part of a process? The ordeal I’m thinking of is mourning.
[/quote]
Is what you are asking more along the lines of “Does thinking influence emotion?”- or “Does emotion influence thinking?”?
There is a cart horse relationship there that gets confusing sometimes. I would like to believe that for myself thinking influences emotion, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is emotion which influences thinking.
[/quote]
I don’t think it’s necessarily one way or the other when it comes to what the alpha is between emotion and thinking depending on how you want to think about it. An example are emotions we can experience when we reminisce which is in part why this is kinda slippery and mysterious.
I was more wondering about the hegemony or template Emily buys into since she’s educated and a professional, and measuring it against the way I at least think I do things. The way I understand her explanation is that reason can over-ride emotion. The way I read her, it kinda seems like we can avoid feelings like hearbreak and sorrow if we just reason through those emotions. But when you are in the process of mulling through the memories and good times, that rational side of me that is more calculated and rational can’t always over-ride, I guess we can call it the throws of emotion. All it does most of the time is allow you to withhold an expression of those feelings.
You may not cry but you feel sorrow. You may not get into a fight but you feel angry. I’m saying it’s not just the rational aspect of us that helps us deal with things, time is also a factor. We aren’t using, nor are very many of us familiar with the technical language, I was wondering if by processing, she meant reason + time, kinda like a food processor analogy.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Are there ordeals in your hegemony of processes, rationality and emotion? Or are ordeals considered part of a process? The ordeal I’m thinking of is mourning.
[/quote]
Is what you are asking more along the lines of “Does thinking influence emotion?”- or “Does emotion influence thinking?”?
There is a cart horse relationship there that gets confusing sometimes. I would like to believe that for myself thinking influences emotion, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is emotion which influences thinking.
[/quote]
I don’t think it’s necessarily one way or the other when it comes to what the alpha is between emotion and thinking depending on how you want to think about it. An example are emotions we can experience when we reminisce which is in part why this is kinda slippery and mysterious.
I was more wondering about the hegemony or template Emily buys into since she’s educated and a professional, and measuring it against the way I at least think I do things. The way I understand her explanation is that reason can over-ride emotion. The way I read her, it kinda seems like we can avoid feelings like hearbreak and sorrow if we just reason through those emotions. But when you are in the process of mulling through the memories and good times, that rational side of me that is more calculated and rational can’t always over-ride, I guess we can call it the throws of emotion. All it does most of the time is allow you to withhold an expression of those feelings.
You may not cry but you feel sorrow. You may not get into a fight but you feel angry. I’m saying it’s not just the rational aspect of us that helps us deal with things, time is also a factor. We aren’t using, nor are very many of us familiar with the technical language, I was wondering if by processing, she meant reason + time, kinda like a food processor analogy. [/quote]
I mean using reason to understand emotion’s impact on our reactions (thoughts) and behavior rather than necessarily stopping the feelings, and using our capacity to think to problem-solve or accept, depending which is needed, the things we feel. So “manage” might be a better word than “over-ride.” For example, anger, which is a big one with men. It isn’t that they feel irritated or frustrated or genuinely angry that’s the problem, it’s that they frighten and overwhelm the people they love with it. “Anger management” is learning to use your mind to manage the expression of your feelings. “Distress tolerance and emotion regulation” are standard goals in my field. People who can’t tolerate unhappiness or frustration are lacking in maturity. But we can develop strategies, or support them through growing up.
You asked why I’m in here when I know about people and relationships and the answer is simple. I’ve had a lot of loss and can be reactive as a result in romantic relationships. I don’t want a repeat of old patterns, which is that I find a man who is immature and then have to help him regulate his emotions. So my goal is to apply reason to something that is largely emotional (falling in love). I want TNation to support me through growing up. Although the strategy of buying a gun and shooting my dates might be the easier avenue. lol
Buy the gun! Good for taking care of those vultures and lions you don’t want hanging around.
Well, that’s just in case of emergency when your emotional howitzer doesn’t do the job.
