[theultdev]

I didn't say suppress or fake your emotions, I said to rationalize them.

If they are irrational you prevent the emotional knee-jerk response in the first place.

If they are rational then you know the root cause to work through so you can fix the issue.

For those rational emotional responses, recognizing the stimuli can still be helpful. It's still stressing, but you know the exact problem and can work to resolve it, the opposite of suppressing it.

[deisteve]

you're advocating for a proactive approach to emotions, where we acknowledge and rationalize them to prevent irrational responses, while still allowing ourselves to feel and work through rational emotions. This approach seems to strike a balance between emotional awareness and emotional regulation.

I think this is a great way to approach emotions, and it's refreshing to see a nuanced discussion about emotional intelligence.

[theultdev]

Thank you, these are things I developed to manage my emotions and it's the first time to put them in words, I tried my best to serialize it.

The cool thing is, if you do this enough, you can always recognize the stimuli.

There's one exception, hormonal imbalance (bipolar, seasonal depression, etc.), because there is no stimuli.

But once you realize there is no external stimuli, you know it's hormonal. It is then classified as a irrational reaction. The difference of an internal irrational reaction is it takes more investigation and sometimes a few emotional knee-jerk reactions slip through before the hormonal cause is detected.

Also the irrational brain can misattribute the imbalance and attribute it to an external stimuli, but you can immediately correct it with evaluation and communication if the misattributed stimuli is a person. (ask for clarification, if it's not what you assumed, apologize after snapping and solve the conflict immediately).

My wife and I can tell when she's nearing her time of the month because it effects both of us. The hormone change unbalances us a week or so before sometimes causing fatigue or snippiness. It's nice to recognize it as to not contribute it the fatigue to burnout or take the snapping to heart.

We just overcompensate in communication and directly ask what the other person meant to not take something the wrong way once we recognize we're in this temporary state.

[darby_nine]

I don't see how recognizing an emotion as irrational gives you certainty of calming it. Generally speaking, emotions don't arise from a conveniently rational level of consciousness. If they did they would be referred to with terms ofther than "emotion".

[theultdev]

> I don't see how recognizing an emotion as irrational gives you certainty of calming it

When you realize it's an irrational reaction you automatically reprocess the stimuli and get a rational reaction.

Let's say someone close to you is unusually quiet and short with you. You irrationally think they are mad at you or ignoring you because they are being short. That makes you feel mad because you didn't do anything to them! Upon receiving the feeling you start rationalizing the response and realize that you have no evidence that they are mad at you and there are many times you don't want to talk. You then simply ask them if anything's wrong and they say they have a headache! Whew, it wasn't about you at all, it was just a headache! You then empathize with them and want to help so you ask if you can get them some advil and know not to be loud or talk too much until they start feeling better (acting normally)

> Generally speaking, emotions don't arise from a conveniently rational level of consciousness.

What makes you say that? Emotions commonly arise from rational thought. There are rational reasons to be mad/happy/sad/etc.

But what I'm suggesting though is the opposite, to make it a habit upon receiving every powerful emotional to verify it with rational thought.

[wruza]

I don’t believe in this theory and my experience with therapy suggests it just makes little sense. Emotional outbursts (like being startled/angered/in pain) may be temporarily irrational your own logic-wise, but your regular emotional background absolutely reflects what you actually believe is happening and the way you think. So unless you’re doing emotional logging and are really managing your beliefs, deep settings, etc afterwards, this is simply impossible. I mean you can learn therapy, but it’s not a knowledge you’re born with as a regular guy and it’s a whole “learn C++ in 21 days” thing.

There is a level of being still not broken enough, but then emotions aren’t a problem in the first place. You usually end up trying to manage them when you’re already lost and what people do is simple suppressing, thinking that’s how “adults” do.

To be clear, I provide no answer to this thread, only a comment.

[theultdev]

> Emotional outbursts (like being startled/angered/in pain) may be temporarily irrational your own logic-wise, but your regular emotional background absolutely reflects what you actually believe is happening and the way you think.

