What For These Emotions?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"What for these emotions?" - that is how the question was put to me in my office yesterday. And I once again said goodbye to the illusion that constantly arises in me that the emotional sphere of a person in the minds of modern people has been rehabilitated, and such a question is already a rarity. Yeah, rare. Sometimes I even had to read mini-lectures on the topic "what kind of animal is this, emotions", because the question "what do you feel?" ran into a complete misunderstanding, and the answer followed in the style of "I think …". I've heard a lot of different sayings: "aren't emotions in my head?" live”,“why talk about your feelings at all?”,“strong feelings are dangerous and destructive”…

Overwhelmingly, such thoughts were voiced by men.

I returned home, I go online - and in front of me is a site on which a young man engaged in "self-development" actively promotes meditation and - which, unfortunately, very often goes in addition to meditation - the fight against "destructive emotions".

“Yes, it can be hard to deal with emotions, even when it seems that everything, you have coped with her, nothing guarantees that she will not overtake you again on the same day, in the evening. Emotions are easier to deal with during the day when you are full of energy, but as soon as the energy leaves you, and the body gets tired, everything becomes much more difficult. And I still find it difficult to cope with some feelings. But the main thing is to try. " His site is full of the words “stop,” “stop,” “eliminate,” “contain,” “conquer,” “overcome,” “get rid of,” “handle,” “curb,” “force,” “train the ego,” “endure "," get out of my head. " He never turned to psychologists.

Another example, only from a woman. I am an overly emotional and aggressive person. I don't have the same perception of the world as 98% of the population, I think so. And in fact, this is bad. I do not know how to suppress negative emotions in myself, because they interfere with my life and my loved ones. Literally today, because of my violent reactions, we parted with my MCH. I cried all day. Here are emotions again. And there is no point in crying. Except me no one will help me. And I perfectly understand that with my screams I just annoyed him, so I want to learn how to control my emotions..)

In general, I will now write about emotions and why they are needed - I will try to collect basic information in this publication

I'll start a little from afar. Emotions are a mental process, and for a start it is important to explain what the psyche is. I am quite happy with this definition: psyche is a systemic property of highly organized matter, which consists in the active reflection by the subject of the objective world and self-regulation on this basis of his behavior and activity. In other words, a living organism that has acquired the ability to actively, and not passively (like plants or the simplest unicellular, like amoeba) interact with the environment, reveals the presence of a psyche. The psyche does not exist separately from the nervous system and is based on the neuro-humoral (hormonal) regulation of the body's vital activity.

Why does the psyche (the ability to actively respond to stimuli from the outside world) need living matter?

Imagine two conditional living cells, one of which can do without this excess, and the second has acquired it. The first will be carried by waves / wind, it will receive nutrients according to a random principle: if it finds itself in a suitable environment, it will feed, if not, it will die; it's the same with danger. And the second will begin to actively collect information from the outside world about the presence / absence of food or danger, and even BEFORE it encounters a danger, and will react not in a direct collision with food / danger, but when receiving SIGNALS about the close presence of food / danger. Not a single tree has yet escaped from the lumberjack, and the point is not only that trees cannot run, but also that they are unable to react to steps or the image of an approaching person with an ax … It is clear that the more complex the nervous system, the more varied the way the animal interacts with the world, including such an extremely important thing as the ability to learn.

Getting closer to the topic of emotion. Emotions are among the very ancient regulators of the behavior of a living organism in its interaction with the outside world. Much more ancient than our conscious thinking, which in the evolutionary sense exists only for a moment. This is a kind of pre-rational signaling system that lets the whole body know about what is happening either to it or to the environment, and mobilizes it for action. The more developed the nervous and humoral systems of regulation, the more complex the emotional life of a living being (it is important to remember that the experience of emotions is closely related to hormones / neurotransmitters). Emotions work FASTER than a person's conscious thinking, and much more. At the same time, emotional and cognitive (cognitive) processes are a single whole, and one cannot be separated from the other, if only because emotions are in the same way connected with information processing.

There is no unified theory of emotion, but what most agree on: emotion is the subjective experience of the body's reactions to various kinds of changes in the internal or external environment. For example, fear can be described purely physiologically (increased heart rate, sweating, trembling in the knees), but on a subjective level, we experience fear, and not just feel that "for some unknown reason, my knees give way." This, by the way, happens when the conscious experience of fear is completely blocked: the body “experiences fear”, but on the subjective conscious level “everything is in order”.