Me and the wife just found out for sure that we are having our first child. She is 8 weeks along and I am pretty stoked but extraordinarily nervous as well. It has been a tough road, tried for a year, she had surgery to remove Endometriosis lesions in August, and we were pregnant by October. That’s a lot of emotion packed into a couple of months ha.
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
Me and the wife just found out for sure that we are having our first child. She is 8 weeks along and I am pretty stoked but extraordinarily nervous as well. It has been a tough road, tried for a year, she had surgery to remove Endometriosis lesions in August, and we were pregnant by October. That’s a lot of emotion packed into a couple of months ha. [/quote]
Congrats
Its a strange wonderful experience.
Story of a man dealing with his feelings. Just thought it fit here and its one of my favorite pieces of writing.
Lilyfish by Bill Heavey (July 2000 Field and Stream)
After the world takes an eggbeater to your soul, you never know what?s going to get you up and back among the living. In my case, it was the ham. It was 3:30 on a sweltering July afternoon, three weeks to the hour since my new baby daughter lay down for a nap and woke up on the other side of this life.
I decided it was time to go fishing. There were any number of good reasons. For one, I could still smell Lily?s baby sweetness in the corners of the house, still feel her small heft in the hollow of my shoulder. For another, I?d hardly left the house since she died and had taken to working my way through an alarming amount of dark rum and tonic each night, not a sustainable grief management technique over the long haul. Jane and I had planted the memorial pink crepe myrtle and the yellow lilies, chosen for having the audacity to bloom in the heat of the summer, the very time Lily died.
But it was the ham that got me off the dime. After the funeral, the neighbors had started bringing over hogs? hind legs as if the baby might rise from the dead and stop by for a sandwich if they could just get enough cured pork in the refrigerator. I knew my mind wasn?t quite right, knew I still hadn?t even accepted her death. But it seemed like I?d lose it unless I put some distance between me and the ham.
I shoved a small box of lures in a fanny pack, spooled up a spinning rod with 6-pound mono line, and filled a quart bottle with tap water. On my way out the door, I stopped, as I have taken to doing since her death, to touch the tiny blue urn on the mantel. ?Baby girl,? I said. I stood there for several minutes, feeling the coolness of fired clay and waiting for my eyes to clear again. Then I got in the car and drove 20 miles north of D.C. to the Seneca Breaks on the upper Potomac River.
I didn?t particularly care that it was 102 degrees outside. I didn?t particularly care that any smallmouth bass not yet parboiled by the worst heat wave in memory would scarcely be biting. I was furious at the world and everything still living in it now that my daughter wasn?t. As I drove, the radio reported severe thunderstorms to the west and said they might be moving our way. Fine by me. If someone up there wanted to send a little electroshock therapy my way, I?d be easy to find.
Even at five o?clock the sun still had its noon fury. The heat had emptied the normally crowded parking lot at the river?s edge. I stepped out of the air-conditioned car into the afternoon?s slow oven. I slugged down some water, put my long-billed cap on, found a wading stick in the underbrush, and walked into the river. The water was bathtub warm and 2 feet below normal. Seneca Breaks, normally a mile-long series of fishy-looking riffles and rock gardens was, like the only angler fool enough to be out there, a ghost of its former self. At least it didn?t smell like ham. But the fish weren?t here, and I realized I shouldn?t be either. It dawned on me that I?d better get in water that went over my waist or risk heatstroke.
Just upstream from the breaks, the river is called Seneca Lake, 3 miles of deep flats covered with mats of floating grass. I worked my way to the head of the breaks and slipped into this deeper water, casting a 4-inch plastic worm on a light sinker. Soon I?d waded out chin-deep into the lake, holding my rod arm just high enough to keep the reel out of the water. There were baitfish dimpling the surface every so often and dragonflies landing on my wrist, and once a small brown water snake wriggled by so close I could have touched him.
