[gress]

I didn't find this model particularly compelling compared to the many that have been developed in the psychological and therapeutic literature, or in the esoteric spiritual traditions.

However what I think is valuable, and is what the author is experiencing, is that thinking about emotion and how it works, and developing our own model of it that makes sense of your own experience, is a profoundly helpful thing to do. Developing your own personal model is fundamentally different from learning someone else's, wherever it comes from.

So, whether this model does or doesn't work for you, it may be worth figuring out why, and making your own better one.

[hosh]

I totally agree with you there. This model merely scratches the surface, and yet, I'm glad the author is attempting to explore it.

[MarkPNeyer]

hey, author here. i didn't realize this was on hacker news :)

a thought occured to me yesterday - perhaps my use of this internal model isn't "for everyone", but it "works for me" because of some kind of placebo effect. every time i have emotional reactions, i'm able to look at them through this lens and act in a way that typically involves modifying an errant belief.

[gress]

I think the key point is that you now have developed this reflective process by which you consider your emotions and beliefs. Expect it to continue to get richer!

[wdewind]

Can you point to other models that are so clearly and concisely explained? Would really like to read that.

[gress]

No, because in my experience emotions are not clear and concise. They are a very complex and nuanced way of generating relatively rapid responses to our environment based on our genetics and our experience. Our experiences are complex, therefore so are our emotions.

However his book: Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self, by Donald L. Nathanson

Describes one system that I have found helpful. It's not concise, and it's not easy to read, plus there are obvious flaws, but I thought it was still as good as anything I've encountered.

[wdewind]

Sure, I guess I wasn't looking so much for an in depth text as a high level summary of different models and how they differ. Just to get an idea of what's out there.

[gress]

Unfortunately I have not found such a thing, probably because human knowledge about this is so patchy.

[hosh]

You're better off picking up a meditative practice with just enough "seed" and go from there. It's a kind of empiricism where you observe your experience, and in which insights naturally emerge from being aware of your experiencing. In a practice like that, eventually to get to the deeper stuff, you drop your attachment to models and explanations.