ape-men called “japs” who wanted nothing more than to steal blond women<\/a>.\u00a0 It became an emotional issue and therefore controllable.<\/p>\nHumans have emotional reactions to things.\u00a0 It’s a big part of what we are.<\/p>\n
The reason for that strange introduction is that I’m sad today.\u00a0 It’s not shameful or anything else to be sad.\u00a0 It’s something that I desperately want and I probably can’t get tomorrow after planning and preparing and waiting for it for the last six months (has it been that long)?<\/p>\n
Call it privilege, call it a first world problem if you like, but when one works for something for a long time and the plans fall apart, it makes people sad.\u00a0 A new job, a relationship, a special project… all of these things can invoke the kind of sadness I’m talking about.<\/p>\n
However, I do recognize that this is an emotional reaction.\u00a0 It’s is a feeling of incompleteness, of effort… not wasted… but not fulfilled either.\u00a0 And that’s what the feeling is.\u00a0 That’s all that it is.\u00a0 Our brains recognizing that something isn’t the way we want it to be.\u00a0 Which tends to happen a lot.<\/p>\n
The problem is that, sometimes, the sadness can overcome someone’s ability to deal with it.\u00a0 I don’t know if some people are just better able to handle such things or if their past experiences have made them more emotional resilient or some combination of both.\u00a0 I do know that I was sad a lot as a child.\u00a0 We didn’t have much.\u00a0 I never had many friends.\u00a0 I was generally alone.\u00a0 I was teased a lot as a child.<\/p>\n
What I think has helped me to deal with sadness and depression and rage and all those other emotions is reason.\u00a0 Once I get past the initial burst of emotions, I can find a way to examine what I’m feeling and why.\u00a0 It’s not always easy.\u00a0 But it is utterly fascinating to sit down and really look at one’s self and be able to say, “I’m sad and I’m sad because something I was hoping for isn’t going to go the way I wanted it to.”<\/p>\n
Then, using reason, you can examine the issue and, at least in my experience, I find that, in almost every case, there’s a solution.\u00a0 In this case, it’s simply being patient and waiting a little longer.\u00a0 Can every problem be solved?\u00a0 No, but a rational decision is much better than an emotional decision.<\/p>\n
I’ll admit that occasionally an emotional decision will be the same as the reasoned decision.\u00a0 But it seems to me to be like the hero in the movie who rescues the girl hoping to get laid.\u00a0 The decision is the same (rescue the girl), but the reason is flawed.<\/p>\n
We should do things, because they are the correct thing to do or the best possible decision (that we know of).\u00a0 We shouldn’t do things because, in a second of emotional outburst, we do something.\u00a0 I know what I’m asking here.\u00a0 It’s HARD to do this. But our decisions are much better for it.<\/p>\n
Let me give you an example.\u00a0 My child is growing up.\u00a0 He recently told me that he was mad at me and didn’t want to be my kid anymore. He was sooo mad.\u00a0 But, in a moment of clarity, I was able to step back, avoid the emotional reaction and really look at what was going on, what he was feeling, what I was feeling, and make a reasoned response.<\/p>\n
Instead of yelling, or fighting him, or anything else, I just smiled sadly and said, “Well, I still love you, but if you don’t want to be my kid, I’ll drop you off wherever you’d like to go.\u00a0 You’ll have to leave your toys and your cat, but I’ll let you have a change of clothes.”\u00a0 That shut him down so fast, it was absolutely stunning.\u00a0 In less than 5 minutes he was snuggled in my lap and we were back to being calm and everything was fine.<\/p>\n
I never even raised my voice.\u00a0 Indeed, I thought it was kind of funny (which made him more mad).<\/p>\n
This reasonable response (wow, look at that root word) was not an emotional response, but it was infinitely more effective.<\/p>\n
As I write this, I am trying to apply the same process to my sadness (it is really hard and takes lots of practice) and it’s working.\u00a0 I’m sad, but my mind is reminding me of all the things that are accomplished and that a delay is just a delay.\u00a0 It’s not actually going to change anything.\u00a0 Heck, a lot of things might even be better because of some end of the month factors coming into play.<\/p>\n
In all the movies, the master says something like ‘fear shouldn’t control you’.\u00a0 And that’s true, but it’s the same for any emotion.\u00a0 Fear, sadness, depression, love, happiness, and all the other emotions are not the correct ways to make decisions.\u00a0 Some of these emotions are good, some are bad.\u00a0 But they are all just feelings.\u00a0 They are, literally, changes in the chemical structure of the brain.<\/p>\n
Reason though, is a good way to make decisions.\u00a0 It gives us the advantage of cycling through several responses and using defined criteria to determine the best possible decision.\u00a0 Emotions don’t work that way.\u00a0 If you are sad, you will have a very different response to the same stimuli than you would if you were angry.\u00a0 Reason prevents all those variable responses.<\/p>\n
_____________________
\nP.S. I am NOT a doctor or therapist or anything else.\u00a0 Your mileage may vary.\u00a0 I’ll happily talk with you if you have an issue that you’d like to talk about with someone.\u00a0 But all I can do is talk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You know, I’m kind of tired of the ‘atheists are all amoral psychopaths’ memes that I hear every so often.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,36,11],"tags":[421,419,420],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-life","category-skepticism","tag-decision-making","tag-emotions","tag-reason"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}