So, what functions do emotions perform (I will talk about human emotions)? At least three:

A) Assessment … For example, we experience fear when our brain, having counted all possible information in the external environment, gives the conclusion: "danger!" The conclusion is sometimes based on previous experience, therefore, our emotional reactions are far from always adequate to the situation: a mentally healthy person with paranoid behavior, having become a hostage to the generalization (over-generalization) of his past negative experience of communicating with significant people, is now afraid of all people. Positive emotional states like joy and happiness are also associated with assessing how things are going. Can you guess why it is impossible to “turn off” negative emotions without suppressing positive ones? There is only one function.

B) Motivation and mobilization of energy. Emotions also motivate us to perform certain actions. If we completely turn off the emotional life of a person, then he will simply lie down and look at the ceiling - there is no mobilization of energy. We all know the powerful "I want!" and accompanying emotions; nervous excitement with anxiety; a strong release of energy in anger. Emotions can also motivate "by contradiction": "never again!" If we do not care, we will not do anything, because there is no energy.

There is one problem with the motivational function - the general pattern of our psyche is the struggle of motives, when directly opposite aspirations come into conflict, which is why there is a lot of energy, but it is partially used to suppress “wrong” stimuli. Do you know the emotional situation when you want to buy something, but at the same time the price is very high, or you need to make a choice of one thing out of five, for example? But I really want to buy …

C) Marking needs … Emotions are closely related to needs, and their third function (connected with the first two) is to provide a person with energy to satisfy a particular need and assess how this satisfaction occurs. For example, an unmet need for security is “marked” by fear (if the threat is obvious and understandable) or anxiety (there is a threat, but it is not clear what), fear and anxiety mobilize energy to counter the threat (most often through control). Shame points to a bottomless hole in terms of the impossibility of satisfying the need to accept oneself by other people, anger - to a sudden obstacle to the satisfaction of certain desires. We may not be aware of the need, but at the same time experience the emotions associated with it - this is the "labeling" of needs.

Emotions can be simple or complex. Simple emotions are primary, simple experiences, while complex emotions are composed of several simple ones (and they are often called "feelings"). Simple emotions include: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, shame, guilt, tenderness, joy, satisfaction, curiosity, surprise, gratitude. Behind each of this emotion lies a) assessment of the situation b) motivation for a specific action c) marking the need. Fear: danger / avoidance of threat / need for security. Guilt: I did something bad / make up for my guilt / need to be accepted by others. Gratitude: Something good was done to me / to reward a benefactor / need for relationships with other people. Etc. Simple emotions can easily be translated into action.

So, an attempt to become a "rational machine" or to ignore emotions, sitting in meditation and waiting for them to "pass by themselves, the main thing is not to interfere in anything" is an attempt to ignore the ancient mechanism of self-regulation, which, moreover, works at an unconscious level (consciousness simply does not keep pace). Therefore, sometimes it seems to us that emotions arise by themselves, without any reason. This may be the case if you have taken psychoactive substances or if you have severe mental problems (with depression or schizophrenia, the balance of neurotransmitters is imbalanced). Otherwise, emotions always have reasons (perceived or not), because our psyche is in continuous interaction with the environment.

Therefore, "I do not understand what came over me, why I am annoyed at everyone for no reason!" - this is a direct indication that some need is not satisfied, and for a long time, and instead of fighting "hysteria", it would be good to listen to what the emotion wants to communicate (however, irritation at everyone and everything is not an emotion, but a muddy hodgepodge / okroshka from under-experienced feelings and misunderstood own needs). As Jung said of depression, “depression is like a lady in black. If she has come, do not drive her away, but invite her to the table as a guest, and listen to what she intends to say. " When fighting emotion, we are fighting an indicator of a problem, not a problem. As if the best way to fight a fire is to smash a fire alarm or yell at a burning red light.

How to defeat jealousy? - Do not fight with jealousy, but deal with the feeling of your own inferiority and uncompetitiveness in the fight for a partner.

How to overcome fear of public speaking? - Do not fight with fear, but figure out why the task “to please everyone present” you prioritize the task “to convey the desired information to interested listeners”. Face the thing that is causing the fear, rather than breaking the alarm.

Emotions, as I already said, do not always tell us the truth, because in the human psyche they are refracted through past experience or borrowed attitudes from others. We can see a fire where there is none. But they always tell us something about our inner world, about the prism through which we look at the environment around us, and give us energy to make changes. It is important to learn how to use this wonderful tool, and not treat it like a dangerous animal, which is better to put in a cage and keep on a starvation diet.