Nothing was hitting my worm, but that was to be expected. My arms seemed to be working the rod on their own, and I was content to let them. I stood heron-still and felt the slow current brush grass against my legs. Every so often, a minnow would pucker up and take a little nip at my exposed leg. It tickled. Baby fish. I remembered how I?d call her Lilyfish sometimes when changing her diaper, remembered how she had loved to be naked and squiggling on the changing table, gazing up at me and gurgling with something approaching rapture as I pulled at her arms and legs to stretch them.
The tears welled up again. I found the melody to an old Pete Townshend song running circles through my head and finally latched onto the chorus:
After the fire, the fire still burns,
The heart grows older but never ever learns.
That?s how it was, alright. The fire was gone, but it still burned. It would always burn. The memories?her smell, her smile, the weight of her in my arms?would always smoulder.
And I?d always yearn for the one thing I?d never have.
And what struck me as I stood alone in the middle of the river was that while my world had been changed forever, the world itself had not changed a whit. The river simply went about its business. A dead catfish, bloated and colorless, washed serenely past, on its way back down the food chain. The sun hammered down, and a hot wind wandered the water.
I caught a bluegill, then two little smallmouths, within 10 minutes of each other. As I brought the fish to the surface, I had the sensation of bringing creatures from a parallel universe into my own for a minute before sending them darting back home. I wondered if death might be like this, traveling to a place where you didn?t think it was possible to breathe, only to arrive discovering that you could. I hoped it was. The older I get, the more I believe that there is such a thing as the soul, that energy changes form but still retains something it never loses. I hoped that Lily?s soul was safe. That she knew how much she was still loved.
I don?t know how long I stayed there or even if I kept fishing. I remember looking up at some point and noticing that the light had softened. It was after eight and the sun was finally headed into the trees. And now, just like every summer night for aeons, the birds came out: an osprey flying recon over the shallows 50 feet up; a great blue heron flapping deep and slow, straight toward me out of the fireball, settling atop a rock and locking into hunting stance. And everywhere swallows coming out like twinkling spirits to test who could trace the most intricate patterns in the air, trailing their liquid songs behind them.
Suddenly I wasn?t angry anymore. This is the world, I realized for the millionth time, and its unfathomable mystery: always and never the same, composed in roughly equal parts of suffering and wonder, unmoved by either, endlessly rolling away. It was getting dark now, hard to see the stones beneath the water. I waded carefully back to my car, rested the stick by a post for another fisherman to use, changed into dry clothes, and drove home.
Take your grief one day at a time, someone had told me. I hadn?t known what he meant at the time, but I did now. This had been a good day. Lily, you are always in my heart.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Are there ordeals in your hegemony of processes, rationality and emotion? Or are ordeals considered part of a process? The ordeal I’m thinking of is mourning.
[/quote]
Is what you are asking more along the lines of “Does thinking influence emotion?”- or “Does emotion influence thinking?”?
There is a cart horse relationship there that gets confusing sometimes. I would like to believe that for myself thinking influences emotion, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is emotion which influences thinking.
[/quote]
I don’t think it’s necessarily one way or the other when it comes to what the alpha is between emotion and thinking depending on how you want to think about it. An example are emotions we can experience when we reminisce which is in part why this is kinda slippery and mysterious.
I was more wondering about the hegemony or template Emily buys into since she’s educated and a professional, and measuring it against the way I at least think I do things. The way I understand her explanation is that reason can over-ride emotion. The way I read her, it kinda seems like we can avoid feelings like hearbreak and sorrow if we just reason through those emotions. But when you are in the process of mulling through the memories and good times, that rational side of me that is more calculated and rational can’t always over-ride, I guess we can call it the throws of emotion. All it does most of the time is allow you to withhold an expression of those feelings.
You may not cry but you feel sorrow. You may not get into a fight but you feel angry. I’m saying it’s not just the rational aspect of us that helps us deal with things, time is also a factor. We aren’t using, nor are very many of us familiar with the technical language, I was wondering if by processing, she meant reason + time, kinda like a food processor analogy. [/quote]
Ok. I didn’t intend to answer for her. It’s just that I find the topic very engaging and interjected at a point that piqued my interest.