Yes your emotional background reflects what you believe is happening, but you can correct your belief if you analyze and rationalize the emotional response when you feel it, which then updates your emotional background.

> So unless you’re doing emotional logging and are really managing your beliefs, deep settings, etc afterwards, this is simply impossible.

That's exactly what I'm suggesting you do.

Upon receiving every major emotional reaction you make it a habit to analyze it immediately afterwards.

[wruza]

I find it very hard to impossible to do immediately afterwards. I can detect it, which is somewhat obvious, and write down the situation, but finding the source of it immediately I find unrealistic.

Either we talk about different things here, or I lack some Sherlock Holmes level skills that you have.

Anyway, if something bothers me that hard, making it unbother me is an improvement to work in a stupid situation, not self-normalization.

For example, recently I got frustrated when an inexperienced relative wrongly measured airport hand baggage (pure geometric cluelessness) and insisted airport will do it that way too. I find this frustration absolutely normal and don’t really want to get rid of it, cause it’s immediately actionable and the response is correct-ish.

Otoh, I successfully defeated my non-actionable fear of being late, but it took me a couple of advanced techniques I didn’t even know existed, some movie-level talk to your childhood stuff.

So there’s so much to it that I just don’t see how to “just do afterwards” (at least it sounds like that).

Again, feels we are talking different things here, not sure. And sorry for the stream of consciousness.

[theultdev]

I coded my thought process of a specific example if it helps clarify what I'm talking about:

https://gist.github.com/TheUltDev/fc8386e42205504c55d1cf2127...

(as this is a state of mind and logic thing, a program of state and logic is a better way to describe it vs words)

[aspenmayer]

> Otoh, I successfully defeated my non-actionable fear of being late, but it took me a couple of advanced techniques I didn’t even know existed, some movie-level talk to your childhood stuff.

Can you elaborate on these techniques?

[wruza]

The downward arrow (cbt) with elements of self-hypnosis.

You basically log-trace your mind at emotional points, including pulling up automatic thoughts (somewhat difficult, they tend to escape). Datetime, situation, emotion, thoughts, levels. Then intersect it all through time, because different situations disturb different sets of facets of your problem, but only one facet is primary. This discovers intermediate beliefs and coping strategies, makes them explicit. And then you logically realize your core belief. It may happen quickly or slowly (weeks), depends on how conscious you are about it and how often it happens.

In my case it was: unable to do anything 4-5 hours before an appointment or even a friends meeting. Set up a few timers, got ready step by step, doing mostly nothing in time buffers. Check for clean clothes, etc. Afraid of forgetting time and being late. Coping: long preparation, timing processes, checking time in the car. Intermediate belief: if I prepare I’ll be on time. Core belief: being late is atrocious and intolerable.

Realizing is only half the job. To destroy a core belief you have to remember how [irrationally] it formed, that’s where hypnosis kicks in. I couldn’t sleep/relax in a session, but took homework. Basically before you go to sleep you ask yourself “when it was”, as if there was some entity inside you who could answer. Few minutes later it just flashed in pre-sleep in every detail. It’s akin to thinking “I will wake up at 6:30” and doing so, a similar process and feeling.

I was few hours late from school when my grandma waited for me and couldn‘t get to work (strict schedule). She was afraid of giving me the keys. I was tired that everyone plays after classes and I cannot, so decided to just not care. She was very angry and terrified, hit me and went away like I was an enemy.

Next week after therapy, for the first time in 25 years I was being intentionally late to a doctor, said hi, sorry for being late. She said it’s fine, smiled and asked what I came with.

I realize I have serious issues here (like many others probably). But I believe either there’s no easy way to “just reflect afterwards”, or these issues aren’t really that hard to make this process explicit. I, for one, don’t understand how you get an emotion if a logical counter is readily available in your mind. It won’t happen for me in the first place then. Maybe on the contrary, I’m… healthier?