To Be Sane–Don’t Trust Your Emotions

They tell you nothing and make a mess of your life

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

Emotions are treacherous.

Just a few days ago, on a peaceful Saturday evening, I was feeling dreadful. My mind indulged in reminding me about all my anxieties and fears, leading to nothing but cynicism about any major project I’ve undertaken. Random loneliness hit me as well.

No need to worry; it was an incidental occurrence. However, I’ve never figured out exactly why I fall into — a seemingly random — emotional pit now and then. The evening part is straightforward; it’s late, and we don’t have much strong will or energy left to fight any negative thoughts.

Even if I’m distanced towards my emotions, I still did not fancy feeling existentially down for the rest of the evening. So, what did I do? Well:

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day — that is, forget oneself. — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I know you aren’t impressed, but let me redeem myself. I did not — I repeat — I did not drink myself into oblivion or anything similar. Instead, I binged-watched comedy-drama until midnight. It was hilarious, so my objective was achieved: the morning did come.

Funnily enough, by then, I was perfectly fine; No hard feelings at all. Honestly, I wasn’t even surprised. From experience: however crazy my idea is, the brightness of the day always seems to be saying, “yes” whereas the darkness of the night, “no”.

Silly reason with huge consequences

Now, it’s time for a plot twist! Two days before that night, my workout session had been canceled, and I thought, “I guess I’ll just wait till the next one”. And so, I ended up with a few days without any major physical activity. As you know from the rest of the story — hell — it has backfired on me.

Yet, the title of this article isn’t “On the Importance of Physical Activity”. God, no one would ever read that. I meant to illustrate that, this time, I could pinpoint why these negative emotions suddenly flowed into my brain, but there are way more cases when I couldn’t.

Importantly, the lack of physical activity didn’t cause my negativity. I was merely deprived of a stress buffer it had served as. Therefore, that negativity had to come from somewhere else. And God only knows where! We are so complicated — it’s beyond our capacity to understand.

The Psychology behind

My story is an example of why you shouldn’t trust your emotions, but let’s introduce a scientific side to it as well.

Our mind undergoes two distinct cognitive processes. Let’s start with the wild one, the monitoring process. This guy does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. You know him quite well: imagine lying on your bed at night, just chilling out, trying to fall asleep.

Suddenly, this awkward situation from MONTHS ago pops into your head, tormenting you with whatever inappropriate thing you did or said. Want to sleep? Well, he won’t let you. The guy is obsessed with having all the authority.

Okay, I got carried away with the metaphor; the key is that the monitoring process is unconscious and mostly beyond your control.

I said “mostly” because you can control it to some (little) extent. Yay!
It works based on probability chance; “what you put in is what you get out,” as the saying goes. It’s simple — for example — the more positivity you “consume,” the better the chances your unconscious will present them to you spontaneously.

However — sorry for saying this — it’s still not much compared to all your childhood experiences and traumas lurking out there.

But you still have the consciousness, right? And that’s the operating process. The guy who has to deal with it all. This one gives you room for maneuver as it allows you to switch attention. So, whenever you think, “I don’t wanna muse about that, shut up.” — that’s the operating process.

How to survive the attack

I hope we established, by now, that you’d better be cautious with trusting your emotions. They’re treacherous as hell. However, that alone doesn’t stop them from existing; by God, they’re relentless! And you cannot simply pretend they’re not there, or can you? Maybe it’s a brilliant idea — the rescue of all humanity!

Actually, people have already tried it. It doesn’t work. Funnily, not only that, but it also worsens the problem. Human beings are so fun! It’s called the ironic rebound effect (or theory):

Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions

Did Dostoevsky manipulate you into thinking about polar bears? Yes, but be grateful it was just a bear. Anyway, many studies show that repressing your thoughts will only strengthen them, so don’t try this at home.

Here’s what to do instead, according to the psychologist and researcher of that topic, Daniel Wegner:

1. Distract yourself with an absorbing activity.
   For me, it was that comedy-drama — it saved my life.
2. Postpone thinking about it until later.
   If I had known it earlier, I would have said to my brain, “I refuse to consider it until tomorrow afternoon and require you to desist your actions immediately”. Yeah, I love fancy wording.
3. Don’t multitask.
4. Meditation and mindfulness: I had to, okay.
5. Exposure: Full details here ↓↓

Either Confront the Chaos Now, or Get Destroyed by It Later

The morals of the story:

1. Don’t trust your emotions too easily: In some sense, your mind is like an open hotel everyone can walk into.
2. If an open hotel syndrome appears, don’t suppress your thoughts by force, but use the tips I provided above.