[quote]Derek542 wrote:
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
Me and the wife just found out for sure that we are having our first child. She is 8 weeks along and I am pretty stoked but extraordinarily nervous as well. It has been a tough road, tried for a year, she had surgery to remove Endometriosis lesions in August, and we were pregnant by October. That’s a lot of emotion packed into a couple of months ha. [/quote]
Congrats
Its a strange wonderful experience. [/quote]
X9000!
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
But the anger and sadness themselves are just natural biological reactions to life events, and I would probably let them run their course, like a virus. Primarily, thoughts would be directed towards minimizing their damage, rather than endless self reflection. For example, I would convince myself to keep going to work, because I need a job. Limit thoughts of revenge, because for most wrongs it’s just not worth it, as they always say.
[/quote]
I appreciate the idea that what most characterizes us as human beings is our ability to reason. However, we use reason in service of our emotions. In Freudian terms the id forms the desire but the ego deals with reality to satisfy it. Rationality, on its own, is directionless.
Bringing reason to bear on our psyche - putting words to what we feel - not only organizes our experiences, but allows us to steer intelligence toward meaningful pursuits and avoid damaging behaviors. Talking about emotions in terms of mad, happy, and sad is reductive in a way similar to saying that music is just a collection of notes chosen from the musical alphabet. Such an oversimplification might have pedagogic or therapeutic value for some people, but it is still an oversimplification.
[quote]LoRez wrote:
[quote]LoRez wrote:
[quote]StevenF wrote:
i turn 30 in 10 days. [/quote]
I did that yesterday. I’m… still trying to process it.
Didn’t expect it to hit me so hard, and I don’t even know what “it” is.[/quote]
For some reason, turning 30 brought about a ton of negative self-judgment. It doesn’t really make sense to me; it’s all in my head.[/quote]
I didn’t like it, either. I think we are enculturated to reflect on our lives and accomplishments at certain milestones. The transition from the twenties into the thirties is one such milestone. It is certainly hard for me to look back on what I have and what I’ve done and not think I could have done more or better. It is also difficult not to believe that years past are opportunities foreclosed.
And everything seems more difficult in my thirties. I know that senescence accumulates more or less gradually, but it took on an urgency and sense of inevitability when I hit thirty.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Are there ordeals in your hegemony of processes, rationality and emotion? Or are ordeals considered part of a process? The ordeal I’m thinking of is mourning.
[/quote]
Is what you are asking more along the lines of “Does thinking influence emotion?”- or “Does emotion influence thinking?”?
There is a cart horse relationship there that gets confusing sometimes. I would like to believe that for myself thinking influences emotion, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is emotion which influences thinking.
[/quote]
It’s both. Thought arouses feeling, feeling prompts action or behavior. Or feeling influences thought, thought prompts action or behavior. It can go either way. [/quote]
Hey Skyz, wanna hear something creepy?
I just responded to your noop post in the testes award, and when I wrote “I honestly think it’s one of the most beneficial things we can take” about L-theanine, I was thinking along the lines of this very thought, BUT, I had thought to myself “Don’t hijak this thread. If there’s a question that propmts it, answer it, but that’s best saved for Em’s thread.” Then I come in here…
Honest.
Anyway, I think it’s that exact reason Em just stated that L-theanine can be SO beneficial to us. L-theanine promotes a mood boost, increases smile/laugh frequency, induces positive thinking, decreases stress, etc. My posture improves, less stress means less cortisol, etc…
I recently came across a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci that read “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
It stuck with me because I’ve been reading quite a few books on stuff from body language and self self esteem to stuff like Malcom Gladwells The Tipping Point or Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power and holy fuck, it’s incredible how much of this stuff overlaps in so many ways.
One of the groups of things I think that overlap are positive thoughts, happy feelings, good posture, improved mood, and quality sleep… which influences everything else. I think L-theanine can be an awesome kick start to one of those aspects that will influence the others.
But this, of course, is just my opinion. Still doesn’t change the fact that I can sit in bumper to bumper traffic with a smile across my face with a decent dose of the stuff, haha.